A Hunger Artist E-Book

Franz kafka

• Herausgeber: Phoemixx Classics Ebooks
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 22

Beschreibung

A Hunger Artist Franz Kafka - Kafka wrote "Hunger Artist" as he was starving to death. He suffered from a bad case of laryngeal tuberculosis that made eating too painful. As the condition worsened his throat closed and doctors had no way to feed him. He was 40 when he died."Hunger Artist" has a bitter irony feel to it. Like Metamorphosis, it deals with feelings of alienation, isolation and withdrawal. Of course with Kafka there is always the initiation of something extremely unusual, and that's no different here.Strangely as it may seem, as we are dealing with a man inside a cage, it's a spiritual freedom that reverberates through out the story. The artist is melancholic, not because he does not eat, but because he is continuously tempted to abandon his fasting and to accept the very food he tries to evade.He evaluates everything on deeper levels, like a psychologist mainlining his subconscious mind. He creates a tone that plays havoc with your thought process where he invites us to see art in a darker shade of gray, to consider the relationship between art and authenticity.The protagonist experiences the decline in appreciation of his craft, an individual marginalized by society at large. The short story explores themes such as art, isolation, asceticism, spiritual poverty, futility, personal failure and the corruption of human relationships.Kafka is thought to have been inspired to write his tale by a Giovanni Succi, a professional faster who amazed crowds across Europe around the turn of the century with his stoic refusal of food for as many as 40 days.

Leseprobe

Franz Kafka

A Hunger Artist

PUBLISHER NOTES:

Take our Free

Quick Quiz and Find Out Which

Best Side Hustle is ✓Best for You.

✓ VISIT OUR WEBSITE:

→LYFREEDOM.COM ← ← CLICK HERE ←

In the last decades interest in hunger artists has declined considerably. Whereas in earlier days there was good money to be earned putting on major productions of this sort under one's own management, nowadays that is totally impossible. Those were different times. Back then the hunger artist captured the attention of the entire city. From day to day while the fasting lasted, participation increased. Everyone wanted to see the hunger artist at least daily. During the final days there were people with subscription tickets who sat all day in front of the small barred cage. And there were even viewing hours at night, their impact heightened by torchlight. On fine days the cage was dragged out into the open air, and then the hunger artist was put on display particularly for the children. While for grown-ups the hunger artist was often merely a joke, something they participated in because it was fashionable, the children looked on amazed, their mouths open, holding each other's hands for safety, as he sat there on scattered straw — spurning a chair — in a black tights, looking pale, with his ribs sticking out prominently, sometimes nodding politely, answering questions with a forced smile, even sticking his arm out through the bars to let people feel how emaciated he was, but then completely sinking back into himself, so that he paid no attention to anything, not even to what was so important to him, the striking of the clock, which was the single furnishing in the cage, merely looking out in front of him with his eyes almost shut and now and then sipping from a tiny glass of water to moisten his lips.