A Hunger Artist

THE PANTHER from Franz Kafka’s A Hunger Artist has stuck with me ever since I first read the short sto­ry.

But in his cage they put a young pan­ther. Even for a per­son with the dullest mind it was clear­ly re­fresh­ing to see this wild an­i­mal prowl­ing around in this cage, which had been drea­ry for such a long time. It lacked noth­ing. Without hav­ing to think much about it, the guards brought the an­i­mal food whose taste it en­joyed. It nev­er seemed once to miss its free­dom. This no­ble body, equipped with every­thing nec­es­sary, al­most to the point of burst­ing, even ap­peared to car­ry free­dom around with it. That seemed to be lo­cat­ed some­where or oth­er in its teeth, and its joy in liv­ing came with such strong pas­sion from its throat that it was not easy for spec­ta­tors to keep watch­ing. But they con­trolled them­selves, kept press­ing around the cage, and had no de­sire at all to move on.

That im­age is most strik­ing in con­trast to the hunger artist the pan­ther re­placed. “The en­e­mies of the es­thet­ic are nei­ther the prac­ti­cal nor the in­tel­lec­tu­al. They are the hum­drum; slack­ness of loose ends; sub­mis­sion to con­ven­tion in prac­tice and in­tel­lec­tu­al pro­ce­dure.”John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Minton Balch & Co, 1934).

That was the hunger artist. A hunger artist, even. Just one of many. The pan­ther is Dewey’s “live be­ing”, “re­cur­rent­ly los­ing and re-es­tab­lish­ing equi­lib­ri­um with its sur­round­ings.” Its joy and pas­sion come from “achieve­ments in a world of things”. At least for this mo­ment.

The hunger artist, though, was not striv­ing for equi­lib­ri­um. He couldn’t help but fast: he didn’t eat be­cause he couldn’t find any food that tast­ed good to him. There was no strug­gle. There was no art.