a-hunger-artist.html.pm

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◊define-meta[page-title]{A Hunger Artist}
◊define-meta[snippet]{THE PANTHER from Kafka's A Hunger Artist has stuck with me ever since I first read the short story.}
◊define-meta[original-date]{2018-02-16}
◊define-meta[edited-date]{2018-05-24}

◊fig[#:src "assets/panther_patrick_bouquet.jpg"]{Photo by ◊a[#:href
"https://www.flickr.com/photos/pattoise/3731006773/"]{Patrick
Bouquet}. (◊a[#:href
"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/"]{CC◊nbsp[]BY◊non-breaking-hyphen[]NC◊non-breaking-hyphen[]ND◊nbsp[]2.0})}

THE PANTHER from Franz Kafka's ◊a[#:href
"http://johnstoniatexts.x10host.com/kafka/hungerartisthtml.html"]{◊em{A
Hunger Artist}} has stuck with me ever since I first read the short
story.

◊q{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."◊note{◊format-work[#:type "book" #:author "John Dewey"
#:year "1934" #:title "Art as Experience" #:publisher "Minton Balch &
Co" #:publisher-location "New York"]}

That was the hunger artist. ◊em{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.