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    A Hunger Artist
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    A Hunger Artist
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    A Hunger Artist
    Ebook21 pages20 minutes

    A Hunger Artist

    By Franz Kafka and Sheba Blake

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    A Hunger Artist is a short story by Franz Kafka. The protagonist, a hunger artist who experiences the decline in appreciation of his craft, is an archetypical creation of Kafka: an individual marginalized and victimized by society at large. The title of the story has been translated also to "A Fasting Artist" and "A Starvation Artist". A Hunger Artist was first published in the periodical Die neue Rundschau in 1922 and was subsequently included as the title piece in the short story collection. "A Hunger Artist" explores the familiar Kafka themes of death, art, isolation, asceticism, spiritual poverty, futility, personal failure and the corruption of human relationships. There is a sharp division among critical interpretations of "A Hunger Artist". Most commentators concur that the story is an allegory, but they disagree as to what is represented. Some critics[who?], pointing to the hunger artist's asceticism, regard him as a saintly or even Christ-like figure. In support of this view they emphasize the unworldliness of the protagonist, the priest-like quality of the watchers, and the traditional religious significance of the forty-day period. Other critics[who?] insist that A Hunger Artist is an allegory of the misunderstood artist, whose vision of transcendence and artistic excellence is rejected or ignored by the public. This interpretation is sometimes joined with a reading of the story as autobiographical. According to this view, this story, written near the end of Kafka's life, links the hunger artist with the author as an alienated artist who is dying.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSheba Blake Publishing
    Release dateApr 13, 2017
    ISBN9783961890255
    Author

    Franz Kafka

    Franz Kafka was born to Jewish parents in Bohemia in 1883. Kafka’s father was a luxury goods retailer who worked long hours and as a result never became close with his son. Kafka’s relationship with his father greatly influenced his later writing and directly informed his Brief an den Vater (Letter to His Father). Kafka had a thorough education and was fluent in both German and Czech. As a young man, he was hired to work at an insurance company where he was quickly promoted despite his desire to devote his time to writing rather than insurance. Over the course of his life, Kafka wrote a great number of stories, letters, and essays, but burned the majority of his work before his death and requested that his friend Max Brod burn the rest. Brod, however, did not fulfill this request and published many of the works in the years following Kafka’s death of tuberculosis in 1924. Thus, most of Kafka’s works were published posthumously, and he did not live to see them recognized as some of the most important examples of literature of the twentieth century. Kafka’s works are considered among the most significant pieces of existentialist writing, and he is remembered for his poignant depictions of internal conflicts with alienation and oppression. Some of Kafka’s most famous works include The Metamorphosis, The Trial and The Castle.

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    • 5/5
      It was a unique read, very different from anything I’ve read before