Franz Kafka’s “A Hunger Artist”

Symbolism

http://www.zeitgeist-gallery.org/archives/images/HungArt-1.jpg

Symbolism• An example of “figurative language”

http://thenonist.com/images/uploads/polkfka.jpg

Figurative language

•“language that creates imaginative connections between our ideas and our senses”

•“reveals similarities between things we have never associated before”

Comparisons

•Similes: “like” or “as”: eg. “Like a rolling stone”; “Like a virgin”

•Metaphors: direct comparison: eg. “Papa was a rolling stone”

•Symbol: “a metaphor multiplied”

Symbol

•“A symbol is a metaphor that has been in use by many people for a long time, or that otherwise has a magnified or many-layered significance.”

•Pervasive symbols become “archetypes”

Examples?

•Literature often invents new symbols

•Text provides clues

•Symbol is often a focal point

•Extended symbol; encompasses whole story; every element has another meanig

Allegory

Myth

•A symbolic story that has a wide, even cross-cultural, meaning

•“A good symbol cannot be extracted from the story in which it serves.”

Franz Kafka

•1883-1924

•b. Prague

•middle-class Jewish family

http://www.discoverczech.com/apictures/z_prague/prague/praguetours/franz-kafka-v.jpg

•a major German-language writer of the 20thc

• influential

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Kafka_monument.jpg

•troubled individuals caught up in nightmarish bureaucratic

•“Kafkaesque” has entered common usage

http://alangullette.com/lit/absurd/

•Franz Kafka by Anthony Hare (2003)http://www.siteway.com/illustrations_franzkafka.php

“A Hunger Artist”

•published in Die Neue Rundschau (1922)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/411HTvll9GL._AA240_.jpg

http://www.showhistory.com/Succi.hunger.jpg

Symbolic resonance

•Interpreted as a play by The Hunger Artists Theater Company (2006)

http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~kaz/photos2/C7_0001.jpg

•Interpreted as a graphic story by Peter Kruper (1995)

http://www.rackham.dk/Interviews/Billeder/kuper/hungerartist.gif

http://anilldressedfoolishwise.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html

• Made into an animated film by Tom Gibbons (2002)

•“Hunger Artist” by Kurt Kemp (1999)

http://www.hooksepsteingalleries.com/images/kemp/kemp_the_hunger_artist.shtml

•Oscar Grillo (2007)

http://okgrillo.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html

http://www.artscrawlabq.org/HungerArtist/hungerartist.html

• “A Hunger Artist Gallery's name derives from a short story by Franz Kafka and, as with artists today, Kafka's ‘hunger artist’ struggles for recognition and understanding within society. As a contemporary gallery we support ‘visual hunger artists’ in their universal inquiry about their modern world, helping to bridge the gap between the general public and the current art scene.”

Questions

•What are some possible symbolic interpretations of the hunger artist? the impresario? How do you interpet the panther that replaces the dead artist at the end of “A Hunger Artist”?

•Why is fasting such a powerful symbolic art form? What are some of the “hungers” that it might represent?

•Shortly before he dies, the hunger artist declares that his art shouldn’t be admired. Why not? What do you make of his explanation that he simply couldn’t find the foot that he liked? What “food” might have satisfied him?

http://tragle-family-memorial.us/shane_truitts_art.htm