A Hunger Artist

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6811719312494990925.post-34579120136712111842007-04-24T20:12:00.000-07:002007-04-24T21:06:29.274-07:00A Hunger Artist At the end of Franz Kafka's story, "A Hunger Artist," a starving man decreases in size to the point that he vanishes into the straw bedding of the circus cage in which he has performed his otherwise uninterrupted act. This, in any case, is one way to read it. That is to say: the hunger artist does not die in the story, though the story tempts us to say as much. Thus, too, Kafka's breakthrough story, "The Judgment," which ends when the protagonist leaps off a bridge and Precisely. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_0bBNhyTkH28/Ri7OqfEC7UI/AAAAAAAAAAM/iyaHsfOkIrk/s1600-h/PH2007041302285.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_0bBNhyTkH28/Ri7OqfEC7UI/AAAAAAAAAAM/iyaHsfOkIrk/s320/PH2007041302285.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5057206660871941442" border="0" /></a> There is today a hunger artist on the steps of the Sudanese Embassy in Washington. Or at least there was <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/13/AR2007041302195.html?referrer=emailarticle">on April 14th</a>. Perhaps he's now dead, or if anything just infinitely small. As The Washington Post writes, <blockquote></blockquote><blockquote>...he has no illusions that his lone protest will make a difference. "I'm here because my brothers and sisters are being killed. It's not my responsibility what others do. It's only my responsibility what I do. I can do nothing less in the face of this atrocity." He pauses to swallow his welling tears. "I wish I had thousands of lives to give. But I have mine and this is how I choose to spend it." </blockquote>What Kafka understood is that the infinitely small embrace everything, and that the sized, the ambitious, consume themselves. A hunger artist is patience, and patience is raw compassion (Mitglied). A hunger artist says, "There is nothing here worth eating." Bon appetit.J P Lhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10512564931109178915noreply@blogger.com