In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

118 ARRAYS
survive here and there. All in vain: everywhere, as if by secret agreement,
people displayed a positive revulsion toward professional fasting" (181).
Since he is only too aware of the reasons for this crisis, Kafka's hunger
artist sinks into a depression that sometimes turns into fits of rage (which
his manager tries to market as a psychologically interesting spectacle).
The narrow, self-reflexive circle within which he monitors his own performance
cannot help giving rise to suspicions of cheating: "No one
could possibly watch the hunger artist every minute, day and night, and
so no one could produce first-hand evidence that his fast really had been
rigorous and continuous; only the artist himself could know that. Inevitably,
then, he was the only spectator of his own fast who could be
completely satisfied with the performance" (177). Even more important,
Kafka's fictional hunger artist is frustrated by the fact that he never fasts
for more than about forty days. He is aware that such a limit is arbitrary
and undramatic:
The longest period of fasting was fixed by his manager at forty days ...
Experience had shown that for about forty days the public's interest
could be kept up by an increasingly vigorous advertising campaign, but
that subsequently the townspeople would begin to lose interest, and
support would begin to wane ... So on the fortieth day the flowerbedecked
cage was opened, enthusiastic spectators filled the hall, a
military band played, two doctors entered the cage to declare the results
of the fast through a megaphone ... And at this point the artist always
turned stubborn ... Why stop fasting at this particular moment, after
forty days? He had held out a long time, an immeasurably long time.
Why stop now, when he was at the top of his form, or rather not yet
quite at the top of his form?" (178f£.)
Systematically deprived of any dangerous proximity to death, the hunger
artist enters a period of professional and emotional decline. He ends up
in a circus, as part of the animal show. But even there nobody cares about
him. When, days or perhaps weeks after his death, the circus attendants
discover his corpse, he has finally managed to demonstrate his willingness
to confront death-but he has crossed the boundary between life
and death in the most unspectacular way.
The dead hunger artist is replaced by a panther. Unlike him, the animal
is so full of life that, confined in the former hunger box, it offers an