A Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka

Some time in April, I reread "A Hunger Artist" by Franz Kafka. I had understood it's value and importance. It had left a strong and precise impression on me before. My second time reading it though, my reactions for it were immensely deeper and although more intense, deeper. I hadn't taken the proper time needed for the story to settle in and let it sift it's way back up to me. I jumped to the next story in the collection. I tend to do that sometimes when I want to read all of the stories in the collection. Anyways, I am digressing.

A Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka, hands down has become one of my all time favorite short-stories. There is much there for the modern reader to interpret, walk away from and contrast to Kafka's own modern times and then to ours. Differences between Kafka's and our times are stark and unsettling.

Kafka's short-stories reach much like a newspaper in a way, almost as if matter of fact, reporting with lively details that leaves you longing for one more story at the end of it. Of course what I can read are always translations. Perhaps in German it's quite different. From first hand experience, I know the lost treasures in translations. Somethings, no matter how grand the translator cannot be translated. In those times, no translation is adequate and cannot do the justice the original rightly deserves. I believe Kafka is one of those writers.

His observations translate to the aching pains of his own adulthood, tension between his father and himself and the spiritual desire he has kept within himself, much to this father's disappointment. He writes subtly, effectively and with concrete parallels that he draws very tactfully, almost becoming inevitable in his writing style. Almost like a carefully written research paper, without any of it's boring elements.

A Hunger Artist is a must read for everyone. It makes one question about a billion things, but really the ineffective of our own sacrifices at times and as artists our own short comings and not to beguile ourselves with pride. Let's not forget the allegory of the story. Though I don't want to give away too much.