by Franz Kafka
Such thoughts, however, are plainly due to the influence of my neighbour; he confuses me, he makes me feel quite melancholy; and yet for himself he is cheerful enough, at least when he is in his own domain I can hear him shouting and singing away until it becomes most disagreeable. It would be a good thing for me to renounce this last contact also, to stop giving way to the vague dreams which all contact with the dog world must provoke, however hardened one imagines oneself to be, and to employ the short time that remains to me exclusively for my own researches. The next time he comes I shall creep off and pretend to be asleep, and then repeat the procedure for as long as necessary until he stops coming.
Also my researches have become disorganized, I am slackening off, I am growing weary, now I merely trot mechanically where once I ran with a good spirit. I remember the time when I began to investigate the question: ‘Where does the earth get our nourishment from?’ Then indeed I really lived among the people, I pushed my way through to where the crowd was thickest, I wanted to make everyone a witness to the work I was doing; indeed to have witnesses was more important to me than the work itself, for I was still expecting to make some kind of universal impression. Naturally that fired me with a great enthusiasm, which now that I am on my own I have no longer. But in those days I felt so strong that I did something unheard-of, something that runs counter to all our principles, and I am sure that everyone who was then an eyewitness can still remember it as a strangely disturbing episode.
I had observed that science, which normally seeks to make endless distinctions, was content in one respect with a remarkable simplification. It teaches that, in the main, it is the earth which produces our nourishment, and having made this assumption it then enumerates the methods by which the different foods may be obtained in best quality and greatest abundance. Now it is of course true that the earth produces our nourishment, of that there can be no doubt, but it is by no means as simple as it is generally made out to be, by no means so simple as to make all further inquiry superfluous. Suppose one just takes the most primitive sort of occurrences that are repeated every day. If we were to be wholly inactive, as with me is by now almost the case, and after a perfunctory preparation of the soil we were just to curl up and wait for things to happen, then we should indeed find, assuming that anything happened at all, our nourishment upon the ground. Nevertheless that is not the regular pattern. Anyone who has preserved even a little open-mindedness in scientific matters – and there are certainly not many of them, for the circles of science are ever widening – any such person can easily recognize, even if he does not set out to make any specific observations, that the greater part of the nourishment which is then found lying on the ground comes down from above; indeed we even catch most of it, according to the measure of our dexterity and greed, before it touches the ground at all. By saying that I do not mean to say anything against science; the earth does of course produce this nourishment also, naturally; whether it draws one kind of nourishment out of itself, or calls another kind down from on high, may indeed make no essential difference, and since science has established that preparation of the ground is necessary in both cases, it has perhaps no need to concern itself with such distinctions, for is it not said: ‘If you have food in your jaws, you have for the present solved all problems.’ But it seems to me that science does take a veiled interest in these matters none the less, at least to some extent, inasmuch as it recognizes two main methods of procuring nourishment: namely, the actual preparation of the ground, and then the supplementary improvement-process in the form of incantation, dance, and song. Here I find a division, not a total division but one that is obvious enough, and which corresponds to the distinction that I myself draw in the matter. In my opinion the preparation of the ground serves to obtain both kinds of nourishment, and remains always indispensable; incantation, dance, and song, on the other hand, do not so much affect the ground nourishment in the narrower sense, they serve principally to draw down the nourishment from above. Tradition fortifies me in this interpretation. Here the ordinary people seem to rectify science, without their being aware of it and without science daring to resist them. If, as science claims, these ceremonies serve the earth only, in order perhaps to give it the strength to summon the nourishment from above, then logically they should be performed exclusively close against the earth; it is to the earth that all the whispering, all the singing, and all the dancing should be addressed. And to the best of my knowledge nothing other than this is required by science. But now comes the remarkable thing: the people address all their ceremonies towards the heights. This is no offence against science, for science does not forbid it; it allows the husbandman complete freedom in this respect; in its teaching it has only the earth in mind, and if the husbandman gives effect to the specific teachings about the earth, then science is content; but in my opinion the train of scientific thought ought really to require something more. And for myself, though I have never been deeply initiated into science, I just cannot conceive how it is that the learned scientists are willing to permit our people, in the passionate way that they have, to chant their spells into the air, to wail the ancient folk-songs at the sky, to perform their high-leaping dances as if they wished to forget the ground and soar aloft for ever. I made the emphasis on these contradictions my starting-point; whenever the time was approaching, according to scientific doctrine, for harvest time, I restricted my attention solely to the ground; I scrabbled it in the dance, I twisted my neck to get down as close to it as possible, later I dug a hole in it for my nose, and thus I sang and declaimed, so that only the earth could hear me and no one else around or above me.
My experimental results were meagre. Sometimes the food did not appear, and I was on the point of rejoicing at this discovery, but then the food appeared again after all; it was as if my strange behaviour had caused some initial confusion, but that the advantages it brought were now recognized, and my calls and leaps could be gladly dispensed with; often the food even came in greater abundance than before, but then again it failed to appear altogether. With a diligence hitherto unknown in young dogs I drew up an exact account of all my experiments, I fancied now and again that I had hit on a track which might lead me further, but then everything dissolved once more in uncertainty. I was undoubtedly handicapped here by my insufficient grounding in science. What assurance had I, for example, that the non-appearance of the food was caused by my experiments rather than by my unscientific preparation of the ground; and if that was so, then all my conclusions were invalid. I might under certain conditions have achieved an almost scrupulously exact experiment, that is to say, if I had succeeded just once in achieving the descent of food by upwards-directed ceremony, without any preparation of the ground, and then the non-appearance of food by exclusively ground-directed ceremony. Indeed I attempted that sort of thing, but without any firm belief in it and not in perfect experimental conditions; for it is my unshakeable conviction that at least some measure of ground preparation is always necessary; and even if the heretics who deny this should be right their theory could never be proved, since the watering of the ground occurs under compulsion and within certain limits simply cannot be avoided. Another experiment of mine, admittedly a somewhat eccentric one, met with greater success and caused a certain amount of stir. Prompted by the customary method by which food is caught in midair, I resolved to adopt the scheme of encouraging the food to drop but not catching it. To this end I always made a small leap in the air when the food came, but I judged it carefully so as to miss; usually it fell to the ground then just the same, in a dull and indifferent manner, and I flung myself on it furiously, not only furious with hunger but furious with disappointment as well. But in isolated cases something else happened, something really wonderful; the food did not fall, but followed me through the air; the food pursued the hungry. That did not last for long, just for a brief stretch, and then it fell after all, or vanished completely, or – this was most often the case – my greed put a premature end to the expe
riment and I swallowed the stuff down.
All the same I was happy at that moment, a murmur of interest ran through my neighbourhood, the public began to pay uneasy attention, I found my acquaintances more accessible to my questions, I could see in their eyes some kind of imploring gleam; and even if it was only the reflection of my own glance I asked for nothing more, I was content. But then I soon discovered – and the others discovered it with me – that this experiment of mine had long since been described in the scientific literature, others had made a far more impressive success of it than I had, and though it had not been attempted for a long time on account of the extreme self-control it required, there was in any case no need to repeat it, for it was allegedly quite without scientific value. It only proved what was already known, that the ground not only attracts nourishment vertically from above, but also slant-wise, indeed even in spirals. So there I stood, but I was not discouraged, I was still too young for that; on the contrary it inspired me to what has been perhaps the greatest achievement of my life.
I did not believe that science had disvalued the experiment, but belief was of no avail here, only proof, so I resolved to offer that proof, and by doing so to bring what had been initially a somewhat out-of-the-way experiment into the full light of day, and to place it at the very centre of research. I wished to prove that when I retreated before the food it was not the ground that attracted it at a slant, but I who enticed it to follow me. Admittedly I was unable to develop this particular experiment further; to see the provender before one and meanwhile to experiment in a scientific manner, that was not something one could keep up in the long run. But I decided to do something else; I decided to fast completely for as long as I could stand it, while at the same time avoiding all sight of food, all temptation. If I were to withdraw myself in this manner, if I stayed lying down day and night with my eyes closed, making no effort either to pick up nourishment from the ground or to intercept it in the air, and if, as I dared not assume but faintly hoped, without my taking any further measures, and merely in response to the unavoidable irrational watering of the ground and the quiet repetition of the spells and songs (the dancing I wished to omit, so as not to weaken my powers) the food were then to descend of itself from above, and without paying attention to the ground were to come knocking at my teeth for admittance – if that were to happen, then it would indeed be no confutation of science, for science has enough elasticity to admit exceptions and special cases, but what would be the reaction of the ordinary folk, whose elasticity of mind is fortunately not so great? For this would not be the kind of exceptional case that history records, as for instance when an individual refuses because of bodily illness or melancholia to prepare for, seek out, and absorb his nourishment, whereupon the whole dog community unites in its incantations, and succeeds in making the food deviate from its customary path straight into the jaws of the invalid. I, on the contrary, had all my health and strength; my appetite was so magnificent that it prevented me for days on end from thinking of anything else; believe it or not, I subjected myself to fasting of my own free will; I was quite capable of effecting the descent of food myself, and that was exactly what I wished to do, so I required no assistance at all from the dog community and indeed most firmly forbade it.
I sought out a suitable place in a remote clump of bushes, where I should hear no talk of food, no smacking of chops or crunching of bones; I ate my fill for the last time and then I lay down. I wanted as far as possible to pass the whole time with my eyes shut; so long as no food came it was to be constant night for me, even if it should last for days and weeks. But what made things much more difficult was the fact that I could permit myself hardly any sleep, preferably no sleep at all, for not only did I have to call down the food, I had also to take good care not to sleep through its arrival; on the other hand, however, sleep was very welcome, for I would be able to fast much longer asleep than awake. For these reasons I resolved to divide up my time carefully, and to sleep a lot, but always for short periods only. I achieved this by always sleeping with my head supported on some frail twig, which soon snapped and so awoke me. Thus I lay, sleeping or waking, dreaming or singing quietly to myself. To begin with, the time passed uneventfully; perhaps, in the place whence nourishment comes, it had still remained somehow unobserved that I was setting myself up here in opposition to the normal course of things; and so all remained quiet. My efforts were a little disturbed by the fear that the other dogs would miss me, would soon track me down and take some kind of steps against me. My second fear was that the ground, even though this was declared by science to be an unfruitful area, might in response to mere watering produce what is known as random nourishment, and that the smell of this might seduce me. But for the time being nothing of that kind happened, and I could go on fasting. Apart from such fears, I was at the outset calmer than I could ever remember before. Although my work was really an attempt to undermine science, I felt a deep contentment and something like the proverbial calm of the scientific worker. In my reveries I obtained the forgiveness of science, room was to be found within it for my researches too; a consoling voice seemed to sound in my ears, assuring me that even if my researches met with great success, and indeed especially if so, I was by no means lost to doggish life; science was well-disposed to me, it would itself undertake the interpretation of my findings, and that promise already meant fulfilment; whereas hitherto I had felt an outcast to the depths of my being and had run my head against the walls of my people like a savage, now I was to be received with full honours, the longed-for stream of warmth from the assembled pack of bodies would lap round me, amid resounding praise I would be borne swaying on my people’s shoulders.
Remarkable effect of my initial fasting. My achievement appeared to me so great that from emotion and self-pity I began to weep there among the still bushes, which I must confess was not entirely comprehensible, for if I was anticipating my well-earned reward why then did I weep? Probably it was just from contentment. My weeping has never met with approval. I have always only wept when I was content, and that has been seldom enough. But on that occasion my contentment soon passed. My beautiful dreams fled one by one before the increasing urgency of my hunger; it was not long before I had paid an abrupt farewell to all my fantasies and all my sentiment, and found myself all alone with the hunger that burned in my entrails. ‘That is hunger,’ I said to myself countless times, as if I wanted to convince myself that hunger and I were two separate entities, and I could shake it off like a wearisome lover; but in reality we were most painfully one, and when I told myself: ‘That is hunger’ it was really the hunger that was speaking, and mocking me as it did so.
A bad, bad time! I still shudder when I think of it, and that is not only because of the suffering which I then endured but above all because at that time I had failed to bring it to a conclusion, because I shall have to go through this suffering once again if I am to achieve anything; for today I still regard fasting as the ultimate and most powerful means of my research. It is through hungering that the way lies; the highest things can only be achieved, if they can be achieved at all, by the highest effort, and in our case that highest effort is voluntary hungering. So when I think about those times – and I take the greatest pleasure in raking them over – I also think about the threatening times ahead. It would seem that one must let almost a lifetime pass before one recovers from such an experiment; all my manhood years lie between me and that bout of fasting, but I am still not recovered. When I next begin fasting I shall perhaps have more determination than before, but my physical powers are now weaker, they are still impaired by that first attempt, and I shall surely begin to flag at the mere approach of those familiar terrors. My feebler appetite will not help me, it will only reduce the value of the attempt a little and probably also compel me to fast for longer than I should have had to the first time. About these and other conditions I think I am clear in my mind; during the long intervening period there has been no lack of preparatory attempts, often e
nough I have literally got my teeth into hungering, but without yet feeling strong enough to go on to the end, and of course the naive attacking spirit of youth is gone for ever. It vanished already in the course of that original fast. Many different kinds of reflections tormented me. Our forefathers appeared threateningly before me. I must confess that I regard them, even if I dare not say so openly, as being responsible for everything; it is they who bear the guilt for our dog’s life, so I could easily respond to their threats with counter-threats, but before their knowledge I bow, it came from sources that are known to us no longer, and for that reason, much as I feel the urge to contend with them, I would never actually transgress their laws, I merely slip out through the loopholes in the law for which I have a particularly good nose.