by Franz Kafka
Deep down, however, the hunger artist had not lost his sense of the real situation and took it for granted that he would not be placed with his cage as a highlight in the middle of the ring, but outside in a quite accessible spot near the stalls. Large, colorfully painted signs framed the cage announcing what was to be seen there. When the audience surged to the stalls during the shows’ intervals to see the animals, they would almost inevitably pass by the hunger artist and pause there for a moment; they might have spent more time with him if the throng of people, pushing through the narrow path and not understanding this stop on the way to the eagerly awaited stalls, had not made longer, peaceful observation impossible. And that was the reason why the hunger artist, who had of course been looking forward to these visiting hours as the main achievement of his life, began instead to shrink from them. In the early days, he could hardly wait for the intervals; he had looked forward to the thronging masses with delight until only too soon—even the most stubborn, almost conscious self-deception could not withstand his experience—he became convinced that most of them were, at least according to their actions, again and again, without exception, nothing more than stall visitors. And this view of them from a distance still remained the best one. For when they came all the way up to him, he was immediately surrounded by the shouts and curses of the groups that were constantly shifting: those who wanted to have a look at him in peace—the hunger artist soon found these to be the more embarrassing ones—and who did so not out of understanding, but just to be whimsical and stubborn; and the others, who primarily wanted to go to the stalls. Once the big horde had passed, the stragglers came, but although these were no longer prevented from stopping as long as they liked, they hurried past with long strides, almost without a side glance in order to get to the animals in time. And it was a none-too-frequent stroke of luck when a father came with his children, pointing at the hunger artist with his finger, explaining extensively what it was all about, talking about earlier times when he had been to similar, but incomparably more impressive performances; and although the children, lacking sufficient education from school and life, were still incapable of understanding—what was hunger to them?—they still revealed something of the new, impending, more merciful times in the sparkle of their exploring eyes. Perhaps, the hunger artist would sometimes tell himself, everything would be a bit better if he were not located so close to the stalls. This made the choice too easy for people, not to mention the stench from the stalls, the restlessness of the animals at night, the raw pieces of meat carried by for the beasts of prey, the howling at feeding time, which offended and continuously depressed him. But he did not dare to approach the management; he had the animals to thank, after all, for the crowd of visitors, among which here and there one could be found who was meant for him. And who knew where they would hide him if he were to remind them of his existence and thereby also that he was, in fact, nothing more than a hindrance on the way to the stalls.
A small hindrance, indeed, a diminishingly small hindrance. People became familiar with the peculiarity of requesting in this day and age that attention be paid to a hunger artist, and with this familiarity, his verdict had been delivered. He wanted to hunger as well as he could, and he did it, but nothing could save him anymore, people passed him by. Just try to explain to someone the art of hungering! To someone who does not feel it, it cannot be made conceivable. The beautiful signs grew dirty and incomprehensible; they were torn down; no one thought of replacing them; the little board displaying the number of hungering days completed, which had initially been carefully renewed on a daily basis, had long since remained unchanged, for after the first weeks the attendants had even become tired of this small task; and so the hunger artist continued to hunger, just as he had once dreamt of, and he succeeded effortlessly, just as he had predicted back then, but no one was counting the days; no one, not even the hunger artist himself knew how great his achievement already was, and his heart became heavy. And if once in a while someone strolled idly by, stopping to make fun of the old number and speak of fraud, it was in this sense the stupidest lie that apathy and innate malice could invent, for it was not the hunger artist who was cheating—he worked honestly—but the world that was cheating him of his reward.
But many more days passed, and then that too came to an end. One day an overseer noticed the cage and asked the attendants why this perfectly good cage had been left standing here unused with rotten straw inside; no one knew, until someone, with the help of the little board, remembered the hunger artist. They stirred up the straw with sticks and found the hunger artist inside. “Are you still hungering?” asked the overseer. “When will you finally stop?” “Please forgive me, everyone,” whispered the hunger artist; only the overseer, who was holding his ear to the cage, understood him. “Certainly,” said the overseer, pointing his finger to his forehead as a sign to the personnel indicating the hunger artist’s condition, “We forgive you.” “I always wanted you to admire my hungering,” said the hunger artist. “And we do admire it,” the overseer said obligingly. “But you shouldn’t admire it,” said the hunger artist. “Well then we don’t admire it,” the overseer said. “And why shouldn’t we admire it?” “Because I have to hunger; I can’t help it,” said the hunger artist. “Well, you don’t say,” said the overseer, “why can’t you help it?” “Because,” said the hunger artist, raising his frail head slightly and speaking with lips puckered as if for kissing right into the overseer’s ear so that nothing was lost, “because I could not find food that I liked. Had I found it, believe me, I would have not have caused a scene, and would have eaten my fill like you and everyone.” These were his last words, but in his broken eyes remained the firm, though no longer proud, conviction that he was continuing to hunger.
“Now put this in order,” said the overseer, and the hunger artist was buried along with the straw. Into the cage they put a young panther. It was refreshing for even the dullest of senses to see this wild animal throwing itself about the cage that had been desolate for so long. It lacked for nothing. The food, which it liked, was brought to him by the keepers without lengthy deliberation; it didn’t even seem to miss freedom; this noble body, equipped almost to the bursting point with all that he needed, also seemed to carry freedom around with it; it seemed to be hiding somewhere in its teeth; and its joy in life came with such strong fervor from his throat that it was not easy for the spectators to withstand it. But they endured it, crowded around the cage, and didn’t want to stir from their spot at all.
A REPORT TO AN ACADEMY
Honored Gentlemen of the Academy!
You have done me the honor of inviting me to submit a report about my past life as an ape.
In this sense, I am unfortunately not able to fulfill your request. Nearly five years separate me from apedom, a period of time that is perhaps short measured by the calendar, but infinitely long to gallop through as I have done, accompanied for stretches by excellent humans, advice, applause, and orchestral music, but basically alone, for the company remained—to maintain the metaphor—far behind the barrier. This achievement would have been impossible had I wished to stubbornly hold on to my origins, to memories of my youth. In fact, renouncing all stubbornness was the supreme commandment that I imposed upon myself; I, free ape, submitted to this yoke. As a result, the memories closed themselves off to me more and more. Although I initially would have been free to return—had the humans permitted it—through the vast gateway formed by the sky above the earth, this gate became lower and narrower, the more my development was compelled forward. I felt more comfortable and determined in the human world; the storm that blew after me from my past subdued; today, it is merely a draft of air that cools my heels; and the hole in the distance that it comes through, and through which I once came, has grown so small that, even if I had sufficient strength and will to walk back there, I would have to flay the skin from my body to get through. To speak frankly, however much I like to choose metaphors for these things, to speak
frankly: your apedom, Gentlemen, insofar as you have something like that in your background, cannot be further removed from you than mine. But everyone who walks here upon earth feels a tickle at their heel: the little chimpanzee and the great Achilles alike.
However, in a limited sense I can maybe answer your question after all, and I even do so with great pleasure. The first thing that I learned was to shake hands; a handshake shows frankness; I hope that today, now that I am standing at the height of my career, the first handshake may also be followed by frank words. They will not contribute anything essentially new to the Academy, and will fall far short of that which has been requested of me and which I am unable to say with the best will in the world—all the same, it should indicate the guideline according to which a former ape entered the human world and established himself there. Of course, I would certainly not mention the trivialities that follow if I were not completely sure of myself, and if my position on all of the great variety theater stages of the civilized world had not been established to the point of invincibility.
I am from the Gold Coast. For the story of how I was captured, I must rely on the reports of others. A hunting expedition from the Hagenbeck firm—I have since emptied many a good bottle of red wine with its leader, by the way—was lying in wait on the raised hide in the bankside brush when I ran down amongst a troop of apes in the evening to the watering hole. They shot; I was the only one to be hit; I took two bullets.
One in the cheek—that one was slight, but it left a large, bare red scar, that earned me the name of Red Peter, a disgusting, entirely inappropriate name, literally invented by an ape, as if the red patch on my cheek were the only thing distinguishing me from Peter, the performing ape, well known here and there, who kicked the bucket not long ago. This as a side note.
The second bullet struck me beneath the hip. It was severe; it’s the reason that I still have a slight limp. I recently read an article by one of the ten thousand windbags who go on about me in the newspapers: my ape nature is not yet entirely suppressed; his proof is that I like to remove my trousers when guests come to show them where the bullet entered. Each little finger on that fellow’s writing hand should be shot off one by one. As for me, I may remove my trousers before whomever I please; there is nothing to be found there other than a well-groomed coat and the scar left by—let us use for this specific purpose a specific word, which is not be misunderstood—the scar left by an outrageous gunshot. Everything has been brought to light; there is nothing to hide; if it is a matter of truth, everyone of noble mind discards their finest manners. On the other hand, if that writer were to remove his trousers when visitors came, this would have an entirely different appearance, and I am willing to accept it as a sign of reason that he does not do so. But in return, he can get off my back with his sensitive feelings.
After those shots I woke up—and here is where my own memories gradually begin—in a cage on the steerage of the Hagenbeck steamer. It was not a four-sided wire cage; rather there were three sides fastened to a crate; so the crate formed the fourth wall. The whole thing was too low for me to stand up straight and too narrow for me to sit down. I therefore crouched with turned-in, continuously trembling knees, and, because I probably didn’t want to see anyone at first and only wanted to be in the dark, I turned to face the crate while the bars behind me cut into my flesh. It is considered beneficial to keep wild animals like this initially, and, after my experience, I cannot deny today that this is, in a human sense, truly the case.
But I didn’t think of that then. For the first time in my life, I had no way out; or no direct one, at least; direct before me was a crate, board fit tightly into board. True, there was a gap that ran through the boards, which I greeted with a blissful howl of ignorance when I first discovered it, but this gap was not nearly wide enough to even stick my tail through, and could not even be widened with all my ape strength.
I was later told that I had made unusually little noise, which led them to conclude that I was sure to die soon or, if I survived the first critical period, to become quite trainable. I survived this period. Muffled sobbing, painful flea-hunting, tiredly licking a coconut, banging the crate with my skull, sticking out my tongue if someone came near—these were the first activities in my new life. In all of it, however, only the one feeling: no way out. Of course, I can only retrace the apelike feelings I had back then with human words and distort them as a result, but even though I can no longer reach the old ape truth, it lies at least in the direction of my description. Of this there is no doubt.
I had had so many ways out until then, and now I had none. I was trapped. If I had been nailed down, my freedom would not have grown any smaller. Why is that? Scratch open the flesh between your toes and you won’t find the reason. Press yourself against the bar behind you until it nearly divides you in two and you won’t find the reason. I had no way out, but I had to make one for myself, for I could not live without it. Always against that crate—I would inevitably have done myself in. But at Hagenbeck, apes belong against the crate—so I stopped being an ape. A nice, clear line of thought that I must have somehow come up with in my belly, for apes think with their bellies.
I’m afraid that you do not entirely understand what I mean by a way out. I use this term in its fullest and most common sense. I deliberately do not say freedom. I do not mean that great feeling of freedom on all sides. I may have known it as an ape, and I have known humans who long for it. But in my case, I demanded freedom neither then nor today. By the way: humans deceive themselves all too often with freedom. And just as freedom counts among the noblest of feelings, the corresponding deception is also among the noblest. Often, before my performances in the variety shows, I have observed a pair of performers on their trapeze high up under the ceiling. They swung, they swayed, they sprung, they glided into one another’s arms, one carried the other by the hair with his teeth. “This too is human freedom,” I thought, “arbitrary movement.” What a mockery of sacred nature! No structure could withstand the laughter of apedom at this sight.
No, it was not freedom that I wanted. Only a way out; to the right, left, wherever; I made no other demands; even if the way out were only to be a deception; the demand was small, the deception would not be greater. Move forward, move forward! To not always stand here with raised arms pressed against a crate.
Today I see it clearly: without the greatest inner calm I would never have been able to escape. And I quite possibly owe everything that I have become to the calmness that overcame me after the first days there on the ship. The calmness, in turn, I probably owed to the people on the ship.
They are good people, in spite of everything. Even today I am glad to remember the sound of their heavy footsteps, which used to resonate in my half-sleep. They were in the habit of tackling everything extremely slowly. If one of them wanted to rub his eyes, he raised his hand like a hanging weight. Their jokes were crude, but affectionate. Their laughter was always mixed with a dangerous-sounding but meaningless cough. They always had something in their mouths to spit out, and where they spit it out was irrelevant. They always complained that my fleas jumped over onto them; however they were never seriously angry with me because of it; they knew, after all, that fleas thrived in my fur and that fleas are jumpers; they accepted it. When they were off-duty, some of them sometimes sat down in a semicircle around me; hardly spoke, but simply grunted at one another; smoked a pipe, stretched out on crates; slapped their knees as soon as I made the slightest movement; and here and there one of them would take a stick and tickle me where I liked it. If I were invited today to take part in a voyage on that ship, I would be certain to refuse the invitation, but it is just as certain that there are not only ugly memories from the steerage that I could dwell on.
The calmness that I acquired among these people is primarily what held me back from any attempt to escape. From today’s perspective, it seems that I had at least sensed that I must find a way out if I wanted to live, but that this way out was not to
be achieved through flight. I can’t recall whether flight was possible, but I believe it was; for an ape, flight should always be possible. With the current state of my teeth, I already have to be careful with ordinary nut cracking, but back then, I could have managed to gradually bite through the lock on the door. I didn’t do so. What would have been gained by it? I would have been recaptured as soon as I had stuck my head out, and locked up in an even worse cage; or I would have fled unnoticed to other animals, such as the giant snakes opposite me, and breathed my last breath in their embrace; or I would have succeeded in stealing up on deck and jumping overboard, after which I would have rocked for a little while on the ocean and drowned. Acts of desperation. I did not calculate in such a human fashion, but under the influence of my surroundings, I behaved as though I had calculated.
I wasn’t calculating, but I was observing calmly. I watched these people going back and forth, always the same faces, the same movements; often it seemed that there was only one of them. So this human, or these humans, walked without disturbance. A great purpose dawned upon me. No one promised me that the gate would be lifted if I were to become like them. Such promises, apparently impossible to fulfill, are not made. But if they are fulfilled, the promises will also appear retrospectively in exactly the place where one had previously looked for them in vain. Now there was nothing about these humans that I found particularly appealing. Had I been a believer in the freedom I mentioned, I would certainly have preferred the ocean to the way out that presented itself to me in these humans’ dull eyes. But in any case, I had already been observing them for a long time before I began thinking of such things; indeed it was the accumulated observations that urged me in this particular direction to begin with.