[In the following essay, Waidson disagrees with Meno Spann's interpretation of the roles of the occupants of the cage in "A Hunger Artist" and seeks to "restore the starvation-artist to his former central position and relegate the leopard to a less exalted status. "]

In his imaginative writing Kafka gives an impression of being at an immense distance from the people and creatures he describes, and the effects of humor and controlled melancholy are intensified by this appearance of objectivity. The short story "Ein Hungerkünstler" in particular has attracted analysis, since the simple sequence of its events, the almost complete absence of the obviously absurd, the fact that the tale has been brought to a conclusion, that the author has restrained himself from inserting passages of elaborate argument, arouse in the reader the conviction that here Kafka is distilling his "dream-like inner life" in as concentrated and artistic a way as is likely to be found anywhere. Mr. Meno Spann's article ["Franz Kafka's Leopard," The Germanic Review XXXIV, No. 2, 1959] on this fascinating and elusive story is instructive in many respects, but his interpretation of the roles of the two occupants of the cage appears to me to be far from convincing. His concluding sentence commends Kafka for having added to "the Western tradition of literature" "a beautiful leopard whom the allegorizers want to poison." This is putting the cart before the horse, in other words, the leopard before the starvation-artist. At the risk of being thrown into Mr. Spann's limbo of "maimed psychoanalysts, sociologists, philosophers and theologians," I should like briefly to run through this story again as I see it, in an endeavor to restore the starvation-artist to his former central position and to relegate the leopard to a less exalted status.

"In the last decades the interest in starvation-artists has declined very much. Whereas it was formerly well worth while organizing great performances of this sort as a show of their own, today this is quite impossible. Times were different then." These opening words place the narrator a long way from his subject-matter. He is recounting events that could only have taken place decades ago, for historical reasons, and are unimaginable "today." Kafka does not explain the historical position of the starvation-artist in the world of entertainment (that has since been done by Mr. Spann); the reader will perhaps think that this career is the fabrication of a fantastic imagination, even if the bounds of everyday realism are apparently not overstepped. Mr. Spann has provided evidence of the realism of the background; the golden age of starvation-artists was the 1880's, when a world record of forty days was soon to be beaten by one of fifty, though a revival of the art has led to a new record of ninety-three days being set in Frankfurt in 1956. (Perhaps, incidentally, we live in the "new, coming, more gracious times" which Kafka's narrator sees in the "light" of the children's "observant eyes.") But why should this evidence exclude the interpretation of the forty days in terms of the Israelites' wanderings in the desert and of Jesus Christ's fasting in the wilderness? Kafka may well have been deliberately ambivalent here.

In a number of his works Kafka happily relates events in the first person singular (e.g., "Ein Landarzt," "Ein Bericht für eine Akademie," "Forschungen eines Hundes") or from the point of one man, though in the third person (Der Prozeß, Das Schloß). But the starvation-artist is seen both from outside and from within his own consciousness. In the first section, the account of the starvation-artist's career in prosperity, the reader is shown the starvationartist, his relations with the public, with the butcher guardians, the manager and the chosen ladies, from the standpoint of an omniscient narrator. The period of success is followed, a few years later, by "that previously mentioned turning-point"; the second section of the story is a description of the starvation-artist's latter years, after fashion has changed and there is no room for a man of his calling except on the way to the animals. Here again we follow the starvation-artist's thought much of the time, but the narrator also records the ironical smile of the "professional colleagues" at the starvation-artist's hopes of surprising the world with his achievements even now, and describes him as being "apparently respected by the world, but with all that mostly in melancholy mood." Or the narrator himself castigates the casual charge of cheating which is made by one of the starvation-artist's later onlookers as "the most stupid lie that indifference and innate malice could invent, for it was not the starvation-artist who was deceiving, he worked honestly, but the world deceived him of his reward." These words, coming at the end of the second section of the story, are interesting as a revelation that the unknown narrator, recounting the events years after they are all over, still feels his sympathies personally involved on the starvation-artist's behalf. Kafka's narrator is reconstructing episodes from a past that most people have forgotten, but he feels so deeply for the starvation-artist that he puts in his own indignant comments on his hero's account: "Try to explain the art of fasting to somebody! To him who does not feel it, it cannot be made comprehensible."

While the starvation-artist's career in prosperity and then neglect is being described, the past tense has an imperfect meaning and dialogue is not used. As his fasting is a solitary, dedicated operation, he is essentially passive in his way of life; his work excludes him from society, though it exposes him to its gaze. After the episodes illustrating the main course of his life follow the two final paragraphs of the story. The dialogue between the circus-attendant and the starvation-artist, who is lying in the dirty straw, is full of tension; the past tense is used historically, up to the climax of the dying man's last-minute revelation. The narrator achieves a certain rhetorical pathos here, as if knowing that the death-bed confession has been worth his listeners' waiting for: "Those were the last words, but there was still in his glazed eyes the firm, even if no longer proud conviction that he would go on fasting." If the story had ended at this point, there would be no reason for doubting its completeness; the starvation-artist has died, living just long enough to be able to reveal to the circusattendants his last reflections of repentance, explanation, and resolution.

Apart from the last paragraph, the story is a gradual unfolding of the starvation-artist's situation and personality through characteristic episodes and through comments from the narrator. Even during the period of his international success, the starvation-artist has to reckon with being regarded as "often only a joke" by adults and with receiving unqualified admiration only from children. Elaborate precautions are taken to ensure that he does not cheat, and this depresses him, for he has nothing to fear on this account: "only the starvation-artist himself could know that, only he therefore could at the same time be the observer completely satisfied with his own fasting." One simple reason for the starvation-artist's honesty is that he finds fasting easy: "it was the easiest thing in the world." The forty-day limit to the fasting period is imposed by his manager, and is resented by the performer, who, however, endures the charade against his better judgment. The ladies who are to carry him out of his cage are his enemies because they put an ending to his fasting and lead him to food, the thought of which makes him feel nauseated. "And he looked up into the eyes of the apparently so friendly, in reality so cruel ladies . . ." Their sympathy is superficial, and based on a misconception. What appears to the mass of spectators as friendliness is from his point of view cruelty. Reality for the starvation-artist is not what it is for other people; his feet scrape on the ground as he is being carried, as if this were not the real ground, "as if they were just beginning to look for it." When feminine emotion is brought into contact with the alien world of professional fasting, it expresses itself in helpless tears "amid the delighted laughter of the spectators." K. in Das Schloß has to wrestle with the world of emotions represented by the various women and by their relationships with Klamm and himself; if K. wishes to fulfill his quest, he must overcome the world of Klamm and penetrate beyond. For the starvation-artist this particular barrier presents no difficulties.

In the midst of his successes the starvation-artist is melancholy but not afraid. An occasional fury of rage follows any well-meant suggestion that his melancholy may be due to his fasting, for he sees this too as an oblique reflection on the merit of his calling: ". . . to the terror of all (he) began to shake on the iron bars like an animal." These moods do not recur in the second period, when he is neglected by the world and able to realize his ambition to carry on fasting as long as he likes: "but nobody counted the days, not even the starvation-artist himself knew how great the achievement already was, and his heart became heavy." The starvation-artist has overcome all attachment to the world, to material pleasures, human society and bourgeois normality. His quest for a second reality is, however, unfulfilled. Like so many of Kafka's characters he is between two worlds; the old, familiar life of common sense has become distasteful or unaccountably alienated, while the new world has not yet been revealed. Gregor Samsa in Die Verwandlung and Josef K. in Der Prozeß are rudely thrown out of lives of unthinking normality and plunged lost into a world where their previous values have no meaning. Gregor has an inkling of a new, higher order of experience, and the mood of his insect-state is similar to that of the starvation-artist in his later periods. The short final paragraph of "Ein Hungerkünstler" forms a coda introducing the leopard as new material into the story as a device for rounding it off to a satisfying conclusion. In Die Verwandlung, Gregor's death is followed by a comparable concluding section where the Samsa family is relieved and reinvigorated by being rid of him. They become arrogant and unjust, as in their treatment of the charwoman who has disposed of Gregor's remains, and Grete blossoms out ("at the end of their journey she stood up first and stretched her young body") into feline marriage-ability. Kafka had a lot of trouble with the concluding sections of his narratives (the three novels are the best known instances). If Die Verwandlung and "Ein Hungerkünstler" are in this respect artistically satisfying, while having their elements of ambiguity, Kafka was not always so successful. Emrich's analysis of In der Strafkolonie brings forward concrete evidence of Kafka's own dissatisfaction with his coda section to this tale. Josef K. in Der Prozeß in particular resists and resents being wrenched out of normality. On the other hand, K. in Das Schloß has chosen to come to the strange village as a surveyor, and is actively struggling to penetrate through the obstructive bureaucracy of the castle in order to realize fulfillment beyond. Josef K. is a hunted man, but K., like the starvation-artist, has taken the initiative and is unafraid. Artistic achievement may be subject to distortion through routine, showmanship, and vanity, but not through fear; for creative work is an attack on the public, even when it takes the passive form of the starvation-artist's abstract art where words, color, or music have no part, and where time is the one defining factor. The achievement of the starvation-artist has all the qualities of that of the seven dancing dogs in "Forschungen eines Hundes"; they do not talk or sing, they are deliberately silent, their performance is artistic and unique, they are courageous and strong, they defy nature, but yet they seem to be in need of help and arouse the watching puppy to intense wonder. "It could not be anxiety on account of success or failure that moved them so; whoever dared such things and carried them out, could no longer be afraid.—Afraid of what, then? For who was compelling them to do what they were doing here?"

The starvation-artist is unafraid; in the end he acknowledges guilt and asks for forgiveness. In these respects he has put behind him attachment to the material world in a way that Josef K. never does. The starvation-artist dies convinced of the Tightness of his striving, even if aware of his own shortcomings, and does not despair of the world order and of the values of his place in it. He dies a martyr's death, not the bewildered, nearly hopeless death of Josef K. The latter persists in plans of resistance almost to the end, even when he recognizes their futility. "There was nothing heroic, if he resisted, if he now made difficulties for the gentlemen, if now in his last defence he still tried to enjoy the last glimmer of life." The "last mistake," he thinks, is on the part of the authorities, and is not his responsibility. Then the stranger leans out of the distant window and stretches out his hands; there is a possibility of sympathy and help, but Josef K. has to die "like a dog." The starvation-artist's death is by contrast one of full acceptance of his situation, based on the final insight that if the world-order is right, his life must have been wrong, or at least must have contained a serious flaw. "Forgive me, all of you," he whispers. He has attempted his mission alone, but for success he needed the co-operation of all. In "Forschungen eines Hundes" all dogs must use their teeth to help if the marrow from the iron bones is to become available ("But it is only an image. The marrow under discussion here is not a food, it is the opposite, is poison.") Josef K. wonders whether the man looking out of the window was "an individual" or "everybody." The starvation-artist, then, acknowledges the need for forgiveness by "all," separated from whom he has vainly carried on his life. The circus-attendant gives him a form of absolution with patronizing amusement, but the starvationartist insists on explaining why he requires it: "I continually wanted you to admire my fasting." The motive for his action has been self-regarding, not only during the period of his success but much later too. But his fasting was no merit; he could "do no other," and his last words explain why: "Because I could not find the food that I like. If I had found it, believe me, I would have made no fuss and would have eaten my fill like you and everybody else." The starvation-artist must locate the fault within himself, in order to find conviction that his life's aim and the order of the universe are right. The last word he utters again speaks of the whole community: "everybody else," or "all." Once more "Forschungen eines Hundes," which was written shortly after "Ein Hungerkünstler" and is close to it in its theme of food and metaphysical striving, throws light on this tale. "More and more, lately, I reflect on my life," the dog says, "I look for the decisive mistake which I have perhaps made, that has made everything go wrong, and I can't find it. And yet I must have made it, for if I had not made it, and in spite of that had not attained what I wanted through the honest labor of a long life, it would be proved that what I wanted was impossible, and complete despair would result from it." Josef K. in Der Prozeß refuses to admit that he has done anything wrong, refuses to acknowledge that there is any reason why he should not be allowed to go on living the care-free life of a comfortably off, unmarried bank employee. The starvation-artist has broken away from bourgeois normality and made his life into an ascetic quest. If he has failed to find the right food, he has at least realized the inadequacy of earthly food. The question of the right food is raised in many of Kafka's works, usually in the same sense as in "Ein Hungerkünstler," though nowhere so insistently, nor with such serenity, as in "Forschungen eines Hundes." Here death is averted for the time being; the dog, having fasted until a haemorrhage brings him to the point of exhaustion, is saved by the hunting dog's music which inspires him to leap ecstatically from the "pool of blood and dirt" where he has been lying.

Mr. Spann has noted that Kafka read Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych on December 23, 1921. If the starvation-artist's death is to be compared with that of Ivan Ilych, the point of essential comparison seems to lie in passages such as these: "At that very moment Ivan Ilych fell through and caught sight of the light, and it was revealed to him that though his life had not been what it should have been, this could still be rectified . . . He tried to add, "forgive me," but said "forego" and waved his hand, knowing that He whose understanding mattered would understand . . . In place of death there was light."

The leopard of the final paragraph is a device to round off a story in which it has had no previous part, unless its advent was anticipated in the starvation-artist's rattling on the bars of his cage "like an animal." It is doubtful whether English usage normally ascribes any pejorative meaning to "panther" which is absent from "leopard." The Encyclopaedia Britannica (13th ed., 1926) says "panther" is "another name for the leopard," and describes the leopard's habits in terms which are not calculated to arouse admiration:

In habits the leopard resembles the other large cat-like animals, yielding to none in the ferocity of its disposition. It is exceedingly quick in its movements, but seizes its prey by waiting in ambush or stealthily approaching to within springing distance, when it suddenly rushes upon it and tears it to the ground with its powerful claws and teeth. It preys upon almost any animal it can overcome, such as antelopes, deer, sheep, goats, monkeys, peafowl, and has a special liking for dogs. It not unfrequently attacks human beings in India, chiefly children and old women, but instances have been known of a leopard becoming a regular "maneater." When favorable opportunities occur, it often kills many more victims than it can devour at once, either to gratify its propensity for killing or for the sake of their fresh blood.

The creature's presence certainly gives an ironic twist to the tale, making the reader aware of the dichotomy between mind and life, but not to the extent of asking him to abandon the sympathy aroused by the starvation-artist's life and death and suddenly to accept the leopard's as the right attitude. The circus-attendant, it is true, thinks the dying starvation-artist mad and slightly comic, but Kafka's narrator, we have already seen, certainly does not share this attitude. It is appropriate, too, that the circus visitors, previously indifferent to the starvation-artist's feats, should crowd round the leopard in appreciation, and that "the joy of life," man's animal nature, should have the last word; for the things of the mind are precarious and elusive, Kafka often implies. Benno von Wiese and Felix Weltsch may well be unimpressed by the leopard's beauty. "Ihm fehlte nichts": "It had all it wanted," "It lacked for nothing," "It was all right." Looked at as a positive statement, the implication is that the leopard is adjusted to life and society, and is without defect or frustration; that to be a healthy animal is a desirable condition. The same words, expressed in a slightly different tone of voice, imply a nausea of repulsion on the narrator's part at the crudity of natural, animal life. Any feelings of admiration that the creature may arouse are seriously qualified by the insertion three times of "seemed" in the subsequent sentence: "it did not even seem to miss freedom; this noble . . . body seemed to carry freedom too around with it; it seemed to be situated somewhere in its jaws . . ."

It is a consequence of the irony and ambivalence nearly always present in Kafka's work that the reader should be compelled to ask himself whether the hero of the story is in fact the starvation-artist or the leopard. The starvation-artist's name itself implies duality of purpose: fasting and artistry; the search for true food, that is, the metaphysical quest, and aesthetic achievement, that is, the artistry of fasting for its own sake. Then the word "Künstler" has the double meaning of "artist" and "artiste" which cannot be translated by one word in English: the artist is a showman, and the showman an artist; art for art's sake, without metaphysical purpose, is perhaps showmanship and not art. The starvation-artist unites in himself man's aspirations both in realms of art and of religion; the leopard represents the predatory urge of a life-force that is hostile to these spheres: "Leopards break into the temple and drink the sacrificial chalices dry; this occurs repeatedly again and again; finally it can be reckoned upon before-hand and becomes part of the ceremony" [Kafka, Reflections on Sin].

If the crowd and the leopard are indifferent to the starvation-artist's fate, this is no proof that Kafka wishes his readers to share this indifference. In the "Kleine Fabel" Kafka lets the cat have the last word and eat up the mouse; but surely we are not expected to admire the cat on this account. The starvation-artist dies with firm conviction still in his eyes; he has lost his pride, but not his sense of purpose. Josef K. in Der Prozeß, we have seen, has not found in life the same purpose which the starvation-artist has, and so feels shame at dying "like a dog." But there may be hope for him; someone leans out of a window, and his clothes are neatly folded before his death. And from "Forschungen eines Hundes" it is clear that Kafka saw, or came to see, a quiet and moving dignity about a dog's life. Dog and starvation-artist indeed often appear, and are intended to appear, ridiculous and absurd in their struggles and misapprehensions, but it is these aspirations that can arouse Kafka's sympathies, and those of his readers, not simply ferocity of the leopard's world.