1. Franz Kafka’s “A Hunger Artist”
Symbolism

2. Symbolism An example of “figurative language”

3. Figurative language
“language that creates imaginative connections between our ideas and our senses”
“reveals similarities between things we have never associated before”

4. Comparisons
Similes: “like” or “as”: eg. “Like a rolling stone”; “Like a virgin”
Metaphors: direct comparison: eg. “Papa was a rolling stone”
Symbol: “a metaphor multiplied”

5. Symbol
“A symbol is a metaphor that has been in use by many people for a long time, or that otherwise has a magnified or many- layered significance.”
Pervasive symbols become “archetypes”

6. Examples?

7. Literature often invents new symbols
Text provides clues
Symbol is often a focal point

8. Allegory
Extended symbol; encompasses whole story; every element has another meanig

9. Myth
A symbolic story that has a wide, even cross-cultural, meaning

10. “A good symbol cannot be extracted from the story in which it serves.”

11. Franz Kafka 1883-1924 b. Prague middle-class Jewish family

12. a major German- language writer of the 20thc
influential

13. troubled individuals caught up in nightmarish bureaucratic
“Kafkaesque” has entered common usage

14. Franz Kafka by Anthony Hare (2003)

15. “A Hunger Artist” published in Die Neue Rundschau (1922)

17. Symbolic resonance

18. Interpreted as a play by The Hunger Artists Theater Company (2006)

19. Interpreted as a graphic story by Peter Kruper (1995)

21. Made into an animated film by Tom Gibbons (2002)

22. “Hunger Artist” by Kurt Kemp (1999)

23. Oscar Grillo (2007)

24. “A Hunger Artist Gallery's name derives from a short story by Franz Kafka and, as with artists today, Kafka's ‘hunger artist’ struggles for recognition and understanding within society. As a contemporary gallery we support ‘visual hunger artists’ in their universal inquiry about their modern world, helping to bridge the gap between the general public and the current art scene.”

25. Questions
What are some possible symbolic interpretations of the hunger artist? the impresario? How do you interpet the panther that replaces the dead artist at the end of “A Hunger Artist”?

26. Why is fasting such a powerful symbolic art form
Why is fasting such a powerful symbolic art form? What are some of the “hungers” that it might represent?

27. Shortly before he dies, the hunger artist declares that his art shouldn’t be admired. Why not? What do you make of his explanation that he simply couldn’t find the foot that he liked? What “food” might have satisfied him?