The past few mornings, when I get up, it’s with appreciation for having simple things to do—making coffee, firing up the distiller and humidifiers, feeding the cat, reading, writing, practicing—all familiar, simple tasks that provide me with an alternative to worrying about the threats that have been interrupting my sleep.
After feeding Kiva, our six-year-old cat, I cleaned out her litter as she comes in through the window from her catio, an outside cage 8 by 6 by 4 feet, with places for her to jump, climb and sightsee.
Thinking of cages, in my favorite story by Franz Kafka, “The Hunger Artist, the artist sits in a cage while the world forgets him.
I’ve been feeling anxious, as the new administration turns in just a few days to agendas of revenge and pulling down programs on which people rely, for no more worthy purpose than to line the pockets of billionaires, most of whom don’t produce anything tangible but provide distribution systems for the products of other hands and for the opinions of people who would otherwise have to grieve for what they have lost and are about to lose.
Kafka saw the Holocaust developing thirty years before it burst through the levies of humanity. George Steiner observes in “Language and Silence” that after the holocaust we can no longer assume that beautiful literature and music humanizes the human soul; that there were real tears in the eyes of Auschwitz employees when they listened to Bach or read Goethe, before heading off for their workday at their local crematorium.
Decades ago, long before I recognized any threat to the way of life that gave me so many opportunities that I didn’t appreciate at the time, Kafka’s stories provided me with the confidence to feel that I too could have a meaningful life. It never crossed my mind that my boring world would ever abandon respect for the law and human rights for everyone.
In his haunting story, “The Hunger Artist”, Kafka tells of a sideshow artist whose performance is to sit in a cage on a bed of straw, for weeks and months, fasting. Not only has this exhibit lost its appeal for the general public but the few visitors who glance into his cage, on their way to more exciting exhibits, are indifferent and insolent—audibly doubting the authenticity of the hunger artist’s art. He hears their taunts–“you can be sure he has his bratwurst after the fair closes.” Yet, even in the face of a world that has moved on to the Consumer Age, in which the once renowned hunger artist is at best an atavistic irrelevance, he continues his fast. One day the crew, who change the straw in the animal cages and who have completely forgotten about him, discover his remains, scarcely distinguishable from the straw bedding. A young panther, “carrying its life force somewhere around its jaws”, becomes the new resident of the cage. Now visitors have to be torn away as they shiver in thrilled alarm at its robust roars.
Kafka’s power didn’t come from an appetite for the ordinary things of daily life, but he had a hunger for writing about what he saw around him. As he put it, “The only thing harder than writing is not writing.”
Sometimes it is only by letting ourselves sink into the darkness that we can rise again into the light. My mother taught me what to do if I am ever at risk of drowning in deep water. Take a breath and let my head sink below the surface. With my lungs full of buoyant air and my entire body submerged, I will naturally bob back up above the surface, where in the few seconds I have available I can turn my face upwards, exhale, inhale, then allow myself to sink back down into the water again.
When we try to control forces too great for us to bend to our will, our dark side will seep into our bodies, minds, and hearts until, exhausted, we can’t raise our eyes. It seems we are now entering a time when we will have to sink into our anxiety in small moments of mindfulness, marking time in an environment that has the power to drown us and everything we care about.
I doubt that Kafka’s stories about marginal people in an uncaring society would work if his characters weren’t so intimately engaged in exploring their own humanity. The hunger artist is ignored, treated as a worthless being, but expresses no resentment, no claim that he deserves to be rewarded. He just continues to carry out his own purpose and would like others to recognize him as a human being. I expect that many people are beginning to discover, almost a century later, that if you ignore the needs of the people with whom you share this world, pretty soon your own needs for respect and sustenance will also be ignored.
So powerful. Thanks, Michael!