HUNGER ARTISTS.

HUNGER ARTISTS. There is a frightening counterpart to competitive eaters: the hunger artist. Kafka’s great story, “A Hunger Artist”, begins: “In the last decades interest in hunger artists has declined considerably.” I had thought that Kafka had invented the whole idea of the hunger artist. It turns out that there is a long tradition of performing hunger artists. This article from a blog devoted to the history of sideshows and circuses identifies performers who were hunger artists as early as the 1500’s. The article says that there was a revival of the popularity of hunger artists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (which would be during Kafka’s lifetime). Kafka’s story describes the elaborate arrangements his hunger artist made to eliminate claims of fraud. Claims of fraud also have a long history. One of the performers in the 1500’s was exposed as a fraud. The article describes how Engeltje van der Vlies, was kept under surveillance “for 4 weeks by 4 trustworthy persons around the clock, and they declared under oath that she hadn’t eaten anything, food nor beverages.” She was later found to have been receiving food regularly through a hatch behind her bed.