Blooms Literary Themes - THE TRICKSTER.pdf - ymerleksi - home

“A Hunger Artist” 107
By allowing diff erent allegorical possibilities to coexist in this
parable-like narrative, Kafka performs a similar act. Traditionally, a
parable is written to exemplify or demonstrate a moral truth that
precedes its telling. Kafka’s parable, much like the hunger artist’s
admission that he expends no special eff ort during his fasts, obscures
the possibility of exegesis and consequently seems to destroy the
ground upon which it was built. Like trickster characters throughout
world mythology, Kafka and his hunger artist are boundary fi gures,
functioning as intermediaries between life and death, text and
meaning, art and artist, parable and intelligible allegory. Like Hermes,
the archtrickster and messenger of Greek mythology, Kafka stands
between our experience of reading his tales and the rarifi ed signifi -
cance we (often) presume they possess. For Kafka, parables that point
unequivocally to the sacred wisdom they are meant to demonstrate do
so untruthfully; only through indeterminate, playful language can we
begin to confront what is beyond our experience.
WORKS CITED AND CONSULTED
Cesaretti, Enrico. “Consuming Texts: Creation and Self-eff acement in Kafka
and Palazzeschi.” Comparative Literature 56.4 (Fall 2004): 300–316.
Doty, William G. “A Lifetime of Trouble-Making: Hermes as Trickster.”
Hynes and Doty 46–65.
Doueihi, Anne. “Inhabiting the Space Between Discourse and Story in
Trickster Narratives.” Hynes and Doty 193–201.
Eliade, Mircea. Th e Quest: History and Meaning in Religion. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1969.
Heller, Erich. “Introduction.” Th e Basic Kafka. New York: Washington Square
Press, 1979.
Hyde, Lewis. Trickster Makes Th is World: Mischief, Myth, and Art. New York:
North Point Press, 1998.
Hynes, William J. “Mapping the Characteristics of Mythic Tricksters: A
Heuristic Guide.” Hynes and Doty 33–45.
Hynes, William J. and William G. Doty, eds. Mythical Trickster Figures: Contours,
Contexts, and Criticism. Tuscaloosa, Ala.: University of Alabama Press,
1993.
Janouch, Gustav. Conversations with Kafka. 1968. Trans. Goronwy Rees. New
York: New Directions, 1971.