“I always wanted you to admire my fasting,” said the hunger artist.
“But we do admire it,” said the supervisor obligingly.
“But you shouldn’t admire it,” said the hunger artist.
“Well then, we don’t admire it,” said the supervisor, “but why shouldn’t we admire it?”
“Because I had to fast. I can’t do anything else,” said the hunger artist.
“Just look at you,” said the supervisor, “why can’t you do anything else?”
“Because,” said the hunger artist, lifting his head a little and, with his lips pursed as if for a kiss, speaking right into the supervisor’s ear so that he wouldn’t miss anything, “because I couldn’t find a food which I enjoyed. If had found that, believe me, I would not have made a spectacle of myself and would have eaten to my heart’s content, like you and everyone else.”
Those were his last words, but in his failing eyes there was the firm, if no longer proud, conviction that he was continuing to fast.
-from “The Hunger Artist” by F. Kafka
1:30 am • 10 December 2012 • 10 notes
jiks asked: Do you know the date and origin of this quote? Is it from one of his works or diaries? I am looking for the German translation. “Often - and in my inmost self perhaps all the time - I doubt whether I am a human being.”
I do not know the date, but I believe it is from a diary entry!
4:48 pm • 7 December 2012 • 1 note
“
I ordered my horse to be brought from the stables. The servant did not understand my orders. So I went to the stables myself, saddled my horse, and mounted. In the distance I heard the sound of a trumpet, and I asked the servant what it meant. He knew nothing and had heard nothing. At the gate he stopped me and asked:
“Where is the master going?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “just out of here, just out of here. Out of here, nothing else, it’s the only way I can reach my goal.”
“So you know your goal?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied, “I’ve just told you. Out of here—that’s my goal.”
”
— Franz Kafka, The Departure (via kafkaesque-world)
(via kafkaesque-world)
4:44 pm • 7 December 2012 • 33 notes
Last words of author Franz Kafka (1883-1924), who wanted all his works to be burned unread.
4:42 pm • 7 December 2012 • 22 notes
woodysblues asked: Wonderful theme for a blog. Kudos.
Thank you! And I apologize for not posting regularly!
4:41 pm • 7 December 2012
“Often - and in my inmost self perhaps all the time - I doubt whether I am a human being.”
-F. Kafka
10:06 pm • 8 August 2012 • 88 notes
“A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.”
— Franz Kafka (via kafkaesque-world)
(Source: sicklysentient, via kafkaesque-world)
9:52 pm • 8 August 2012 • 1,420 notes
“Not shaking off the self, but consuming the self.”
-from The Blue Octavo Notebooks
7:56 pm • 4 July 2012 • 1 note
“October 25. Sad, jumpy, physically unwell, dread of Prague, in bed.”
— from The Blue Octavo Notebooks
7:49 pm • 4 July 2012 • 7 notes
“One must dare to dive and sink into the depths, in order to later rise again — laughing and fighting for breath — to the now doubly illuminated surface of things.”
— Franz Kafka
6:21 pm • 31 May 2012 • 304 notes
