SOURCE: "The Starvation Artist and the Leopard," in The Germanic Review, Vol. XXXV, No. 4, December, 1960, pp. 262-69.

In the following essay, Waidson disagrees with Meno Spann's interpretation of the roles of the occupants of the cage in "A Hunger Artist" and seeks to "restore the starvation-artist to his former central position and relegate the leopard to a less exalted status. "

In his imaginative writing Kafka gives an impression of being at an immense distance from the people and creatures he describes, and the effects of humor and controlled melancholy are intensified by this appearance of objectivity. The short story "Ein Hungerkünstler" in particular has attracted analysis, since the simple sequence of its events, the almost complete absence of the obviously absurd, the fact that the tale has been brought to a conclusion, that the author has restrained himself from inserting passages of elaborate argument, arouse in the...