The writers I discuss in this book forcefully undermine this relationship between aesthetic autonomy and freedom, portraying their art as neither free nor voluntarily chosen. As for what is related to some writers of the art of hunger, the absence of this freedom takes the form of a literal loss of liberation, as Bartleby starves to death in his prison and Kafka’s hunger artist moves from one cage to another throughout the story. While for other writers, this absence takes the form of an end that presents true freedom, in contrast to the absence of freedom envisioned by the art of hunger. The narrator in Hamsun’s story ends his hunger by joining the crew of a ship, freeing himself from hunger and writing in a sudden twist. Rimbaud presents the realistic counterpart to Hamsun’s fictional novel. He is the one who left poetry, as he is famous for, to live as a French colonel. Maud Elman, in her book “The Hunger Artists,” hypothesizes a relationship between hunger, writing, and imprisonment.
