Rated :4/5
The story is about a trapeze artist who never comes down from the trapeze to hone his art to perfection. This story is just three pages long, and I still loved it (yes, I am biased when it comes to Franz Kafka). Again, like all his short stories, there is a recurring theme of seclusion, obsession (very similar to A Hunger Artist) and sadness (almost, illogical). But the story was about the artist experiencing his ‘first sorrow’ as he wanted another trapeze for his act.
“Yet it took much questioning and soothing endearment until the trapeze artist sobbed: ‘Only the one bar in my hands-how can I go on living!'”
The manager actually agrees to his request, but still, he remarks that “Once such ideas began to torment him, would they ever quite leave him alone? Would they not rather increase in urgency? Would they not threaten his very existence?”
Yes, they would. He would live his entire life in torment. All of us our glutton for punishment when it comes to things that harm us or, emotions for that matter.
And indeed the manager believed he could see, during the apparently peaceful sleep which had succeeded the fit for tears, the first furrows of care engraving themselves upon the trapeze artist’s smooth, childlike forehead.
The Beauty and Her Reads 