Like a dog in a cage

From his dark and strong strokes emerges a light that becomes a tale. Danijel Zezelj signs his latest graphic novel "Like a Dog" (24ORECultura comics) and is inspired by a short story by Franz Kafka "The Fasting Man". Since his high school years spent in Zagreb, his hometown, Zezelj has been so passionate about Kafkaesque literature that he has formed his own idea of storytelling; Kafka often appears in his art, in his drawings, suggesting thoughts, situations. A cartoonist, animator, illustrator and graphic designer, the Croatian artist has also made several animated films and short films and created multimedia performances with live painting and music; he has received several awards both in Europe and the United States. In 2001, he founded the publishing house Petikat in Croatia and lives and works between Brooklyn and Zagreb. The eye of a horse opens the sequence of 'Like a Dog', then the animal runs aimlessly and seems to fly. 'If only I were an Indian always on the alert, on a running horse,' writes Kafka in the novella 'The Wish to be Indian', which Zezelj quotes in the opening pages.

The eclectic artist needs the Prague author's tales to reveal to us his dreams, his nightmares like the one chasing the protagonist of 'Like a Dog'. "Those were other times, at that time the whole city was interested in the fasting man". In the first plates Zezelj illustrates the greedy and covetous crowd, hundreds of people surrounding the fasting man. "They even came to subscribe" to see the spectacle of the man willing not to touch food forever. Yet the audience is bored after only forty days and longs for something more exciting. Zezelj seems to delve into the darkness to find the white that envelops the fasting man and his world; contrasts explode on every page, no intermediate nuance, no grey, to allow the black and white to emerge like blades cutting through the plot. 'The Fasting Man' intertwines with other Kafkaesque tales including 'A Hunger Artist' and 'The Vulture'. The bird only flies before it aims its lens and plunges into the mouth of the protagonist. "Like a dog" are the last words spoken by the protagonist of Franz Kafka's novel 'The Trial', when Josef K. is confronted with his incomprehensible death sentence. From the novel, the graphic designer quotes the parable 'Before the Law, Chapter 9 In the Cathedral'. Black, white, stairs that have no end, the law leads you to absolute loneliness.

The fasting man is also crushed by injustice and abandonment. Visitors to the circus, in which he has taken refuge, see him without food and water for months but remain indifferent. There is nothing joyful about Zezelj's circus, it is shrouded in hopeless gloom, the same gloom that afflicts the fasting man. "The circus always finds a way to employ those who offer themselves for a job" and the protagonist of the graphic novel offers himself to anyone. He cannot accept that his art is forgotten and that it no longer interests anyone. To fasting he has consecrated his life, he cannot do anything else, he cannot stop, his work is honest work and must be recognised. In the last plates, the eyes of the fasting man appear hollow as they look at the reader through the bars of a cage; not far away are other cages, those with ferocious beasts. In the interval of the circus performance, visitors can see both the lion and the fasting animal. Zezelj narrates the last days of the poor protagonist through his gaze, which is increasingly dark, sad, dull. "The 'hunger artist' was buried with dirty straw, in his cage they placed a young panther. It was the feline's eyes that stared at us for a long time, 'his joie de vivre flowed with such intensity from his jaws that the sight of him was almost unbearable for onlookers'. From the gaze of a tame horse to that of the fasting man and the caged panther, the violence of injustice, of an immediate fate, becomes powerful. Zezelj documents and recalls this in every panel, in every story.

Danijel Žeželj, Like a Dog, 24 ORE Culture Comics, pages: 88, € 29.00