_______________________________
Franz Kafka
Before the Law
This
translation by Ian Johnston of Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo, BC, has
certain copyright restrictions. For information please use the following
link: Copyright.
For comments or question please contact Ian Johnston..
For more links to more Kafka e-texts in English click here.
This text was last revised on February 21, 2009]
Before the Law
Before
the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper
comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the
gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The man thinks
about it and then asks if he will be allowed to come in sometime later on. “It
is possible,” says the gatekeeper, “but not now.” The gate to the law stands
open, as always, and the gatekeeper walks to the side, so the man bends over in
order to see through the gate into the inside. When the gatekeeper notices
that, he laughs and says: “If it tempts you so much, try going inside in spite
of my prohibition. But take note. I am powerful. And I am only the most lowly gatekeeper. But from room to room stand
gatekeepers, each more powerful than the other. I cannot endure even one
glimpse of the third.” The man from the country has not expected such
difficulties: the law should always be accessible for everyone, he thinks, but
as he now looks more closely at the gatekeeper in his fur coat, at his large
pointed nose and his long, thin, black Tartar’s beard, he decides that it would
be better to wait until he gets permission to go inside. The gatekeeper gives
him a stool and allows him to sit down at the side in front of the gate. There
he sits for days and years. He makes many attempts to be let in, and he wears
the gatekeeper out with his requests. The gatekeeper often interrogates him
briefly, questioning him about his homeland and many other things, but they are
indifferent questions, the kind great men put, and at the end he always tells
him once more that he cannot let him inside yet. The man, who has equipped
himself with many things for his journey, spends everything, no matter how
valuable, to win over the gatekeeper. The latter takes it all but, as he does
so, says, “I am taking this only so that you do not think you have failed to do
anything.” During the many years the man observes the gatekeeper almost
continuously. He forgets the other gatekeepers, and this first one seems to him
the only obstacle for entry into the law. He curses the unlucky circumstance,
in the first years thoughtlessly and out loud; later, as he grows old, he only
mumbles to himself. He becomes childish and, since in the long years studying
the gatekeeper he has also come to know the fleas in his fur collar, he even
asks the fleas to help him persuade the gatekeeper. Finally his eyesight grows
weak, and he does not know whether things are really darker around him or
whether his eyes are merely deceiving him. But he recognizes now in the
darkness an illumination which breaks inextinguishably out of the gateway to
the law. Now he no longer has much time to live. Before his death he gathers in
his head all his experiences of the entire time up into one question which he
has not yet put to the gatekeeper. He waves to him, since he can no longer lift
up his stiffening body. The gatekeeper has to bend way down to him, for the
great difference has changed things considerably to the disadvantage of the
man. “What do you still want to know now?” asks the gatekeeper. “You are
insatiable.” “Everyone strives after the law,” says the man, “so how is it that
in these many years no one except me has requested entry?” The gatekeeper sees
that the man is already dying and, in order to reach his diminishing sense of
hearing, he shouts at him, “Here no one else can gain entry, since this
entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.”
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