Franz Kafka
Before the Law
This translation by Ian Johnston of Malaspina University-College,
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 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 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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