__________________________
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 links to more Kafka e-texts
in English click here. This text
was last revised on June 11, 2015.
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 lowliest gatekeeper. But from
room to room stand gatekeepers, each more powerful than the last. 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 up in his head all his experiences of the entire time 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 difference between them has changed considerably to the disadvantage of
the man. “What do you 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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