Franz Kafka
Before the Law
(Vor dem Gesetz)
Before the Law stands a doorkeeper.
To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the country and prays
for admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says that he cannot
grant admittance at the moment. The man thinks it over and then
asks if he will be allowed in later.
"It is possible,"
says the doorkeeper, "but not at the moment."
Since the gate stands open, as usual, and the doorkeeper steps to one
side, the man stoops to peer through the gateway into the interior.
Observing that, the doorkeeper laughs and says:
"If you
are so drawn to it, just try to go in despite my veto. But take
note: I am powerful. And I am only the least of the doorkeepers.
From hall to hall there is one doorkeeper after another, each
more powerful than the last. The third doorkeeper is already
so terrible that even I cannot bear to look at him."
These are difficulties the man from the country has not expected; the
Law, he thinks, should surely be accessible at all times and
to everyone, but as he now takes a closer look at the doorkeeper
in his fur coat, with his big sharp nose and long, thin, black
Tartar beard, he decides that it is better to wait until he gets
permission to enter. The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets
him sit down at one side of the door.
There he sits for days
and years. He makes many attempts to be admitted, and wearies
the doorkeeper by his importunity. The doorkeeper frequently
has little interviews with him, asking him questions about his
home and many other things, but the questions are put indifferently,
as great lords put them, and always finish with the statement
that he cannot be let in yet. The man, who has furnished himself
with many things for his journey, sacrifices all he has, however
valuable, to bribe the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper accepts everything,
but always with the remark:
"I am only taking it to keep
you from thinking you have omitted anything."
During these
many years the man fixes his attention almost continuously on
the doorkeeper. He forgets the other doorkeepers, and this first
one seems to him the sole obstacle preventing access to the Law.
He curses his bad luck, in his early years boldly and loudly;
later, as he grows old, he only grumbles to himself. He becomes
childish, and since in his year long contemplation of the doorkeeper
he has come to know even the fleas in his fur collar, he begs
the fleas as well to help him and to change the doorkeeper's
mind. At length his eyesight begins to fail, and he does not
know whether the world is really darker or whether his eyes are
only deceiving him. Yet in his darkness he is now aware of a
radiance that streams inextinguishably from the gateway of the
Law. Now he has not very long to live.
Before he dies, all his
experiences in these long years gather themselves in his head
to one point, a question he has not yet asked the doorkeeper.
He waves him nearer, since he can no longer raise his stiffening
body. The doorkeeper has to bend low toward him, for the difference
in height between them has altered much to the man's disadvantage.
"What do you want to know now?" asks the doorkeeper;
"you are insatiable."
"Everyone strives to reach
the Law," says the man, "so how does it happen that
for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for
admittance?"
The doorkeeper recognizes that the man has
reached his end, and, to let his failing senses catch the words,
roars in his ear:
"No one else could ever be admitted here,
since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut
it."
Franz Kafka
Austrian author
Born July 3, 1883, in Prag (now Czech Republic)
Died June 3, 1924, in Kierling bei Wien (near Vienna)
Vor dem Gesetz
in: Selbstwehr. Unabhängige jüdische Wochenschrift,
hrsg. von Siegmund Kaznelson,
Prag, 1915, Nr. 34 (7. September)
Before the Law
in: The Penal Colony. Stories and Short Pieces,
translated by Willa and Edwin Muir,
Schocken Books, New York, 1948
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