'Before the Law' - a parable by Franz Kafka
Before the Law by Franz Kafka
Translation by Ian Johnston
(NB: This parable first appeared in 1915, and became a part of Kafka's book The Trial)
Translation by Ian Johnston
(NB: This parable first appeared in 1915, and became a part of Kafka's book The Trial)
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 later on. “It is possible,” says the
gatekeeper, “but not now.” At the moment 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 it 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 can’t 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 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 still
mumbles to himself. He becomes childish and, since in the long years studying
the gatekeeper he has 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 to the disadvantage of the man. “What do you
still want to know, then?” 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.
From Franz Kafka Online
