quarta-feira, 16 de novembro de 2011
Excuse me, could you tell me a good place to live?
quarta-feira, 8 de dezembro de 2010
The dislusion of the law
You can read more (like the different ways of aproaching this interpretation) in the place where i took this text from: http://www.msgr.ca/msgr-7/christ_on_trial%2013%20Kafka.htm
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‘In the writings which preface the Law it says about this delusion: before the Law stands a door‑keeper. A man from the country comes up to this door‑keeper and begs for admission to the Law. But the door‑keeper tells him that he cannot grant him admission now. The man ponders this and then asks if he will be allowed to enter later. “Possibly,” the door‑keeper says, “but not now.” Since the door leading to the Law is standing open as always and the door‑keeper steps aside, the man bends down to look inside through the door. Seeing this, the door‑keeper laughs and says: “If it attracts you so much, go on and try to get in without my permission. But you must realize that I am powerful. And I’m only the lowest door‑keeper. At every hall there is another doorkeeper, each one more powerful than the last. Even I cannot bear to look at the third one.” The man from the country had not expected difficulties like this, for, he thinks, the Law is surely supposed to be accessible to everyone always, but when he looks more closely at the door‑keeper in his fur coat, with his great sharp nose and his long, thin black Tartar beard, he decides it is better to wait until he receives permission to enter. The doorkeeper gives him a stool and allows him to sit down to one side of the door. There he sits, day after day, and year after year. Many times he tries to get in and wears the door‑keeper out with his appeals. At times the door‑keeper conducts little cross‑examinations, asking him about his home and many other things, but they are impersonal questions, the sort great men ask, and the door‑keeper always ends up by saying that he cannot let him in yet. The man from the country, who has equipped himself with many things for his journey, makes use of everything he has, however valuable, to bribe the door‑keeper, who, it’s true, accepts it all, saying as he takes each thing: “I am only accepting this so that you won’t believe you have left something untried.”
‘During all these long years, the man watches the door‑keeper almost continuously. He forgets the other door‑keepers, this first one seems to be the only obstacle between him and admission to the Law. In the first years he curses this piece of ill‑luck aloud, and later when he gets old, he only grumbles to himself. He becomes childish and, since he has been scrutinizing the doorkeeper so closely for years that he can identify even the fleas in die door‑keeper’s fur collar, he begs these fleas to help him to change the door‑keeper’s mind. In the end his eyes grow dim and he cannot tell whether it is really getting darker around him or whether it is just his eyes deceiving him. But now he glimpses in the darkness a radiance glowing inextinguishably from the door of the Law. He is not going to live much longer now. Before he dies all his experiences during the whole period of waiting merge in his head into one single question, which he has not yet asked the door‑keeper. As he can no longer raise his stiffening body, he beckons the man over. The door‑keeper has to bend down low to him, for the difference in size between them has changed very much to the man's disadvantage.
‘“What is it you want to know now then?” asks the doorkeeper. “You're insatiable.” “All men are intent on the Law,” says the man, “but why is it that in all these many years no one other than myself has asked to enter?” The door‑keeper realizes that the man is nearing his end and that his hearing is fading, and in order to make himself heard he bellows at him: “No one else could gain admission here, because this door was intended only for you. I shall now go and close it.”’
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Is the door-keeper the bad person? Or he is just one faithfull worker, devoted to his job in the Law? Should the man go inside by force instead of wasting all his life outside waiting? Was the Law the guilty, facing the inertia of both man? Is the Law dedicated to each one of us, with a limited time and space?