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 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.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurisprudence
This collection of quotes is being compiled by Lo Snöfall
