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this is the archive of a discussion on the franz kafka discussion list. one person posted questions about the story (message 1), some else replied (message 2), and then went back and forth for a fewmore messages. this is the chronological account of their dialoge (just follow the "next" and "previous" buttons to navigate), and the messages have not been edited or altered in any way. on a similar note, though, because of this discussion, i wrote my own interpretation of "before the law". check it out if you like.
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I am very grateful for your answer.
I fully agree with you that "the Law seems to be the most mysterious of the objects in the story". But I am not so sure that it will be more clarified if we call it "righteousness", "the great scheme of things" or "freedom", or any other thing taken as being merely "there".
What do we know, from the story, about this mysterious "object"?
1) We know that "alle streben doch nach dem Gesetz", everybody yearns towards the Law (I am not sure that my translation is an accurate one). So, it is an "object" that is in relation to everybody in general; more: it is in an apparently essential relation.The yearning towards the Law defines mankind.
2) We know that the way into it is a way for which there is no map available, since the way is an unique one, that can not be represented (if not through an image): my entry is such that does not "fit" anybody else. "Hier konnte niemand sonst Einlass erhalten, denn diser Eingan war nur für dich bestimmt". Here, nobody else could be allowed to enter, since this entry was exclusively made for you.
The degree to which it pertains to me turns to make it in some way equal to me, at least as long as I, like all others, am in an essential relation to it.
An object - and only objects are susceptible of representation through notions, by gender and specific differentiaton - are something in face of which we are. Something "there".
It seems that the least of the mistakes of the the man in the story - a fatal one, as a matter of fact - has not been that of taking the Law for someting merely "there".
Somewhere Kafka has written that "my life has been a long hesitation before the birth" (I am in my office and I can not quote it excatly). Don't you think that "Vor dem Gesetz", among thousands of other things, could be read as a parable of this "hesitation before the birth" (which is in turn a mataphor)? (There is, in any case, from that "description" of his life to the story, a displacement: from "hesitation" as what keeps me from going forward, to the obstacle - whose statute requires clarification - of the infinity of doorkeepers.)
If it is so, the Law would be that by which we come into existence. The man in the story was dead before he was borne. I would like to read your coments to it.
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