[Pitbull]

"Procesul", lui Kafka.

Apropo, referirea lui MinRep la el, din "Cele mai bune începuturi de filme", mi-a dat ideea sä caut pe net varianta englezä a povestirii "In fata legii". Am gäsit-o, într-o traducere mizerabilä, si am mai aranjat-o.
Pentru cine n-a citit-o încä, iat-o:


Franz Kafka

In front of the Law



(The revising translator took the freedom to divide the text into paragraphs, for a better effect of the reading.)

In front of the Law stands a gatekeeper.
To this gatekeeper comes a country man who asks to gain entry to the Law.
But the gatekeeper replies that he cannot grant him this permission at the moment.
The man thinks about it and then asks if he will be allowed to get in later on.
“Anything is possible,” answers the gatekeeper, “but not right now.”
The Law’s gate stands open as always, and the gatekeeper keeps to the side, so the man bends over to see inside, through the gate. Noticing this, the gatekeeper laughs and says:
“If it does tempt you so sorely, try to get in, in spite of my forbiddance. But take note: I am powerful. And I’m only the lowest gatekeeper. From room to room, however, stand other and other gatekeepers, and each is stronger than the previous one. Me, I can’t even dare to look at the third of them.”
The country man had not expected such difficulties: the Law should always be available for everyone, he thinks - but now, as he looks more closely to the gatekeeper in his fur coat, with his large pointed nose and the long, thin, black Tartar’s beard, he decides that it would be wiser to wait until he’ll be allowed to go inside.
The gatekeeper gives him a stool and permits him to sit down beside the gate.
There he sits for days… weeks… months and years. He makes many attempts to be received in, and he wears out the gatekeeper with his requests. Sometimes, the gatekeeper questions him briefly, asking about his home and family, and many other things, but they are indifferent questions, the kind great people use to ask, and at the end he always tells him again and again that he cannot let him inside yet
The man has brought along many things for his journey and, gradually, all his assets pass into the gatekeeper’s possession: the man spends everything, no matter how valuable, to win him over - and the latter takes every bribe but, as doing so, he replies each time:
“I’m accepting this only so that you do not think you have failed to do anything in your power.”
During the countless years, the man observes the gatekeeper almost continuously. He forgets about the other gatekeepers, and this one seems to him the only hurdle against entering to the Law. He curses the unlucky happening when he took the fateful decision, at first shouting out loud and thoughtlessly - and later, as he grows old, just by mumbling to himself.
Advancing into age, he breaks down to the children’s mind and, since in the long years of studying the gatekeeper he came to know even the fleas in his fur collar, he now asks the fleas also to help him persuade the ruthless guardian.
At long last, his eyesight weakens, and he doesn’t know whether the surroundings really got darker, or are his eyes merely deceiving him. However, now he recognizes in the gloom a peculiar enlightening which breaks out of the gateway to the Law.
But his time grew short and, before his death, all his experiences of that entire time gather up in his mind into one question that he didn’t ask yet 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 hear, for the great height difference has changed even worse to the man’s disadvantage.
“What do you still want to know, then?” asks the gatekeeper. “You really are insatiable.”
“Everyone strives after the Law,” says the man, “so how comes that in all these innumerable years no one except me has requested entry?”
The gatekeeper sees that the man’s end is close – and, in order to reach his dying eardrum, he shouts at him:
“No one else could gain access by here, since this entrance was assigned only to you. Now, I’m going to close it.”


Revised by Mihnea Columbeanu,
May 4, 2005, Bucharest, Romania
(After a translation by Ian Johnston)



* * *


…“No one else could gain access by here, since this entrance was assigned only to you. Now, I’m going to close it.”

“…this entrance was assigned only to you. Now, I’m going to close it.”

“…Now, I’m going to close it.”