Selections from Kafka's Epigrams
#2
All human errors are impatience, the premature breaking off of what is
methodical, an apparent fencing in of the apparent thing.
#3 There are two main human sins from which all the others derive: impatience and indolence. It was because of impatience that they were expelled from Paradise; it is because of indolence that they do not return. Yet perhaps there is only one major sin: impatience. Because of impatience they were expelled, because of impatience they do not return.
#69
Theoretically there is a perfect possibility of happiness: believing in
the indestructible element in oneself and not striving towards it.
#70
The indestructible is one: it is each individual human being and, at
#+71. the same time, it is common to all, hence the incomparably indivisible union that exists between human beings.
#87 A belief like a guillotine--as heavy, as light.
# 106 Humility provides everyone, even him who despairs in solitude, with
the strongest relationship to his fellow man, and this immediately, though, of
course, only in the case of complete and permanent humility. It can do this
because it is the true language of prayer, at once adoration and the firmest of
unions. The relationship to one's fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the
relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that
one draws the, strength for one's striving.
* Can you know anything other than deception? If ever the deception is
annihilated, you must not look in that direction or you will turn into a pillar
of salt.
THE TOWER OF BABEL
If it had been possible to build the tower of Babel without ascending it, the work would have been permitted.
THE PIT OF BABEL
What are you building?
--I want to dig a subterranean passage. Some progress must be made. My station up there is much too
high.
We are digging the pit of Babel.
AN IMPERIAL MESSAGE
The Emperor, so it runs, has sent a message to you, the humble subject, the insignificant shadow cowering in the remotest distance
before the imperial sun; the Emperor from his deathbed has sent a message to you alone. He has commanded the messenger to
kneel down by the bed, and has whispered the message to him; so much store did he lay on it that he ordered the messenger to
whisper it back into his ear again. Then by a nod of the head he has confirmed that it is right. Yes, before the assembled
spectators of his death----all the obstructing walls have been broken down, and on the spacious and lofty-mounting open staircases
stand in a ring the great princes of the Empire--before all these he has delivered his message. The messenger immediately sets out
on his journey; a powerful, an indefatigable man; now pushing with his right arm, now with his left, he cleaves a way for himself
through the throng; if he encounters resistance he points to his breast, where the symbol of the sun glitters; the way, too is made
easier for him than it would be for any other man. But the multitudes are so vast; their numbers have no end. If he could reach the
open fields how fast he would fly, and soon doubtless you would hear the welcome hammering of his fists on your door. But
instead how vainly does he wear out his strength; still he is only making his way through the chambers of the innermost palace;
never will he get to the end of them; and if he succeeded in that nothing would be gained; he must fight his way next down the
stair; and if he succeeded in that nothing would be gained; the courts would still have to be crossed; and after the courts the
second outer palace; and once more stairs and courts; and once more another palace; and so on for thousands of years; and if at
last he should burst through the outermost gate--but never, never can that happen--the imperial capital would lie before him, the
center of the world, crammed to bursting with its own refuse. Nobody could fight his way through here, least of all one with a
message from a dead man.--But you sit at your window when evening falls and dream it to yourself.
PARADISE
The expulsion from Paradise is in its main significance eternal: Consequently the expulsion from Paradise is final, and life in this
world irrevocable, but the eternal nature of the occurrence (or, temporally expressed, the eternal recapitulation of the occurrence)
makes it nevertheless possible that not only could we live continuously in Paradise, but that we are continuously there in actual
fact, no matter whether we know it here or not.
Why do we lament over the fall of man? We were not driven out of Paradise because of it, but because of the Tree of life, that
we might not eat of it.
We are sinful not merely because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree
of Life. The state in which we find ourselves is sinful, quite independent of guilt.
We were fashioned to live in Paradise, and Paradise was destined to serve us. Our destiny has been altered; that this has also
happened with the destiny of Paradise is not stated.
We were expelled from Paradise, but Paradise was not destroyed. In a sense our expulsion from Paradise was a stroke of luck,
for had we not been expelled, Paradise would have had to be destroyed.
God said that Adam would have to die on the day he ate of the Tree of Knowledge. According to God, the instantaneous result of
eating of the Tree of Knowledge would be death; according to the serpent (at least it can be understood so), it would be equality
with God. Both were wrong in similar ways. Men did not die, but became mortal; they did not become like God, but received the
indispensable capacity to become so. Both were right in similar ways. Man did not die, but the
paradisiacal man did; men did not
become God, but divine knowledge.
He is a free and secure citizen of the world, for he is fettered to a chain which is long enough to give him the freedom of all
earthly space, and yet only so long that nothing can drag him past the frontiers of the world. But simultaneously he is a free and
secure citizen of Heaven as well, for he is also fettered by a similarly designed heavenly chain. So that if he heads, say, for the
earth, his heavenly collar throttles him, and if he heads for Heaven, the earthly one does the same. And yet all the possibilities are
his, and he feels it, more, he actually refuses to account for the deadlock by an error in the original fettering.
Since the Fall we have been essentially equal in our capacity to recognize good and evil; nonetheless it is just here that we seek to
show our individual superiority. But the real differences begin beyond that knowledge. The opposite illusion may be explained thus: nobody can remain content with the mere knowledge of good and evil in itself, but must endeavor as well to act in accordance
with it. The strength to do so, however, is not likewise given him, consequently he must destroy himself trying to do so, at the risk
of not achieving the necessary strength even then; yet there remains nothing for him but this final attempt. (That is moreover the
meaning of the threat of death attached to the Tree of Knowledge; perhaps too it was the original meaning of natural death.) Now,
faced with this attempt, man is filled with fear,; he prefers to annul his knowledge of good and evil (the term, "the fall of man,"
may be traced back to that fear); yet the accomplished cannot be annulled, but only confused. It was for this purpose that our
rationalizations were created. The whole world is full of them, indeed the whole visible world is perhaps nothing more than than
the rationalization of a man who wants to find peace for a moment. An attempt to falsify the actuality of knowledge, to regard
knowledge as a goal still to be reached.
Before the Law (This parable also appears in Kafka's novel, The
Trial.)
Before the Law stands a doorkeeper. To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the country and prays for admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says
that he cannot grant admittance at the moment. The man thinks it over and then asks if he will be allowed in later. "It is possible," says
the doorkeeper, "but not at the moment." Since the gate stands open, as usual, and the doorkeeper steps to one side, the man stoops to
peer through the gateway into the interior. Observing that, the doorkeeper laughs and says: "If you are so drawn to it, just try to go in despite
my veto. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the least of the doorkeepers. From hall to hall there is one doorkeeper after another, each
more powerful than the last. The third doorkeeper is already so terrible that even I cannot bear to look at him." These are difficulties the man
from the country has not expected; the Law, he thinks, should surely be accessible at all times and to everyone, but as he now takes a closer look
at the doorkeeper in his fur coat, with his big sharp nose and long, thin, black Tartar beard, he decides that it is better to wait until he gets
permission to enter. The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down at one side of the door. There he sits for days and years. He makes many
attempts to be admitted, and wearies the doorkeeper by his importunity. The doorkeeper frequently has little
interviews with him, asking him questions about his home and many other things, but the questions are put indifferently, as great lords put them, and always finish with the statement that he cannot be let in yet. The man, who has furnished himself with many things for his journey, sacrifices all he has, however valuable,
to bribe the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper accepts everything, but always with the remark: "I am only taking it to keep you from thinking you have
omitted anything." During these many years the man fixes his attention almost continuously on the doorkeeper. He forgets the other doorkeepers,
and this first one seems to him the sole obstacle preventing access to the Law. He curses his bad luck, in his early years boldly and loudly; later,
as he grows old, he only grumbles to himself. He becomes childish, and since in his yearlong contemplation of the doorkeeper he has come to know
even the fleas in his fur collar, he begs the fleas as well to help him and to change the doorkeeper's mind. At length his eyesight begins to fail, and
he does not know whether the world is really darker or whether his eyes are only deceiving him. Yet in his darkness he is now aware of a radiance that streams
inextinguishably from the gateway of the Law. Now he has not very long to live. Before he dies, all his experiences in these long years gather
themselves in his head to one point, a question he has not yet asked the doorkeeper. He waves him nearer, since he can no longer raise his
stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend low toward him, for the difference in height between them has altered much to the man's disadvantage.
"What do you want to know now?" asks the doorkeeper; "you are insatiable." "Everyone strives to reach the Law,"
says the man, "so how does it happen that for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for admittance?" The doorkeeper
recognizes that the man has reached his end, and, to let his failing senses catch the words, roars in his ear: "No one else could ever be admitted
here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it."
If you are interested in reading more Kafka's parables and paradoxes, you can
visit Reverend
Patty Morin's site: Kafka's Parables and Paradoxes