..."That is well argued," said K., after repeating to himself in a low voice several passages from the priest's exposition. "It is well argued, and I am inclined to agree that the doorkeeper is deceived. But that has not made me abandon my former opinion, since both conclusions are to some extent compatible. Whether the doorkeeper is clear-sighted or deceived does not dispose of the matter. I said the man is deceived. If the doorkeeper is clear-sighted, one might have doubts about that, but if the doorkeeper is himself deceived, then his description must of necessity be communicated to the man. That makes the doorkeeper not, indeed, a deceiver, but a creature so simple-minded he ought to be dismissed at once from his office. You mustn't forget that the doorkeeper's deceptions do himself no harm but do infinite harm to the man." "There are objections to that," said the priest. "Many aver that the story confers no right on anyone to pass judgment on the doorkeeper. Whatever he may seem to us, he is yet a servant of the Law; that is, he belongs to the Law and as such is beyond human judgment. In that case one must not believe that the doorkeeper is subordinate to the man. Bound as he is by his service, even only at the door of the Law, he is incomparably greater than anyone in the world at large in the world. The man is only seeking the Law, the doorkeeper is already attached to it. It is the Law that has placed him at his post; to doubt his dignity is to doubt the law itself." "I don't agree with that point of view," said K., shaking his head, "for if one accepts it, one must accept as true everything the doorkeeper says. But you yourself have sufficiently proved how impossible it is to do that." "No," said the priest, "it is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary." "A melancholy conclusion," said K. "It turns lying into a universal principle."
I see my mistake on reading this chapter the first time was taking the priest at his word that his tale concerned the Law. On re-reading, I notice the tale begins and ends with the priest's assertion of his position as part of the Court:
"You must first see who I am," said the priest. "You are the prison chaplain," said K., groping his way nearer to the priest again; his immediate return to the Bank was not so necessary as he had made out, he could quite well stay longer. "That means I belong to the Court," said the priest. "So why should I want anything from you? The Court wants nothing from you. It receives you when you come and it dismisses you when you go."
(The last is the end of the chapter). I first read The Trial in February or March, and I had my insight into it sometime over the summer. I noticed that the man who finds himself at the doorway to the Law never tries to enter: he sees the doorkeeper and interacts with him, takes him at his word when he is told that the first moment is not the one for him to enter, anticipates a threat of violence that is never made, and engages in a series of actions to get through the door by swaying the doorman, through bribes or persuasion. I thought it was curious that neither K. nor the priest mention that the man fails to ever attempt to walk through the door. But, as I said, I came to realize the tale is about the Court, not the Law: the emphasis placed on the doorkeeper's status with respect to the Law is paralleled by the priest's status with respect to the Court, and what is the book of the Law (the tale is the first preface to the book of the Law) if not the Court's version of the Law? So it's not surprising that the tale omits it and the commentators do not address this possibility (nor does the priest commit himself to any particular interpretation, transmitting only the collected interpretations in response to K.'s objections, until K. will have no more of it): what interest could they have in denying the power of the doorkeeper? So one heaps on interpretations until the plainest meaning becomes the most hidden and obscure. The man dies at the threshold of the Law, the testament to the power of the Law (which is to say, the Court), and one hardly notices the tragedy at all.
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