K.

XII. The Stuff of Legends

For generation upon generation, the painters charged with painting the portraits of the court judges have passed down “rules that are numerous, varied, and above all secret.” The latest artist called on to apply them is Titorelli, a painter of mythological scenes with a penchant for heathscapes. As Reynolds painted the great ladies of his day in the attitudes of Diana or Minerva, so Titorelli paints a judge in the semblance of a goddess: the Goddess of Justice, of course. Though she could also be the Goddess of Victory, the artist notes. Or maybe even, after some final retouches, which Titorelli performs in Josef K.’s presence, the Goddess of the Hunt. She is depicted mid-chase, with wings on her ankles. Surely every jolt must unbalance those scales of justice. A blindfolded woman running: that’s what Titorelli is painting. More than a goddess, she’s a riddle, one whose solution isn’t clear. Is she solemn? Derisive? This is all we know for sure: the Goddess of Justice is visible at once, and the Goddess of the Hunt is the last to reveal herself. Does this, perhaps, foretell the court’s ultimate, esoteric meaning?

Josef K. and K. experience their decisive revelations while sitting on the edge of a bed: K. on Bürgel’s bed, Josef K. on Titorelli’s. Less important, but still significant, is proximity to a bed: Gardena beside K.’s bed in the maids’ room, K. beside the superintendent’s bed. Even the position one assumes on the bed is meaningful, as we can see from Titorelli’s behavior. It isn’t enough for him that Josef K. sit on the edge of the bed. Instead the painter “pushed him back into the eiderdown and the cushions.” Only when Josef K. is sinking toward the middle of the bed does Titorelli ask his “first actual question”: “Are you innocent?” And Josef K. answers: “Yes.”

The edge of the bed is the threshold of another world, and one must sink into that other world before the most essential, most direct question can be asked. Only in Titorelli’s studio, in that oppressive burrow, two strides wide in each direction, only in that stale air, can such words be uttered. And what Titorelli says now hasn’t been heard before. First: “The court can never be swayed.” If it has seen guilt, no one can persuade it that the guilt isn’t there. This is a valuable, if indirect, rejoinder to the declaration of innocence that Josef K. has just made. Second: the corrupt girls who play on the stairs and who guided Josef K. to Titorelli “belong to the court.” Indeed, the painter adds, “everything belongs to the court.” With his ceremonious, indifferent manner, and above all with these last words, added “half in jest, half in explanation,” Titorelli has offered Josef K. revelations that could carry great weight, if only he didn’t find them, thanks to his unshakable mistrust, “unbelievable.”

Josef K. already has an “opinion” about the court, even if he prolongs his captious interrogation in an effort to “uncover contradictions” in the painter’s words, and he too now has something to say about it, which, in its terseness, seems like a final judgment: “A single executioner could take the place of the entire court.” That executioner is death itself, which acts without consulting instructions or verdicts, just as the Goddess of the Hunt, whom Josef K. thought he recognized in the painting propped on Titorelli’s easel, strikes in the mazy forest without the authorization of any preliminary judgment. Josef K. has lucidly perceived that the court is the place where the Goddess of Justice and the Goddess of the Hunt blur into a single figure. Titorelli suggests that the Goddess of Victory can be seen in the same figure. But that’s a superfluous addendum. Victory, for the court, is a given for every moment of the world’s existence.

In the eyes of the manufacturer who first speaks to Josef K. about him, Titorelli is a postulant, “almost a beggar,” as every artist is, in principle. In Josef K.’s eyes he is first of all a “poor man,” precisely what he himself will seem in Titorelli’s eyes. And yet that “poor man,” thanks to his profession, is the only one who has direct access to the remote past, to the “legends.”

The subject of legends comes up when Titorelli is explaining to Josef K. that there are three types of absolution: “real acquittal, apparent acquittal, and protraction.” Titorelli knows of no case of real acquittal. But he knows that some real acquittals “are said to have occurred,” at least among the legal cases handed down in legend.

When they speak of legends in The Trial, they may as well be speaking of myth, a word Kafka doesn’t use here, perhaps because it brings in something superfluous or academic. The legends tell of judgments that are otherwise inaccessible: the court’s ancient verdicts, which “are not published.” This alone should render them valuable. An abyss, however, divides us from those legends. Certainly they are “very beautiful,” and one can even attribute to them “a kind of truth”—and here, rustling behind Titorelli’s words, we hear the age-old dispute over myth: Plato is watching us—“but they are not provable.” And what is a court if not the place where proof must be offered? Is it possible, then, Josef K. asks, “to appeal to such legends in court?” Of course not, the painter replies. He even laughs. A terrible laugh. The court is steeped in legends, right down to the portraits of its judges — and these legends are the only means of accessing a part of its history. If nothing else, they offer beauty and “a kind of truth.” But they can’t be utilized, and so, Josef K. concludes, “it’s useless to talk about them.”

This ferocious amputation has many consequences: above all, it becomes pointless to consider “real acquittal,” because real acquittal is treated only in the legends — and it’s useless to talk about legends. It’s as if the world agreed, with a simple gesture, to abolish a part of itself. And the only part, furthermore, where the adjective “real” is applicable. All the rest of the world, which soon will be considered the whole world, is divided up between “apparent acquittal” and “protraction.” Within that world things can be proved, but they may not be real. As for any acquittal that one might obtain there, it will certainly not be “real.” This brief exchange in Titorelli’s cramped, stifling studio, between two people who have just met, has a grave consequence: in the name of reality, reality is left aside. With the haste of a man who is after tangible results, Josef K. says at once: “Then let’s leave real acquittal aside.” What remains? Apparent acquittal and protraction. Only they have applications; only of them is it useful to speak. In the meantime, Titorelli asks Josef K.: “But don’t you want to take your jacket off before we discuss them? You must be very hot.” Josef K. agrees — and says: “It’s nearly unbearable.” He finds it nearly unbearable mainly because he has come too close to grasping the nature of his situation. Thus, just as he is getting ready to talk about what can be most useful to him, he has “the feeling of being totally cut off from air.” Here begins a brief, dense back-and-forth between him and Titorelli on air, fog, windows, heat, doors. In The Trial, any mention of windows or air or breathing is a signal — like a conversation about clothes in The Castle—that we have entered an intense, highly sensitive zone.

What Josef K. wants to find out can never be breathed. Titorelli knows that — and nods “as though he understood K.’s malaise very well.” The close, oppressive air of Titorelli’s garret is now ready to flow out over the vast wasteland of apparent acquittal and protraction.

Does the fact that legends can’t be used as evidence reflect one of their intrinsic weaknesses — or one of their privileges? Since the legends deal with “ancient legal cases” for which “the court’s final verdicts are not published,” one might assume that their inadmissibility as evidence stems from the impossibility of verifying their contents. Titorelli’s account, however, doesn’t say that in the past the court’s final verdicts were not published. The painter asserts, rather, that such verdicts are never published. If that’s the case, not only the legends but also all other evidence, of any kind, would be inadequate. It would always be unverifiable. As for the legends, they would then be the only texts that at least “contain real acquittals,” the only ones, therefore, that incorporate some of the final verdicts. Of course, the legends may all be frauds. But they may also be the last surviving vestige of the court’s final verdicts. The last vestige of something “real” in a world as cut off from reality as Josef K. is from air.

For a long time, during the greater part of human history, myth was the prime source of wisdom. Then it became a sequence of insidious, pointless stories, meaningful only to the degree that they helped us understand how people lived in the past. The sources of wisdom shifted. Matters myth had once told stories about were now proved and applied. But there were those who noticed that some of myth’s wisdom had been sealed off within the new wisdom. No big deal, most felt. We’ll know a little less about our past, but what does the past matter when before us lies the immensity of the present? Others, however, persisted. They noticed that the inaccessible part of myth dealt with the “court’s final verdicts.” And no other text did, since those verdicts “are not published.” Thus the hope was born, in a few, that one might, through the myths, come to know things that one could never otherwise discover. Most considered such hope a serious delusion, but they couldn’t prove it, since the court’s recent verdicts, which might have countered the ancient ones, were also inaccessible. For even now the verdicts were not published. Meanwhile the world continued to be embroiled in trials and verdicts, which, however, were never final. The trials were all visible, the verdicts all provisional. Reality had been taken away, everything became a snarl of appearance and protraction.

Why aren’t the real acquittals published? In order to guard some secret? So that “the highest court” can protect its exclusive right to grant “final acquittals,” thereby ensuring the inaccessibility of the secret? Nothing indeed is as inaccessible as what isn’t there. And many claim it isn’t, convinced that the barricade erected around the secret serves above all to allow the greatest freedom of action at the highest levels. But this explanation, however plausible and seductive, addresses only the secret’s easiest, most external aspect. Its foundation appears when Titorelli describes what happens in the event of a real acquittal: “The court acts must all be set aside, they disappear totally from the proceedings; not only is the charge destroyed, but also the trial and even the acquittal, everything is destroyed.” If everything is destroyed, one can see why real acquittal is never made public: because it is destroyed in the very moment it comes into being. The extinction of the acts—and here again, as we move beyond the surface sense of “judicial acts,” the literal meaning shows through: that of acts as karma—is the only way out of the trial, following the exertion, on the part of the highest judges, of their “great power to free a person from the charge.” All the rest is made of ropes that slacken or tighten according to the will of ordinary judges, who enjoy only “the power to unbind a person from the charge.”

As for apparent acquittals: it’s clear that these cover a vast share of the possibilities — and Titorelli lets it be understood that the most congenial solution for Josef K. lies in this area. Apparent acquittal is characterized by its tendency to grant the relief of temporary victory, but only in the context of ongoing anxiety. One who obtains an apparent acquittal and returns contentedly home can never be sure he won’t find someone waiting for him there, ready to arrest him again on the same charge. The charge, by its nature, tends to remain “alive” and “continues to hover over” the defendant like a dark bird. It’s no surprise that, “as soon as the high order comes,” the charge can “immediately take effect” again. And here Titorelli touches on a crucial point: a trial may lead to a verdict, but “the proceeding remains active.” The trial is only a temporary dramatization of something that never ceases but rather “continues pendulum-like, with larger or smaller oscillations, with longer or shorter interruptions”—and that’s the “proceeding.” Titorelli’s meticulous description only confirms Josef K.’s recent insight: “A single executioner could take the place of the entire court.” Behind all its imposing apparatus, the court “serves no purpose.” It certainly doesn’t serve to determine guilt, given that in every case “the court is firmly convinced of the defendant’s guilt” from the start. Why, then, does the court continue to exist? Couldn’t a single executioner eliminate the interminable series of acts, all of which have a predetermined outcome? And isn’t this like saying that every life could be immediately ended by death, without having to develop through all manner of branching and leafing? Maybe Titorelli would have hinted at an answer had Josef K. not been in such a hurry to get out of that stifling garret. But where would he go to breathe easier? Into the hallways of the court, with which that room communicates via the door behind the painter’s bed.

In his work at the bank, Josef K. deals with laws and courts of every kind. And that multiplicity comforts him, because it seems to limit each individual power. Speaking with Titorelli, however, he realizes that his convictions are mistaken. Everything converges toward a single court — and that court extends everywhere. More disconcerting even than its omnipresence is its talent for mimicry. The court is pervasive, yet it can pass unnoticed or be confused with other courts. The court’s activities are widely known, but at the same time one isn’t bound to be aware of them. Many people are familiar with Josef K.’s trial, but only because they have something to do with the court. Otherwise his trial would be a secret. This is the real terror: that some normal life may exist, that it may be proceeding smoothly along, but that it may contain within it another life, one with radically different aims, working quietly, as if protected by the sheath of the normal life. If that’s true, it will no longer be possible to appeal to normality, and even less to nature, for both will be suspected of serving as mere covers for another process, which proceeds along a completely different course. And whose proceedings have a completely different meaning.

“No acts get lost, the court doesn’t forget anything”: this is still Titorelli speaking. Everything piles up and coalesces. But, in the course of this vast procession of proceedings, does anything final, transparent, or unquestionable manage to survive? It would seem not. The real acquittals are destroyed the moment they are pronounced. And the convictions? There are none. Beyond the void left by the destruction of the real acquittals, there remain only cases of apparent acquittal — which are by their nature never final, since “the proceeding remains active,” like an ember beneath ash — and cases of protraction, where the trial is cunningly kept “at the lowest stage,” so that it never gets as far as a verdict and a possible conviction. The procession of proceedings seems in the end unable to produce not only acquittals but convictions as well. Yet Josef K. will be convicted and killed in the most atrocious manner: “like a dog.” One day the secretary Bürgel, who is the prison chaplain’s secular counterpart, will explain to Josef K. that “there are things that founder for no other reason than themselves.”

Even if “everything belongs to the court,” only in two cases are particular people said to belong to the court: Titorelli says this about the corrupt girls who surround him, and the priest says it about himself in the cathedral. The girls mock Josef K., and the priest is more “friendly” toward him than anyone else has been. In both cases, we’re dealing with manifestations of the court, which must be compatible with each other, or else the entire construction would collapse. At most, they may play different roles within the same “great organism,” where we know that “everything is interconnected” and effortlessly “remains unchanged” even in the presence of disturbances. Perhaps now we can begin to grasp the words the chaplain will eventually say to Josef K.: “You don’t have to regard everything as true, you only have to regard it as necessary.” Nothing is stranger, or more misleading, or more deceptive, than necessity. In this sense, Josef K. has grounds for declaring: “The lie becomes the order of the world.” But as soon as it becomes such, it spreads out over every manifestation, and hence even over the judgment that condemns it. Without knowing it, Josef K. himself belongs in that moment to the court and to its lie.

There are always at least two worlds, and between them no direct contact is permitted. It’s rumored, however, that such contact does occasionally take place, in violation of every rule. And it is always looming, like a threat or an omen, discernible even in a door set into a wall. Josef K. noticed that door in Titorelli’s garret and immediately wondered what it was for. Later someone told him that the court offices were in communication with the painter’s room. That door was the thinnest interspace between the two worlds. Speaking with Titorelli, Josef K. had come as close as possible to the court. But he didn’t trust what he heard, just as K., late one night, hesitated to believe what Bürgel was saying. A door like the one in Titorelli’s studio might look something like this:

In my apartment there’s a door I’ve never paid attention to. It’s in my bedroom, in the wall shared with the house next door. I’ve never thought anything of it, indeed I never even realized it was there. And yet it’s quite visible; the lower part is blocked by the beds, but it rises high above them, it’s not like a regular door, it’s more like a main entryway. Yesterday it was opened. I was in the dining room, which is separated by another room from the bedroom. I had come home very late for lunch, no one else was home, only the maid working in the kitchen. Then the racket began in the bedroom. I rush over there at once and see that the door, the door I’ve been unaware of until this moment, is being slowly opened and at the same time, with gigantic strength, the beds are being pushed out of the way. I yell: “Who is it? What do you want? Easy! Careful!” and I expect to see a swarm of violent men come bursting in, but instead it’s just a skinny young man who, as soon as the gap is wide enough for him to pass, slips through and greets me cheerfully.

When he was writing, Kafka never knew what would come out of that gap in the wall: “a swarm of violent men,” or a “skinny young man” who might resemble himself so closely as to be indistinguishable.