What does a ringing bell communicate?
"
come to me, come to me."
—Jean Ray,
Malpertuis [emphasis ours, if we may be so bold]
Jozé Donoso's
The Obscene Bird of the Night offers a different answer: "So let the churchbells ring, and the cattle bells / To let you know this love that in me wells."
However, Thomas Mann would seem to disagree:
Bells, bells, they swing and sway, they wag and weave through their whole arc on their beams, in their seats, hundred-voiced, in Babylonish confusion. Slow and swift, blaring and booming—there is neither measure nor harmony, they talk all at once and all together, they break in even on themselves; on clang the clappers and leave no time for the excited metal to din itself out, for like a pendulum they are already back at the other edge, droning into its own droning; so that when echo still resounds: "
In te Domine speravi" [In Thee, O Lord, I have hoped], it is uttering already "
Beati quorum tecta sunt peccata" [Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven] into its own midst. —
Thomas Mann, The Holy Sinner [emphasis ours]
Mann adds a delicious tidbit. Who is ringing the bells? "It is
the spirit of story-telling" [italics his].
