Who is Ringing the Bells by Thomas Mann

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The ringing of bells, the surging and swelling of bells supra urbem, above the whole city, in its airs overfilled with sound. 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 altogether, they break 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 [‘I put my trust in you, Lord’], it is uttering already Beati quorum tecta sunt peccata [‘blessed are those whose sins are covered’] into its own midst; not only so, but lesser bells tinkle clear from smaller shrines, as though the mass-boy might be touching the little bell of the Host.

Ringing from the heights and ringing from the depths; from the seven arch-holy places of pilgrimage and all the churches of the seven parishes on both sides of the twice-rounding Tiber. From the Aventine ringing; from the holy places of the Palatine and from St. John of the Lateran; above the grave of him he bears the keys; in the Vatican Hill, from Santa Maria Maggiore, Anta Maria in Foro, in Dominica, in Cosmedin and in  Trastevere; from Ara Celi, St. Paul’s outside the Walls, St. Peter in Chains, and from the house of the Most Holy Cross in Jerusalem. And from the chapels in the cemeteries, from the roofs of the basilicas and oratories in the narrow streets come the sounds as well. Who names their names and knows their titles?  As when the wind, when the tempest rakes the strings of the Aeolian harp and rouses the whole world of sound, the far apart and the close at hand, in whirring, sweeping harmony; such, translated in bronze, are the sounds that split the air, for here everything that is rings for the great feast and high procession.

Who is ringing the bells? Not the bell-ringers. They have run into the street like all the folk, to list the uncanny ringing. Convince yourselves: the bell-chambers are empty. Lax hang the ropes, and yet the bells rock and the clappers clang. One shall Say that nobody rings them? – No, only an ungrammatical head, without logic, would be capable of the utterance. “The bells are ringing”: that means they are rung, and let the bell-chambers be never so empty.- So who is ringing the bells of Rome?

 

– It is the spirit of story-telling.