I’m reading “For Whom the Bell Tolls” by Earnest Hemingway and the original poem by John Donne is in the front of the book. I understand everything perfectly but for the last three lines, I don’t see what they have to do with the rest of the poem. I’m guessing here but I assume it has something to do with the history of executions, executions typically being held at the top of an hour and the town bell tower ringing at the same time? I still don’t see what that has to do with the rest of the poem though.
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
I used to love poetry when I was a student. So I resisted the urge to see what I could find online about interpreting this poem and decided to flex the old brain-muscle.
I think what Donne is saying is that because each individual human is interconnected with all others through our webs of relationships (“For I am involved in mankind”) the death knell for a single stranger should not be ignored because it also robs you, the reader, of a part of his whole human self.
“Send not to know for whom the bell tolls” means, like you said, that Donne urges the reader not to idly question or even ignore the chiming of bells that announce publicly notable deaths because doing so means that the reader is ignoring his own intellectual and spiritual wellbeing. A part of him has died with those “for whom the bell toll[s].”
I don’t know enough about Donne to say, but I strongly suspect that he wasn’t intending to limit his commentary to capital punishment and execution, though that is certainly one layer of interpretation.
In addition to that, I read this poem as Donne’s message that people should get involved with those of their fellows who are in bad straits–suffering from poverty or living sinfully–because caring for them is as important as caring for our own bodies and minds, given humanity’s interconnectedness.
I liked Donne’s poetry in the one or two classes that we read it. I know this is the non-poetry scholar’s pick, but I always did love A Valediction Forbidden Mourning:
A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING.
by John Donne
AS virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
“Now his breath goes,” and some say, “No.”
So let us melt, and make no noise, 5
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ; 10
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers’ love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove 15
The thing which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss. 20
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so 25
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix’d foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th’ other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam, 30
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th’ other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just, 35
And makes me end where I begun.
A friend of mine has gotten back to me (a literary giant in my eyes) and explained it this way:
Funeral services at one time were accompanied by tolling of the bell as the cortege proceeded to the church yard for burial. Important people’s funerals often had all churches in the town or city tolling bells, but for the rest of us, it was just our own small church that would ring the bells for those being buried out of that church.
I’ve been reading since I was very, very small. It was one of the first things my parents saw to it I was capable of doing well and I appreciate that very much.
I’m almost done with this book and I see now that besides Charles Dickens I’ve been reading pretty much nothing but CRAP my whole life. Compared to Hemingway’s writing anyway. This book is amazing, and I don’t mean the exciting bits about the war, I mean Robert’s views on honor, bravery, fear, family, love, the value of life, how to behave in different situations…
Once you get to know Robert in the first half of the book it makes his attempts to bait Pablo all more more powerful. Then his regret afterward… REALLY good stuff.
I don’t think I would have received this story this well twelve years ago, I think you have to have learned some of these lessons yourself, in your own life, to really appreciate what Hemingway says to you. Glad I have more books to read.
And of course it’s cool to see where the inspiration for the Metallica song came from. :o
