The Meaning and Origin of ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls; It Tolls for Thee’
By: Oliver Tearle
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The Meaning and Origin of ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls; It Tolls for Thee’
In this week's Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses the origins of a famous phrase about human sympathy and mortality
'Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.' This phrase has become world-famous but its origins, and even its meaning, are often misconstrued or at least only partially grasped. Many people would be able to identify the origins of 'never send to know for whom the bell tolls' in the work of John Donne (which would be correct), with quite a few of them thinking that the line originated in a poem of Donne's (which would not be correct).
'Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee' is a phrase from one of John Donne's most famous pieces of writing, but it's not a work of poetry. Instead, this line appears in one of Donne's prose writings:
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man 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 thy friend's or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
John Donne (1572-1631) was a hugely important figure in Elizabethan and Jacobean literature: in some ways, he is second only to Shakespeare in his literary importance. As a young man in the 1590s, he had pioneered what would become known as metaphysical poetry, writing impassioned and sensual poetry that drew on new debates and discoveries in astronomy for its imagery and poetic conceits. I have selected and discussed some of his finest poems in an earlier post.
But Donne left behind his heady and headstrong youth and eventually rose high in the ranks of the Church of England (despite being part of a recusant Catholic family), and became a devoted Anglican. In time, he was appointed Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral. He would write a series of Holy Sonnets which are as passionate as his youthful love poems, but this time God, rather than a mortal woman, is the subject and addressee.
Donne was writing at a time when the English language was, in many ways, at its most supple and inventive. This was the great age not just of the Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, of Shakespeare and Marlowe, but also the King James Bible (published in 1611) and the sermons of Lancelot Andrewes. Donne himself was also a powerful writer and deliverer of sermons, and a talented prose writer.
The famous lines he wrote that contain the 'never send for whom the bell tolls' statement were written in the last decade of his life. In 1623, he fell ill with a fever and, while he recovered, he wrote the Devotions upon Emergent Occasions , a series of prose writings split into three parts: 'Meditations', 'Expostulations to God', and 'Prayers'.
The oft-quoted 'no man is an island' line, as well as the 'for whom the bell tolls' one, come the seventeenth Meditation in Donne's Devotions . Donne was gravely ill and his own death, and the mortality of all human life, must have been continually on his mind; the Devotions come back to sin and salvation time and again, as in the Holy Sonnets.
The meaning of 'never send to know for whom the bell tolls' is fairly straightforward. We should feel a sense of belonging to the whole of the human race, and should feel a sense of loss at every death, because it has taken something away from mankind. The other famous phrase from this Meditation that has entered common usage is 'no man is an island', because no individual can subsist alone.
We need not only social company and companionship, but also an awareness of how we all have a share in the world: we are all part of the human race and the suffering and passing of another human being should affect us, not least because it is a regular reminder that one day, it will be us for whom the funeral bell is tolling.
The funeral bell that tolls for another person's death, then, also tolls for us, in a sense, because it marks the death of a part of us, but also because it is a memento mori , a reminder that we ourselves will die one day. Ernest Hemingway's great novel about the Spanish Civil War was named For Whom the Bell Tolls after Donne's line, not just because death pervades the protagonist Robert Jordan's thoughts but because Spain's fate will affect everyone. George Orwell, whose political writing was changed forever as a result of fighting in the Spanish Civil War, would doubtless agree.
Oliver Tearle is the author of The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History , available now from Michael O’Mara Books, and The Tesserae , a long poem about the events of 2020.
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The first line of the article "Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee" was not IMO fully explained by the author. Meditation XVII, from which that line is quoted, was written in the early 17th century, before there were newspapers, and of course no radio, tv or internet, so when a person in the village were to die the church bell would be rung, and the people of the village would go to the church to find out who died. So, what Donne is saying, i.e. not to bother going to the church to find out who died, because when a person dies, we all die a little bit because "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main"; we are all connected, and so since we are connected to the person who died, we have all died a little ourselves.
Many years ago I once gave a eulogy for a friend who died, in which I quoted Donne's Meditation XVII explaining with those two quotations that when he died, we all died a little.
I think he was saying that death gets us all in the end.
Perhaps, but the message he focused mostly upon was that we are all connected.
So, when the bell tolls, it is not for the person who died for they will never hear it, it is for the rest of the community to come to assembly for the person who died.
In other words it is for the living who can actually hear it.
The bell tolled to indicate that someone from the village had died, and as I explained, the villagers would go to the church to find out who it was. Donne is saying that its tolling was an indication that all the villagers had died a little since as humans we are all connected, a part of each other, and the theme of all humans being a part of each other is what Hemingway was trying to project by Robert Jordan travelling to Spain because he considered himself a part of those fighting the fascist regime. In the movie For Whom the Bell Tolls it is made even clearer by Robert (Gary Cooper) remaining behind to cover the retreat of the partisans and especially Maria (Ingrid Bergman) made obvious from his final words to her, making her leave and assuring her that she is taking him with her. It seems to be the same feeling as "Wither thou goest I will go" in spirit if not in reality.
Buzz
Another great article that makes me think (I like that)
I was never a big fan of John Donne (but have read <more than once> a few of his poems, but this made me remember a novel I liked very much, many years ago
For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Hemmingway and there are some interesting reasons offered by people a lot smarter than me about why he chose that title.
Here is an excerpt from one of them
The use of the formal "thee," "thou," and "thy" in Hemingway's novel may serve three purposes. First, Hemingway meant his dialogue to be a direct translation from Spanish, since the novel is set in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. In Spanish, the pronoun you has two forms, the formal usted and the familiar tú. Throughout the novel, Hemingway uses odd translations and, of course, censors the profanity which is common in the dialogue of the Spanish characters (he simply replaces the profanity with words such as "obscenity" and "muck").
Second, Hemingway uses these formalities to suggest the camaraderie of the characters who are fighting for a cause they are willing to die for. Rather than referring to each other as señor, señora or señorita, the characters refer to each other on equal terms as thee and thou. It is similar to the communist term comrade which is also a term of equality. The rebels during the civil war were attempting to bring freedom and equality to Spain, in contrast to their fascist opponents.
Third, the terms may be an allusion to religious symbolism and the Bible. Patrick Cheney, in his article "Hemingway and Christian Epic: The Bible in For Whom the Bell Tolls " argues that the novel is replete with Christian imagery , including the constant use of the biblical "thee" and "thou" (of course, these words were first used in the English translation, the King James Bible). An example of this imagery and symbolism is the description of El Sordo's death and the implication that he is a martyr for the cause of the Spanish Republic. He dies on a hill and in a direct reference to Jesus Christ (who was crucified on Calvary Hill), Robert Jordan says,
Thus, all of the thees and thous give Hemingway's work a biblical effect and may even suggest that Robert Jordan and the Republicans he is fighting with are on the side favored by God. Hemingway, however, would certainly recoil from this link, as he did when critics used biblical references in their analysis of The Old Man and the Sea .
Explain the use of "thee" and "thou" in For Whom the Bell Tolls. - eNotes.com
I think I am going to have to find that book on the shelves and read it again
Notwithstanding that such articles may draw little interest, appreciated by only a few NT members, I will be continuing to post articles that make people think, ones that open other's eyes to things they may never have known, ones that are aimed at niche interests, even if esoteric, and ones that make people laugh. However, the fact that there may be few here who are appreciative, our articles can be seen by people on the internet all around the world even if they are NOT members of NT, such as the 403 visitors indicated at the very bottom of this NT page. I have just experienced for the second time the incidence of a person not being a member having seen what we post causing them to actually join NT for the sole purpose, in the first incident, to thank us for the article we posted about her, and the one the other day being the grandson of a person whose name I mentioned many years ago in an article that coincidentally was the one in which I spoke of having quoted John Donne's Meditation XVII at his grandmother's funeral, and we then carried on a PN dialogue about her.
LOL, I just looked at the number of visitors recorded at the bottom of the page and now it's 429.
Buzz
I think an article that makes us think and look for deeper meaning and not just flame out at each other is a very valuable contribution to NT and I will be checking out your posts as I have done in the past