RESONANCE: NOTES ABOUT, QUESTIONS ABOUT

Photo by Luis Felipe Lins on Unsplash

Mussolini: agreement with the Vatican for “mobilization” of Italy’s bells

Taken, smelted, transformed into shell casings and armaments

Nazi Germany seized 175,000 bells

[When my daughter speaks (in silence) to the tree, what is the substance that

resonates, what carries her message]

What echoes when a former bell lodges into a body

Small bells rung at altar during mass: sanctus bells

The largest of the bell cemeteries (Glockenfriedhöfe): Hamburg

My mother’s collection, all small (top of the piano, shelves of bookcases):

ceramic, Venetian, Bohemian, hand-cut or frosted, emerald or rose glass, etched

with words or pictures, angels atop, blown glass handles, or wire loops for

hanging

Some churches gave their bells willingly in support of the war effort

“Banality of evil”: no sympathetic vibration, blind fulfillment of duty (Arendt)

Napoleon: vanquished cities must buy back their bells, half into his pocket, half

into the treasury (rachat des cloches—“redemption of the bells”)

After German victory, the monks refused to ring their bells

My jellyfish bells, oral arms strung from the clapper, remain silent (missing the

deep window wells of our old home)

There is no credible evidence that the monks were hung as human clappers.

[What collapses when a bell is smelted]

Bells have tongues, languages, cemeteries, the possibility of redemption.

[Can bells still be categorized as inanimate]

After the war: Vatican Commission for the Restoration of Bells. (Too little/late?)

[How to redeem]

My small mystic, my shaman child: This is how you speak (she said). Close your

eyes. God knows what you are saying

[What echoes]