Did Schiller Inspire Poe's "The Bells?"

Happy Birthday!

Friedrich von Schiller

November 10, 1759 - May 9, 1805

RIP

Did Poe, an excellent foreign language student and aspiring poet at the University of Virginia, read James Clarence Mangan's translation of Schiller's "The Song of the Bell" and become inspired to write his own poem "The Bells?" The connection isn't obvious, but perhaps symbolist Poe is simply using Schiller's bells to signal disillusionment? Poe liked Schiller enough to misquote him ("And if I die, at least I die for thee, for thee!") instead of Goethe in "How To Write A Blackwood Article."

From Friedrich von Schiller's "The Song of the Bell"

Therefore test, who wants to bind himself forever,
Whether heart will find right heart.
The elation is short, the remorse is long.
Lovely in the curls of the bride,
The bridal wreath does play,
When the bright church bells
Invite to the splendour of the feast.
Alas! life's most beautiful feast
Will end the May of life too soon,
With the bridal dress, the veil
The beautiful illusion is torn.

With the splendour of the house he stands!
But with the powers of destiny
It's not possible to weave a lasting union,
And misfortune moves quickly.

From the cathedral,
Serious and uneasy,
The bell sounds
Funereal song.
Gravely, her grieving peals accompany
A wanderer on his last journey.

Friedrich Schiller - wiki

Schiller's "The Song of the Bell" - wiki

Edgar Allan Poe's "The Bells"

III.
Hear the loud alarum bells —
Brazen bells !
What tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells !
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright !
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor
Now — now to sit or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells !
What a tale their terror tells
Of Despair !
How they clang, and clash, and roar !
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air !
Yet the ear, it fully knows,
By the twanging,
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows ;
Yet, the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling,
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells —
Of the bells —
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells —
In the clamour and the clangour of the bells !

Poe's "The Bells" - Poe Forward

Poe's "The Bells" - wiki

James Clarence Mangan - wiki

James Clarence Mangan - The Gallery Press

"His (Mangan) poetry draws on an extraordinary range of sources, including exotic languages and legends, and features also 'translations' for which there were no originals. It continues the lyric flights of Shelley and Byron and the gothic fancies of Coleridge and De Quincey. It anticipates the work of Poe (nearly his exact contemporary) and the more modern notion of the poète maudit, all the while foreshadowing the work of Rimbaud, Baudelaire and Verlaine."

Influenced Poe - Poe Forward