Talk:The Bells (poem)

Sun O)))
Could some parts of Sunn O)))'s "My Wall" be partly based on it? It resembles very much, really. Ciacchi 22:36, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't know the band, but I looked up the lyrics. I don't see how it relates to "The Bells," really. It makes some slight repetition, but nothing to the extent of Poe's poem, and it's not onomatopeic as far as I can tell. This is a stretch, but you may find an interview with the band or liner notes or something that says otherwise. Midnightdreary 23:55, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

links
is it this one, right? shouldn't they be linked?
 * Carol of the Old Ones
 * Ding fries are done

btw, why isn't there a link to the poem?!?

--Lo&#39;oris 01:37, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Those links aren't at all related to Poe's "The Bells." And, yes, there is a link to the full text of the poem. It's the "Wikisource" box at the top right corner. I hope that helps. -Midnightdreary 03:47, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
 * lol i searched for the link to the poem at bottom not at top :D about these links, if i understood correctly they use the music by Rachmaninoff written for the Poe's poem, don't they? --Lo&#39;oris 13:56, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
 * No, definitely not. One is "Carol of the Bells," the other is a fairly useless parody of "Carol of the Bells." Neither is Poe-related. -Midnightdreary 19:31, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
 * thanks! --Lo&#39;oris 15:11, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Critical Reception
I was disappointed to see that there isn't a "critical reception" section in this article. That's all. Deepfryer99 (talk) 14:28, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It's definitely an in-progress article. Jump in when you find some good sourced material on critical reception! :) --Midnightdreary (talk) 14:32, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Irrelevant material added to "The Bells" article
Someone seems to have added the following line to the article on Poe's "The Bells":

"" To warn the British the American's were coming." As confirmed by Sarah Palin in June 2011."

Without commenting on the veracity of the statement or Palin's trustworthiness as an historian, this line must be removed since it is non-germane and totally irrelevant to a discussion of this poem. However, the page has been placed on semi-protected status and cannot be edited except by registered users.

Gregoriusu (talk) 12:02, 8 June 2011 (UTC)Gregoriusu, 8 June 2011
 * Done. Thanks for that. --Midnightdreary (talk) 12:47, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Tintinnabulation
I edited this article to say that "tintinnabulum", a coinage of Poe's, comes from the Latin tintinnabulum, "bell", and added the OED as a source. Midnightdreary then removed the source and added a tag with the comment that the source does not support that "Poe altered this word".

I'm not sure which part of the claim the source does not support. It certainly supports the etymology: it states it explicitly in the "etymology" section (as do other dictionaries). It doesn't directly support the claim that Poe was the one to create this word from the Latin. That's really a hard claim to prove outright. However, it does support that claim as well, as the earliest usage of "tintinnabulation" that it records is Poe's in this poem. Here's another source stating that Poe's was the "earliest documented use". Pending clarification of what Midnightdreary is questioning, I've re-added the source and removed the fact tag, and I've added the word "apparently" to reflect the fact that it's almost impossible to make a statement like "Poe coined the word" with certainty. JudahH (talk) 23:12, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Tintinnabulation was used before Poe used it!
I believe it is possible to make a statement like "Poe did not coin the word" with certainty since it was used by Dickens in 1847 — unless Dickens had a manuscript of Poe's poem before it was written. Even so, Merriam-Webster says the first known use of the word was in 1831. As I wrote on the Talk Page for "Tintinnabulation" : I had always thought the word tintinnabulation had been coined by Edgar Allen Poe in his poem "The Bells," so I was surprised when I came across the word in Charles Dickens's Dombey and Son, chapter 12. The novel is said to have been written from 1846 through 1848. Poe's poem is thought to have been written in 1848 but wasn't published until 1849. It seemed likely that Chapter 12 was written before 1848, and I see at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dombey_and_Son (if we can believe Wikipedia at all) that Chapters 11–13 were originally published in January 1847.

From chapter 12:

It was drowned in the tintinnabulation of the gong, which sounding again with great fury, there was a general move towards the dining-room; still excepting Briggs the story boy, who remained where he was, and as he was; and on its way to whom Paul presently encountered a round of bread, genteelly served on a plate and napkin, and with a silver fork lying crosswise on the top of it.

Yet this article (as well as, I think, many other sources) says Poe invented the word:

Tintinnabulation is the lingering sound of a ringing bell that occurs after the bell has been struck. This word was invented by Edgar Allan Poe as used in the first stanza of his poem "The Bells."

Interestingly, the article provides an external link at the bottom to "Tintinnabulation" on www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary.com. That link goes to a page that says a few scrolls down:

First Known Use of tintinnabulation 1831, in the meaning defined at sense 1

And sense 1 is:

tintinnabulation noun 1 : the ringing or sounding of bells

Also, I had always thought that Poe's use of tintinnabulation was the ringing/sounding of bells (as the above definition says), so I am not sure where this article's definition as "the lingering sound of a ringing bell that occurs after the bell has been struck" is derived.

I initially couldn't find a discussion page, so I sent this information as an e-mail to info-en@wikimedia.org and was told, "...the content of Wikipedia articles is decided by consensus amongst volunteer editors, based on what reliable, published sources say about topics. There is no central editorial board that is able to research matters such as this, so if you would like to suggest a change to the article, you should raise the issue at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Tintinnabulation." When I went to this page, I saw that a recommendation to delete the article has been given, based partly on its incorrect attribution of the coinage of the word, and there is also a date of discussion of this inaccuracy of March 2014; however, one must follow a link to determine whether the word being discussed is "tintinnabulation" or just "tintinnabulous." Nonetheless, the fact that the likely inaccuracy of this article was reported as far back as 2014 and yet it still remains, misleading anyone who reads it, is rather disturbing.

Coincidentally, I have done on-line scoring of student essays that use various source materials in discussing whether Wikipedia should be allowed as a source in high school and college papers due to its proclivity for errors, quickly spreading false information, etc. The fact that this blatantly incorrect article has remained since a 2014 notation showing it is wrong tends to make me side with the sources that claim none of Wikipedia can be trusted.

It would appear that the myth that Poe coined the word is so frequently repeated that it has become cited as fact by some, perhaps many, sources. Even if Dickens had read Poe's poem before it was published and "borrowed" the word from Poe, that would not explain the cited 1831 date. Perhaps Poe was reading Dombey and Son when he wrote "The Bells"? Richard G. Mills (talk) 23:43, 2 September 2019 (UTC)


 * I've corrected the claim Poe coined it using a source. Further, the earliest usage I can find is 1823, in a translation of Mr. Schnakenberger; or, Two Masters for One Dog by Friedrich Laun, translated by Thomas De Quincey (see p. 649 in The London Magazine). Neither Poe nor Dickins can claim credit. This dictionary agrees with an 1823 coinage. Fences  &amp;  Windows  23:19, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Requested multi-page move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: move. --  tariq abjotu  06:16, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

– I don't see how the so-called classic poem by Poe is the primary topic. There are other prominent topics of the same name, like the play or the band. George Ho (talk) 17:02, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
 * The Bells → The Bells (poem)
 * The Bells (disambiguation) → The Bells
 * Support Makes sense to me. In fact, I hadn't realized how many other links were on that disambiguation page, and I don't feel this poem is the most obvious default landing page. I support this move. --Midnightdreary (talk) 23:52, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Support not more notable than Rachmaninov's The Bells (symphony). In ictu oculi (talk) 09:27, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure I follow this reasoning. It seems that Poe's "so-called classic poem" (who called it that, anyway?) is the source material for Rachmaninov's composition - which, I would argue, makes it inherently more notable than the derivative. --Midnightdreary (talk) 11:09, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
 * It isn't reasoning, it was a slightly tongue in cheek comment because for me it is - simply because of the randomness of being a classical music rather than poetry fan. You can take it as an admission of subjectivity. In any case Poe's original isn't clearly WP:PRIMARYTOPIC in Google Books. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:37, 13 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Support per nom -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 04:06, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Support, per nom. I would go a step further and merge ambiguous uses of "The Bells" into the disambiguation page, Bells. bd2412  T 17:15, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Oppose. I can hardly believe this is being proposed, much less supported. Of course this extremely famous and important poem is what the vast majority of people looking up "The Bells" in an encyclopedia is looking for. There is no evidence presented otherwise, just gut feelings. The assertion that the play or band are as prominent as this poem is based on nothing.  There is a burden to show that the page views for this article are not the majority.  Which article has the most incoming links?  If you search Google, 5 of the first 9 hits (I'm not counting Wikipedia) are about the poem, the other 4 being 4 different topics.  The only thing close to evidence presented is an assertion about Google Books, but this is not a book and in any case I don't see much of anything called just "The Bells" in the first several pages, only 3 of the first 50 items. Let's have some objective reasons before dumbing down Wikipedia. 69.95.203.227 (talk) 23:30, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The Rachmaninoff symphony 'The Bells', and tintinnabulation
The article states that Rachmaninoff's symphony 'The Bells' is in sonata form. Although usage of this term varies a little, it usually refers to only the typical first movement of a 'traditional' classical symphony. The first movement usually consists of theme, development, recapitulation, and coda. See e.g. https://blog.key-notes.com/sonata-form-and-symphonic-form.html "...usually only the first movement of a sonata or symphony is actually in sonata form, with its primary sections: exposition, development, recapitulation and coda." The Rachmaninoff symphony as a whole, being in four movements, is thus not in sonata form according to common usage. Google Ngram records use of the word 'tintinnabulation' in the 1820s, which is earlier than Poe's first published use of it. This casts doubt on whether Poe coined it. 211.27.152.229 (talk) 02:11, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

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