"And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
You've got it, Ish; it is John Donne. It comes from his "Devotions" (prose, not verse), which has the following epigraph: "Now, this Bell tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die." The passage you cited goes like this, in the original (but with the original spelling corrected):
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 of thy friends or 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.
I would say this is not so much about early death (about those who have died before their time), as it is about the interconnection of all mankind (in life as well as in death).
Great passage. In my opinion, the best thing about Hemingway's novel was its title. It was all downhill from there. <g>
Joan |
