A question about The Cask of Amontillado and John Donne

When Fortunato jingles the little bells on his hat, remember that? That’s a Donne allusion, the bell tolls for thee and all that? Or am I way off?

When I think of the kind of bell that “tolls for thee,” I definitely don’t think of jingle bells.

Poe had a thing about bells himself, for all their different meanings

I thought the bells were just to make Fortunato look jolly/silly. It’s Carnival time and all and Montresor is already pretty drunk yet wants some of that Amontillado.

The really creepy/funny part is when Fortunato makes some remark that he’s a mason (as in Freemason) and Montresor is like “no way - show me a sign” and Fortunato pulls out a trowel. “Ha ha, you jest. Now let’s onto the Amontillado!”

Thanks for your replies, everyone, I didn’t think I would get any.

Sorry about calling it an allusion, obviously it’s not. I guess I remembered that at some point Montressor hesitated when he heard the jingling bells. Looking it up, I was remembering this part:

“I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture and let it fall within. There came forth in return only a jingling of the bells. My heart grew sick — on account of the dampness of the catacombs.”

In my head I was completely disregarding the part after the dash. It’s a joke.

“I feel awful.”
“Why? 'Cause the awful thing you’re doing?”
“No, it’s so muggy in here!”
Badumtish.

My humorlessness will be the death of me.

Stretching a point, at least. Would Poe even have heard of Donne? His sermons were more or less ignored until the early 20th century.

I find that genuinely surprising. Is Hemingway’s novel responsible for his present-day renown?

I’m not Poe, but I well remember studying John Donne at English Lit class in high school and university. Not his sermons, but his poetry: “The Sunne Rising,” “The Flea,” and so on. Is it possible that Poe was also exposed to Donne’s poetry?

Maybe. But “For whom the bell tolls” is from one of his sermons later in life, and it appears that, though his poetry was known (if not widely - too intellectually knotty and/or scandalously erotic for the tastes of the time) his prose and sermons were indeed ignored until much later.

Maybe we’re looking at the question from two different viewpoints. To you, he’s an essayist and a sermonist; to me, he’s a poet. At any rate, I think we can agree that he is controversial in today’s climate.

At any rate, I’m sure that we can agree that he wrote some steamy poetry. “The Sunne Rising” is nothing more than “let’s do it again before we absolutely have to get up and out of bed”; and “The Flea”: which is essentially, “the flea takes your blood and my blood, so why don’t we just cut out the middleman and make love already?” Loved this stuff when I was in Grade 12, and still do.

This is a really interesting example of all that “Death of the Author” stuff.

Almost certainly, as said above, Poe did not write the line about jingling bells with Donne in mind, and was not using it to evoke in the reader an awareness of shared mortality or to increase their identification with, and horror at, Fortunato’s death. And yet, when @Xocomil read those lines, because he is familiar with Donne, that is the effect the text had on him.

We can talk about whether it was right or wrong to think about Donne on reading those words but in some ways that’s beside the point - you did have those thoughts, it did affect your interpretation and appreciation of the story and the fact that Poe certainly didn’t intend that to happen can’t change that.

Which isn’t to say Poe’s intent is immaterial - the story only exists because Poe had an intent to write it and tell it, and that’s a hugely important fact that can’t be ignored. E.g. if someone were to say the jolly tinkling of the bells made them realise that Fortunato was laughing at the excellent prank Montesori just pulled and that they were certain Fortunato went back after the end of the story to rescue him and they had a good laugh about it, I would be hard put to say that was anything but wrong.

But on smaller levels there is room for different understandings, some of which wil be based on other stuff we have read that influences our understanding of this story.

E…g

I interpreted this very differently. I saw the heartsickness as a genuine attack of conscience, where Montesori saw for a second just what a monstrous thing he was doing, and which he immediately rationalises away as simply a reaction to the clammy atmosphere. But I totally get your interpretation now.

John Donne did not invent the concept of bells tolling to indicate death. It was already a pretty common and widespread thing long before him.

In the Poe story it is possible that the hat bells were written as a deliberate foreshadowing of death. But almost certainly not a reference to Donne specifically.

I don’t think we disagree. He was both. (My school had us focus on 17th century literature, including the Metaphysicals, which I’ll always be grateful for).

And yes, I think the “No man is an island” quote didn’t really have much, if any, circulation until Hemingway picked up on it (and didn’t achieve T-shirt/tea-towel status until those became a thing after WW2).

Now, there is an interesting typo.

They do make some pretty nifty toy tools but I don’t see any trowels there

(I found this link today while wondering if wooden bolts were ever used as stronger than wooden pegs in joinery: Montessori makes toy wooden nuts and bolts as educational toys)

Sure, that popular song- “ohn Donnes Body lies a mouldering in the grave” :crazy_face:

I concur.

The more I think about it, the more I think Montresor is a stone cold killer (pun intended).

He says at the beginning of the story that he intends to take revenge because Fortunato went too far when he insulted him. He wants to get away with it and wants him to know that he is suffering Montresor’s revenge. Except, he never gets around to telling Fortunato why he’s walling him up. Stephen King said the scariest reading of the story is that it wasn’t revenge, it was plain murder (not that it wouldn’t be murder even if it were revenge).

The story heavily points in that direction. Montresor provides neither remorse nor justification. Is taking advantage of Fortunato’s mid-carnival indulgence Montresor’s own indulgence? It seems so to me.

Yet there are those little pangs of conscience. He assures us that they are no such thing. Then whence the hesitation?

Isn’t that more horrifying? He’s no unthinking monster (am I making too much of a reach again to suggest “Montresor” is meant to remind us of “monster”). Fortunato, otherwise admirable and esteemed, couldn’t help himself as he went unwittingly into the darkness. Montresor knew at every point that he was committing a grave wrong, his own body pleading with him, yet he persisted.

So, yeah, Poe wasn’t thinking Donne and fitting him in there would be a stretch. My thought really was “jingling bells, hesitation… why?.. the bell tolls for thee, any man’s death diminishes me? Is that it?” No, probably not.

It ſucked me firſt, and now ſucks thee