The Bell-Tower

"The Bell-Tower" is a short story by Herman Melville, collected in The Piazza Tales and published in 1856.

An eccentric architect, Bannadonna, builds a colossal tower summited by a bell and an uncanny mechanical man to ring it. The story reveals a man of extreme ambition for which the recognition of his artistic vision is the principal goal, and unfolds the disturbing relationship between the man of genius and his creation as local citizens begin to notice strange occurrences during the construction of the tower.

Melville's inspiration for the story is traceable to a variety of possible sources: the biblical Tower of Babel; the character Talus from Spenser's Faerie Queene; the alchemical tradition; and/or Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. It also has some precedence in Moby-Dick: in Ahab's obsessiveness, and his order to the carpenter (in chapter 108) to build a "complete man."

"The Bell-Tower":

• Kindle
• Gutenberg
• [Melville.org](http://www.melville.org/belltowr.htm)

Audiobooks:

• Librivox 40m
• HorrorBabble

Supplemental:

• "The Bell Tower" (The Weird Circle, 1944)
• Ernst Krenek: The Bell Tower, chamber opera in one act (1956)

This meetup is part in a series on Muses and Monsters.