"Who is ringing the bells? Not the bell-ringers. They have run into the street like all the folk, to list the uncanny ringing. Convince yourselves: the bell-chambers are empty. Lax hang the ropes, and yet the bells rock and the clappers clang. Shall one say that nobody rings them?— No, only an ungrammatical head, without logic, would be capable of the utterance. "The bells are ringing": that means they are rung, and let the bell-chambers be never so empty.— So who is ringing the bells of Rome? It is the spirit of story-telling."
(Thomas Mann, The Holy Sinner)
