REEL WRITING No. 6: The Return
“We’ll take refuge in bells, in the swinging bells, in the peal, the air, the heart of ringing. We’ll take refuge in bells and we’ll float over the earth in their heavy casings.” —from “The Bells” by Adam Zagajewski This is the sound of the Letecks foundry outside Moscow in Russia. The screech of metal polishers, the roar from the container of molten metal, and hiss of hot wax being poured into their molds. It is here, in this enormous industrial warehouse, that some of the holiest icons in Russian Orthodoxy are born. It’s incredible that such a cacophony will result in a sound like this. Bells. In Russian, kolakol. For centuries, the art of casting bells has been developed and refined, with craftsmen producing enormously heavy instruments that are both feats of engineering and beautiful artifacts of metal iconography. In Russia, bellringing takes on a much different form from the bells you might hear in the rest of Europe or the United States. For one thing, melody is not the focus of Russian bellringing. …