- Project: Schillers Glocke
- Persona: Schiller
Where Schiller is. The poem is his place.
Without it the world has no author. The world was built from it. Remove it and the commission has no inscription, Stadtrat Brenner has no marked margin, the world has no question it was built to answer. The world is the particular this poem cannot reach. Both exist because the other exists.
A manuscript, then a printed broadsheet in the Musen-Almanach, 1799. 430 lines. The title at the top. The inscription in Latin before the first stanza: Vivos voco. Mortuos plango. Fulgura frango. The lines move between the casting floor and a human lifetime without announcement. The form holds both simultaneously.
The first idea: 1788. Schiller at the Mayer foundry in Rudolstadt. He sat at the wall in a high-backed chair so as not to disturb the work. The casting master was not pleased about the disruption. Schiller watched from the periphery. He did not cross the floor. The poem began in that chair, in the distance between the chair and the channel.
Set aside. Returned to 1793 in Ludwigsburg. Set aside again. In September 1799, in Weimar, finished quickly. Published in the Musen-Almanach that year.
Stadtrat Brenner read it. Marked three lines in the margin in ink that was already fading. The three lines left the poem and entered the specification and then the bell.
The poem remained. The three lines are still in it. They are also in the bell — in bronze, raised, sharp, from the pour to the first blow of the recasting. The poem held the words in ink. the bell held them in bronze. the bell is gone. The poem remains.
The world built from this poem contains the foundry floor. the foundry floor contains the south face variance in the cooling, Anna whose breath is audible before the silence, Konrad holding ore up to a candle that cannot show him anything his hand has not already told him. None of this is in the poem. The poem cannot reach it. The poem is the reason it exists.
v0.1.0 - KAI Worlds