“He was still climbing. Here and there doors opened revealing vast rooms, dormitories with heavy joists where bells were sleeping. A vague feeling stirred within Borluut as he went over to them. They were not entirely at rest,just as virgins are never completely at rest. Their sleep was visited by dreams. He felt as if they were about to move, stretch, moan like sleepwalkers. The incessant murmuring among the bells! A noise that persists, like the sound of the sea in shells! They never empty themselves entirely. Sound forming like beads of sweat! A condensation of music on the bronze...” BellsChurch Bells Book:The Bells of Bruges Source: The Bells of Bruges
“Even during the nights, their nights punctuated by unending kisses, they were sometimes irritated by the carillon, which sounded every quarter of an hour from the top of the belfry opposite. A slow, indistinct jingling which seemed to come from far, far away, from the depths of childhood, from the depths of the ages. It was like a dead bouquet falling, an autumn of sound shedding its leaves over the town. ("The Dead Town")” BellsChurch Bells Book:Hans Cadzand's Vocation & Other Stories Source: Hans Cadzand's Vocation & Other Stories
“Bruges had the air of a ghost town. The high towers, the trees along the canals withdrew, absorbed by the same muslin: impenetrable fog with not a single rift. Even the carillon seemed to have to escape, to force its way out of a prison yard filled with cotton wool to be free in the air, to reach the gables over which, every quarter of an hour, the bells poured, like falling leaves, a melancholy autumn of music.” AutumnMelancholyBellsBrugesChucrh Bells Book:Hans Cadzand's Vocation & Other Stories Source: Hans Cadzand's Vocation & Other Stories
“The carillon is, after all, the music of the people. Elsewhere, in the glittering capitals, public festivals are celebrated with fireworks, that magical offering that can thrill the very soul. Here, in the meditative land of Flanders, among the damp mists so antagonistic to the brilliance of fire, the carillon takes their place. It is a display of fireworks that one hears: flares, rockets, showers, a thousand sparks of sound which colour the air for visionary eyes alerted by hearing.” BellsBrugesCarillon Book:The Bells of Bruges Source: The Bells of Bruges
