This paper considers Emily Dickinson's poem "The brain is wider than the sky" in light of Christianity. The paper reads Dickinson's poem in light of its use of the traditional form of a Christian church-hymn, and notes that the structure of the poem itself builds up to a riddling final stanza. The paper concludes by noting that Dickinson is not writing a straightforward hymn--in fact, she puts the reader in the position of deciding the meaning of the poem, suggesting that the poem itself is more agnostic than Christian, despite its use of traditional Christian motifs and forms.
Emily Dickinson's poem 632 ("The Brain -- is wider than the sky -- ") is, in its own riddling way, a poem that grapples with the Christian religion, while at the same time being a poem about the poetic imagination itself. Dickinson's religious concerns are perhaps most evident when considering the form of the poem (and indeed the form of so many of her poems). The meter and the rhyme scheme of poem 632 are constructed to match the meter and rhyme scheme of traditional Christian hymns. We need only compare Dickinson's poem 632 with "Amazing Grace" to see that the form is mimicked fairly precisely -- the only difference is that Dickinson does not rhyme her first and third lines, while traditional hymns use a rhyme scheme of ABAB. But Dickinson's poem can actually be sung to the tune of "Amazing Grace" if the reader so chooses. In addition, Dickinson's idiosyncratic use of dashes is familiar to anyone who has ever looked at a Christian hymn-book that contains both music and lyrics: ordinarily such dashes are used to indicate a word in the lyrics that is intended to be extended over more than one note. Dickinson's biographer Lyndall Gordon (2011) notes that Dickinson was raised in a conventional Christian household in Massachusetts, and that "each Sunday that combination of scripture and hymn metre fell on the ears of a child who would one day deploy that metre as the poet she was to be" (30). It is clear, then, that the form of Dickinson's poem 632 is meant to strike the reader as one inspired by, and alluding to, traditional Christian belief. But is Dickinson actually writing a Christian hymn? It seems clear that Dickinson is writing a poem that approaches Christianity riddlingly: in some sense, poem 632 is an agnostic hymn.
We must consider, however, the text of Dickinson's poem, and examine it stanza by stanza to determine its meaning. Unlike most traditional Christian hymns -- in which each independent verse basically expresses the same thing (i.e., praise of God) -- Dickinson's poem has a more dramatic structure. Although the form of the poem suggests Christianity immediately to the knowledgeable reader, the subject of Christianity itself is not raised until the end of the poem, as a sort of surprise.
The Brain -- is wider than the Sky
For -- put them side by side
The one the other will contain
With ease -- and You -- beside
The Brain is deeper than the sea
For -- hold them -- Blue to Blue
The one the other will absorb
As Sponges -- Buckets -- do
The Brain is just the weight of God
For -- Heft them -- Pound for Pound
And they will differ -- if they do
As Syllable from Sound -- (Dickinson 312)
Dickinson's first stanza is easy enough to understand, even if it is posing a sort of paradox. The way in which "the brain" can be "wider than the Sky" is not literal: what Dickinson means is that the human mind is capable of containing the concept of the sky and everything in it. In fact, the way in which Dickinson constructs her image is deliberately ambiguous: if we do, in fact, take the brain and the sky and "put them side by side" then a stupidly literalistic way of reading the rest of the stanza suggests that it is the sky which can "contain / with ease" not only the brain, but "you." Of course Dickinson's meaning is the opposite: it is the human mind or imagination that is capable of containing "with ease" not only the idea of the sky, but the idea of the self.
Dickinson's second stanza in some way repeats the basic premise of the first. Again, the image is teasing to the reader: it is just as easy to suggest that the "sea" could "absorb" a human brain, except for the fact that the image of a sponge being put into a bucket suggests that the smaller thing is capable of taking up everything valuable about the larger. The mind can contain the idea of the ocean easily. In fact, this stanza seems to build upon the first with Dickinson's use of "Blue to Blue" -- it seems as though she is suggesting a brain that has already absorbed the blue sky is now prepared to absorb the blue ocean, and is still able to holding more inside it.
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