Emily Dickinson's Poem 632: Brain, God, and Agnostic Hymn

Introduction: Form, Faith, and the Agnostic Hymn

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 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. 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 containing 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" (p. 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 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 Structure of the Poem and Its Dramatic Arc

The Brain is deeper than the sea —
For — hold them — Blue to Blue —
The one the other will absorb —
As Sponges — Buckets — do —

First Stanza: The Brain and the Sky

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, 1976, p. 312)

Dickinson's first stanza is easy enough to understand, even if it poses 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 reading of 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.

Conclusion: Dickinson's Riddling Theology

For this reason, the poem seems riddlingly agnostic — or at the very least, Dickinson wants the reader to decide about the meaning of God's role, rather than writing a traditional Christian hymn in which the praise of God is straightforwardly expressed. Poem 632 borrows the form of devotion while quietly refusing its certainty, leaving the question of whether the brain contains God — or creates him — entirely open.