Emily Dickinson's Religious Poetry: Faith, Doubt, and God

Introduction: Dickinson's Religious Complexity

Emily Dickinson was one of the most varied, lyrical, and enigmatic poets of her time — a considerable achievement during an era when American literature was itself varied and enigmatic. One of the most fascinating themes in Dickinson's poetry is religion. It is significant that critics appear to hold a very wide-ranging view of what the poet is actually attempting to say through her religious verse. Some read her as negating belief altogether, while others ascribe to her a deep, if somewhat wounded, faith.

Emily Dickinson's religious poetry encompasses all of these possibilities. Some poems address the religious theme from the viewpoint of the devotee; others reflect a faith in little more than herself and humanity; and her most interesting and poignant works are perhaps those in which she is wounded by God's apparent silence and distance. Each of these types addresses an aspect of faith that is familiar to believers and to humanity as a whole. This is one of the main reasons her poetry continues to be revered despite its complex nature: it addresses the human condition. In the case of her religious poetry specifically, it addresses human faith in all its aspects.

According to David Yezzi (1998), Emily Dickinson's religious and spiritual work particularly lends itself to enigma. Indeed, few critics agree on the underlying spirituality — or lack thereof — that inspired her religious poetry. Yezzi notes that critics range across a wide spectrum, from those who believe Dickinson had no faith at all to those who believe she was not only deeply but also formally religious. The latter view appears substantiated by letters Dickinson wrote at an early age, as cited by Yezzi, which suggest that the young Emily experienced a particular religious bliss when her faith was at its deepest. Yezzi also notes, however, that this faith soon gave way to doubt as she grew older — a doubt that frequently animates her more negative religious poetry. The ambiguity and contradiction found throughout her poems are thus ascribed not so much to faithlessness as to a lack of religious conviction brought about by maturity and experience.

Divine Silence and the Wound of Doubt

Two of her poems particularly address the cruelty of Dickinson's absent — or at the very least uncaring — God. She begins one poem with the lines "Of course — I prayed — / And did God Care?" The phrase "Of course" at the opening implicates the poet's habit of prayer, the habit of a religious woman. Yet however persistently she prays, the God she seeks simply does not respond, wounding her so deeply that she wishes for the ignorance of innocence. In this, one may agree with Yezzi's assessment that doubt is itself a type of faith. Emily Dickinson's doubt is not faithless; rather, it is the doubt of the faithful, shaped by a lifelong experience of divine silence and absence.

This idea is substantiated by William Franke (2008), who addresses Dickinson's "negative theology" — or what he calls her "apophatic discourse." Rather than offering a positive affirmation of faith, Dickinson reverses her religious conviction and believes, as it were, negatively. Franke presents Dickinson's poetry as demonstrating a non-traditional spirituality: while she is not religious in the conventional sense, she displays a deep sense of spiritual feeling that is inseparable from much of her verse. Themes such as death and immortality recur frequently. According to Franke, Dickinson also regularly addresses the mystery of the spiritual world, in some sense both recognizing and echoing the divine silence that so wounds her.

In more rapturous moments, for example, she writes: "To tell the Beauty would decrease / To state the spell demean." Interpreted alongside her more negative views on religion — as echoed in the poems addressing God's silence — one might draw a parallel between Dickinson's human silence and the divine silence. Reading the poems in conjunction, it is perhaps a bold but logical leap to suggest that, in her less unhappy moments, Dickinson recognizes that both God and his words are unknowable and therefore silent to human ears, but not necessarily absent. This interpretation demonstrates the remarkable diversity with which Dickinson's poetry may be read, and it is little wonder that critics diverge so widely in their assessments.

Negative Theology and Apophatic Spirituality

Magdalena Zapedowska (2006) explores Emily Dickinson's Calvinist roots as a means of explaining the poet's recognition that this inherited faith is inadequate to address her individual spiritual experience, as well as the collective spirituality of her contemporaries. Zapedowska views this dichotomy between spirituality and formal religion as the inspiration for some of Dickinson's most intense poetry. The same dichotomy that Dickinson perceives in the world around her also manifests within her own heart: she is indeed religious, and more deeply spiritual, yet she finds that her tendency toward spirituality leads her to a religion and a God that fail to meet her needs. Hence her frequent exploration of eternity and death.

Her recurring personification of death — referring to it as "he" and giving it human form — could be read as an attempt to approach the God who is unreachable in life through a vehicle that humanity does know. Death is the path toward the God who cannot be known while living. The unfathomable depth of God is a concept strongly promoted by the Calvinism of Dickinson's era, and the doctrine of the divine unknown is frequently addressed in her poetry, as in the lines: "I know that He exists. / Somewhere — in silence — / He has hid his rare life / From our gross eyes." For Emily Dickinson, the Calvinist God is far from personal. He is hidden, divine, separate, and superior to humanity. Her desire to know him can only be fulfilled in death. According to Zapedowska (2006), the opening phrase "I know that He exists" represents one of the discourse types characteristic of Calvinist religion: God's existence is professed as knowledge, even as the adult Emily understands that there is no tangible proof of that existence. Yet her desire to know and explore divine nature persists.

In addressing Dickinson's religious paradigms and the many contradictions within and among them, Jay Ladin (2006) cites a poem that encompasses both Dickinson's dismay at the distance of God and her excitement at the prospect of growing closer to him. She begins the poem with the words "It was too late for Man — / But early, yet, for God —." In these lines, God and humanity are juxtaposed according to their respective power. God is omnipotent; for him, nothing is ever too late. Human beings, by contrast, are often at the mercy of the elements and the world that sustains — or destroys — them without any concern for their welfare.

Conclusion: Ambiguity as Fulfillment

Zapedowska, Magdalena. (2006, March). Wrestling with silence: Emily Dickinson's Calvinist God. The American Transcendental Quarterly.