As I read through Dickinson’s poems, I was continuously fascinated (and confused?) by her thoughts on science and religion. She addressed this theme in multiple poems within the selection for tomorrow’s class, but I found that poem 598 gave me the most clarity about what her actual feelings are about the relationship between science and religion.
In this poem, she details the wonders of the human brain in relation to the natural world (as a neuroscience major, I can appreciate this). In the first two stanzas she seems to be getting at the idea of the brain being more important or more impressive than vast, important aspects of our world; it’s “wider than the sky,” and can contain all of “You” and all of your knowledge at the same time; it’s “deeper than the sea,” and seemingly absorbs new knowledge with no limit. However, the third stanza adds a new dimension to her argument when it says “the Brain is just the weight of God,” and that they differ like “Syllable from Sound.” Upon first reading this stanza, I thought she was saying that the brain is the same as God (as if the brain is just as impressive as God in her mind or has just as much power or something like that – this was my atheist, scientific brain’s delusional reading of it). She even implied in the line “they will differ – if they do,” that they may not be different at all. However, in analyzing the poem further, I now think she is trying to say that the Brain is created by God, in the image of God, and therefore, that (it’s God-like nature) is what makes it seemingly superior to other elements of the natural world. Two aspects of the poem made me come to the conclusion. The first is that she says the Brain is the “weight” of God, as if it’s a part of him or connected to him in a way that does not make them equal, but does make the Brain closer to God than other things. Secondly, she says they differ “as syllable from sound,” which I am taking to mean as the brain being a subtype/kind of God in the way that a syllable is a kind of sound. This more nuanced reading of her poem fits more with what I know about Dickinson’s religious life. As much as I would personally love to interpret the poem as saying the Brain is just as important as God, I recognize now that that’s probably not what she meant.
I really like your post! Poem 598 was my favorite and this was a part of her work that also caught my attention immediately. Her connection between the brain and the sky made me think more into the imaginative part of religion as well- I started thinking more along the lines of the ways that people can create and explore religion as it tailors to their life. The connection between the mind and sky, and when she says, “the one the other will contain”, I thought it was representative of the connection that forms between mind/identity and religion.
I also noticed the theme linking human mind/brain to God, in this poem as well as in #788. Sticking with #598, though, I agree with the interpretation that the brain is “superior” to both the ocean and the sky. I’d go even further as to say that the poem argues that the brain actually contains both of these seemingly all-encompassing elements of the natural world — the brain is not only “wider than,” but “will contain / with ease” the sky; the brain is not only “deeper than the sea,” but it also “absorb[s]” it. Further, the straggling “and You – beside” at the end of the first stanza curiously inverts the physical or material organization of “You” as mortally embodied containing the physical brain; rather, her conception of “You” might me more aligned with the notion of a soul, or an enduring spirit that resides in a figurative brain.
Yet, she returns to the physical brain in the third stanza, calling it “the weight of God.” She appears to suggest that the brain — while perhaps not “God” in itself — acts as a fleeting, mortal embodiment of God; the medium by which one accesses God. If God is the creator of all (the ocean, the sky, etc.), and is channeled via the human brain, then any perception or interpretation of nature are, in fact, an iteration of God’s creative power, individualized and manifested in the human thinking (and thus, creative) brain. This reminds me a lot of Emerson — the concept of the human mind and its creation as a vehicle for “the divine.” Not to get too personal with Dickinson herself (I know it’s frowned upon), but according to this poem’s logic, Dickinson’s poems are, in fact, iterations of God, divine truth, etc. (this connects and is perhaps more explicit in poem #788).