This is my April 2nd work 🙂
In Emily Dickinson’s poems #591 and #598, Dickinson explores two deeply connected ideas: the indifference of the world to individual death and the human need to imagine something beyond that indifference. When read together, these poems suggest that while life on Earth continues without us, the human mind expands itself in order to cope with that unsettling truth.
In poem #591, “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died -,” Dickinson presents death as a disturbingly ordinary event and something that doesn’t quite affect the grand scheme of things like we’d traditionally believe. The speaker describes the moment of death as quiet and anticipatory, “The eyes around – had wrung them dry – / And Breaths were gathering firm,” as something significant is about to happen. However, instead of quietly ascending surrounded by loved ones, her Heavenly journey is interrupted by a fly. The fly’s interference prevents her from quietly drifting out of consciousness, “Between the light – and me -,” and represents the persistence of the physical world. No matter what drastic event occurs, nature presses on, performing its monotonous tasks and meaningless motions. Dickinson suggests here that death does not stop the world; rather, it reveals how little the world depends on us at all.
In contrast, poem #598, “The Brain – is wider than the Sky -,” reflects humanity’s response to this unsettling reality. Dickinson writes, “The Brain – wider than the Sky – / For – put them side by side – the other the one will contain,” claiming that the mind is capable of obtaining and surpassing the vastness of the external world if allowed. This idea becomes even more striking as she suggests the brain can “contain” the sea and even God. If the physical world is indifferent, as seen in #591, then the mind compensates by creating meaning beyond it. Humans are not satisfied with a reality in which their lives end and the world simply continues. To cope, they imagine their deaths to mean something larger in the grand scheme and that there is an after. The “largeness” of the brain, in this poem, is the innate desire to master the world and what lies beyond.
What pairs great into this thought is this striking quote I found by G.K. Chesterton:
“Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.”
With all of these thoughts combined, a revelation can be made about the powerful tensions that lie at the center of human existence. Should we choose to believe that the world continues without our presence, we’d see our contributions insignificant, but if we keep our minds closed to the idea of possibility, we’re also dimming our lights early. I think the presence of the color blue, appearing in both pieces, ties together the two previous points by marking the limits of human experience in #591 and the vastness we imagine beyond it in #598. The brain, as well as a vital organ, is a necessary tool for surviving, and making a sense of a world that does not stop for us.