Why Did Emily Dickinson Know So Much?

Sometimes people wonder why Emily Dickinson knew as much as she did. After all, she was a recluse who lived in a small town in the 19th century. There are few records of her ever leaving her home town. But she could think, and could give verbal embodiment to her thoughts. Experience isn't, after all, things that happen to us, but things that we make of whatever happens to us. And if not much happens to us externally, we have imaginations that can make up for external events. Emily Dickinson actually wrote some poems that relate to this issue. Here is one of my favorites (this is # 632 in the standard edition):

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 for 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 -

What's remarkable about this poem is the fact that it anticipates a lot of what neuroscience tells us about the human brain these days. Its capacities seem endless. So, yes, our brains can hold heaven and earth within their borders, as it were. The final stanza may seem like going overboard a bit. The brain equals the "weight" of God? Well, perhaps the very fact that people can believe in God makes the brain a remarkable part of our humanity.

Also, it's interesting that Emily Dickinson uses the word "brain" rather than "mind" in this instance. We can't accuse her, after the fact, of having been a materialist. On the contrary. Still, many contemporary neuroscientists claim that the mind is just the brain, although some will admit that it's more than the brain, even if it resides in it.

But what difference does any of this make? What's interesting is that with so few words a lonely woman in the 19th century should have come up with all the ideas that are clearly available to us in her poems. I, for one, have always found it interesting, too, that she used such unorthodox methods of capitalization and punctuation. I guess she was giving us a sign to the way her poems should be read - when to pause and when to think that a small idea should be looked upon as if it were bigger than itself.