I know that He exists.

I know that He exists.

Somewhere—in silence—

He has hid his rare life

From our gross eyes.

'Tis an instant's play—

'Tis a fond Ambush—

Just to make Bliss

Earn her own surprise!

But—should the play

Prove piercing earnest—

Should the glee—glaze—

In Death's—stiff—stare—

Would not the fun

Look too expensive!

Would not the jest—

Have crawled too far!

                                                                                          F365 (1862)  338

If God hides himself from our curious eyes, perhaps there is a good reason. How many of us could survive a true encounter? Yet it is reasonable for people to want some real evidence of his (or her or its—I’m going with traditional monotheistic formulations here) existence. Dickinson tackles this issue head on. She puts the question of God’s existence front and center: “I know that He exists.” But she also believes that his “rare” (rarified) existence is hidden from our grosser and fleshly nature. This is a purposeful act: “He has hid his rare life.”

Saul's encounter with God left his
blind for days. (Caravaggio: 1600)

                  But people will do what they can to have a direct experience of God. Some try through suffering or self denial; others through mind-altering experiences or substances; still others through meditation; many more through prayer and supplication. The poet frames this as a game.  The woman who wanders in the woods seeking evidence of the Divine and imagining that an angel or God himself might manifest in front of her is hoping for a “fond Ambush.” She wants the bliss of such a surprising experience, but she wants to “earn” it.

                  God becomes party to this game. His hiding now seems playful rather than precautionary. He may well indulge in “an instant’s play,” a game of hide and seek.

                  It’s a dangerous game—at least for the human (I’m remembering Sancho Panza telling Don Quixote that whether the stone strikes the pot or the pot strikes the stone it is going to be bad for the pot). In a later Dickinson poem, “He fumbles at your Soul” [F477], God begins by just noodling around a bit with your soul as if it were a keyboard and he were just finding the right key. But after a while he “Deals One—imperial Thunderboldt / That scalps your naked soul.” Yes, a dangerous game indeed.

                  Just so in this poem. What would happen, Dickinson asks, if the seeker finds God? Bliss? No. The game could well become “piercing earnest”—and she employs the word ‘piercing’ for its suggestion of stabbing, for the nails that pierced Jesus’ hands and feet during crucifixion, for a bolt through the heart—and certainly not something as trifling as, say, the piercing of a needle through fabric. This is no longer a game. The “glee”—Dickinson ironically trivializes the emotion here rather than use a word such as “ecstasy”—can quickly glaze over into the stare of the dead.

                  But Dickinson is not blaming the God-seeker for unwise presumption. The last stanza holds something of outrage. It drips with sarcasm. She goes back to God’s hide and seek: Doesn’t that “fun / Look too expensive” now, she asks? Look what you’ve done, is the implied accusation. People really can’t survive direct contact with the almighty. This “jest”—again a word to trivialize the hiding game God plays—has “crawled too far,” she says, as if it were something slinking out of the nether world.

                  The poem reflects both unquestioning faith and existential scorn. God may be great and powerful, his nature “rare” and beyond knowing, but Dickinson doesn’t trust him. 

To offer brave assistance

To offer brave assistance
To Lives that stand alone —
When One has failed to stop them —
Is Human — but Divine

To lend an Ample Sinew
Unto a Nameless Man —
Whose Homely Benediction
No other — stopped to earn —
                                                                            F492 (1862)  J767

Perhaps there is one in every family or circle of acquaintances. One individual goes his or her own way, standing, ultimately, alone. We might have tried to reason with this individual or offer persuasions to join the norm, but that doesn't mean that we won't go to great lengths to offer assistance when it is needed. We feel a bit committed to someone we have been involved with to such an extent. We can't just watch them suffer or get into trouble. It's human to try to help.
        That's the first stanza. In the second, Dickinson presents a different scenario. Here there is a "Nameless Man," whom apparently no one knows. When this poor soul needs some help most people just pass by. While it is human to help the "Lives that stand alone," it is "Divine" to help the nameless and unknown. I think Dickinson means "Divine" in the sense of inspired and with great spiritual qualities (this is similar to Pope's usage in "To err is human; to forgive, divine").

Now for a different reading:
       In the first stanza the assistance offered is "brave." I don't think this means "daring" or "valiant" so much as the old-fashioned meaning of "loud" and "flashy." Read with that connotation, the rest of the stanza becomes tinged with cynical irony. Perhaps we are happy to help those who ventured out despite our efforts – because we can then feel both a rightness about our earlier actions and a righteousness about helping them.
  

William Ramirez Valenzuela

     But the second man? He needs some physical help, some "Ample Sinew." No one is lining up to earn his humble thanks, though. That would take a Jesus or Buddha or … a Good Samaritan. That's where I think Dickinson is taking us in this poem – to the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). In that parable (used by Jesus to exemplify the concept of "neighbor" to a lawyer), the only person to help a man beaten and left for dead is a Samaritan, a despised outsider to the Jews of the day. A priest and his assistant  crossed the road and passed by, giving the poor man a wide berth. No doubt they were concerned about a trick and an ambush, or about ritual purity (should the man be dead).
       It is not religion, not the pius, not most of us who will minister to the poor when they need it most, but people without regard for their status – other outcasts, perhaps; Samaritans. (Odd that we really only know of Samaritans by this parable and so they are always "Good."

I think Dickinson was thinking about these lessons as she wrote the poems in this fascicle. In the previous poem she wrote about a dying soldier, ending it with

Mine be the Ministry
When thy Thirst comes —
Dews of Thessaly, to fetch —
And Hybla Balms —

She, humble in her own way as a retiring spinster, can nonetheless imagine herself freely giving of herself to help the dying and downtrodden. The poem challenges us to do likewise.  
   

The Battle fought between the Soul

The Battle fought between the Soul
And No Man — is the One
Of all the Battles prevalent —
By far the Greater One —

No News of it is had abroad —
Its Bodiless Campaign
Establishes, and terminates —
Invisible — Unknown —

Nor History — record it —
As Legions of a Night
The Sunrise scatters — These endure —
Enact — and terminate —
                    Fr629 (1863)  J594


In this rather cryptic poem, Dickinson contends that the interior battle waged between the Soul and the mysterious "No Man" is by far greater than the great battles fought between armies. That Dickinson wrote this during the height of the bloody Civil War underscores how seriously she takes this inner conflict.

The central question involves what Dickinson means by 'No Man'. Perhaps this is the Soul fighting with itself in some great existential conflict such as hope versus despair. More than a few of Dickinson's poems depict despair as a great foe of the Soul. While hope is "the thing with feathers" (Fr314), despair is an "imperial affliction" (Fr320). It is also, according to Christian doctrine that would have been familiar to Dickinson, the one unforgivable sin. No wonder it must be battled!
        But 'No Man' may well refer to God or some divine agent or sublime force. In "He fumbles at your Soul", God "Deals One  imperial Thunderbolt – / That scalps your naked soul –" (Fr477). In "I know that He exists" (Fr365), Dickinson depicts God's occasional "fond Ambush" as potentially lethal. For the Soul to hold its own against such a dangerous force would indeed entail a mighty battle.
        Dickinson's use of 'Campaign', though, expands our understanding of 'Battle': It is not a single contest, but an ongoing one. Unlike Civil War campaigns, however, no battle news is ever published. No analysts will ever puzzle over strategems. Even how it begins and ends is 'Invisible' and 'Unknown'.

One expects that the analogy Dickinson draws between the Soul's campaign and the routing of Night's legions by the ascendant Sun will shed some light on the meaning of "No Man"; instead, it introduces a fundamental ambiguity.
        First, the sun's victory over darkness is neither unknown nor invisible. Neither is there any doubt as to the outcome. More importantly, though, is whether the Soul is analogous to Night or to the Sun. If Night, then the soul is always scattered by the God-like Sun, its pieces enduring to fight again until some final termination. If, however, Dickinson identifies the Soul with dawn, then perhaps the battle is against the darkness of Despair, which even when routed regroups and attacks again, night after night.
        Finally, that last 'terminate' adds to the ambiguity of this reading. Who or what is terminated? Interestingly, Dickinson's manuscript includes the alternate word 'dissipates' for the final 'terminate'.

Regardless, the poem leaves me with a sense of relentless battle, the action recurring and ending, both sides enduring.

I am reminded of one of Dickinson's great Gothic poems: "The Soul has Bandaged moments"  (Fr360) where various stanzas portray the soul in bandaged and constrained moments when subject to assault, in moments of Escape followed by retaken moments when she is shackled and led to where "The Horror welcomes her, again".  Here, too, the Soul wages desperate battle that it seems incapable of winning.