A Man Said to the Universe -- Stephen Crane

(Poem #1200) A Man Said to the Universe A man said to the universe: "Sir I exist!" "However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation." -- Stephen Crane

       (War is Kind & Other Lines: XXI, 1899)

No collection of poetic views on religion would be complete without today's
little gem. Many of Crane's poems seem overly simplistic; indeed, some of them
seem to degenerate into mere tautologies, or even worse, platitudes. However,
if you ask yourself *why* Crane wrote those particular lines; if you note that,
MacLeish notwithstanding, some poems need to mean as well as be, and ask "What
did he mean by that?", the results are invariably thought-provoking, and often
enlightening.

Today's poem is remarkably straightforward for Crane - indeed, it seems almost
Biercelike in its attitude and expression. There are no deep Zenlike moments of
revelation hidden beneath a deceptively void surface, no mind-twisting
experiments in cognitive dissonance, just a dryly ironic commentary on some
people's[1] attitudes towards the higher powers. And indeed, when you think
about it, a number of religious practices *can* be viewed as announcing to the
universe (or the deity of your choice) "Sir, I exist!", and then sitting back
in complacent expectation. (A more prescriptive analogue of this observation
can be found in the saying "Heaven helps those who help themselves"[2], though
it could be argued that Crane doesn't imply any help even for those people who
*do* do more than proclaim their existence).

And tangentially, I am reminded of one of my favourite absurdist
science-fictional religions, Greg Egan's "Church of the God who Makes No
Difference". I believe Vonnegut had something similar too, though I can't
remember the details of that one.

[1] ironic poems are, of course, always about someone else :)
[2] which can, if nothing else, be used to justify a second serving of dessert

martin