A man said to the universe:
 "Sir I exist!"
 "However," replied the universe,
 "The fact has not created in me
 A sense of obligation."

(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’s¹ 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.

— Martin