Poetic Evangelism in the Paris Metro

How do you spread The Good News when you don't particularly have a religion to speak of, beyond a faith in life's beauty, or Keats' "holiness of the heart's affections" ? It was a question that had occurred to me in the vagaries of my spiritual life. It did so happen to me once upon a time, an instance that perhaps was an answer.

I had but recently bought Emily Dickinson's The Complete Poems, and was reading them, bewitched as one is by her words, in the metro.






I was settled in on the inside of the two jump seats, the "strapontins," that are always located just next the train doors. Rapt as I was in my reading I was only vaguely aware of a standing person next to me, on the outer of the strapontins, closest to the doors. At some point I became conscious that this was a young woman and that she had for some time been reading over my shoulder. Understand that this happens in the metro but is understood by all, guilty or no, as a faux-pas. Yet the idea of spreading the joy of Emily's poetic spells, especially beyond her Anglophone reach to the French, was so utterly irresistible that I arranged my body and book in such a way that it might be easier for her to see.

Another point to understand in the Paris metro is that like Dante's hell, the further below you go, the further communications break down. Though some souls do brave the interdiction, no one speaks. Buskers and beggars might ask a coin or sing a song but largely one does not, in my 27 year experience, idly address one's fellow travellers unless under some duress.

So what then was my joy when, just as the train stopped and the doors flew open, my chance companion very hesitantly excused herself and asked what author I was reading. I made sure to take the few seconds remaining to enunciate both à la Francaise and then in proper American pronunciation the name of the poet. She smiled and as the train pulled out of the station, disappeared from view.

Emily (if I may presume a first-name basis) did not herself embrace formal religion, at seventeen refusing to become a professing Christian. So it seems to me fitting that that day in the unlikeliest of places and situations, I quite inspite of myself spread the Gospel of her exquisite works in a way that she might have approved. 

As she declared in Poem 236:


Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –

I keep it, staying at Home –

With a Bobolink for a Chorister –

And an Orchard, for a Dome –



Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –

I, just wear my Wings –

And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,

Our little Sexton – sings.



God preaches, a noted Clergyman –

And the sermon is never long,

So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –

I’m going, all along.