Eureka
by Edgar Allan Poe
In this extraordinary work, master narrator Edgar Allan Poe relies on well-known scientific facts to create a universe governed by immutable laws of attraction and repulsion, namely expansion and return to unity. The fiery, spiteful God of the Old Testament and Master Watchmaker of the Deists is guided by the pantheistic Poe Earth Spirit, whose power of expansion spans throughout his creation. Moreover, we are all part of this universal spirit, and each of us is our own god. Published posthumously as Poe wished, Eureka was based on Poe's lecture on the Cosmography of the Universe, which he presented in 1848. He hoped to pay for a hundred audiences and for the proceeds from the conference, his new magazine, Stylus. However, there were only 60 of them and they were confused. "Eureka" remains a work that is impressively different from the more popular proposals of the author.
