Eureka

Eureka (Edgar Allan Poe)

Eureka (1848) is a work by Edgar Allan Poe which he subtitled "A Prose Poem," though it has also been subtitled as "An Essay on the Material and Spiritual Universe." In it he describes his intuitive conception of the universe. It is dedicated to the German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt.

Overview

Eureka presents a physical/spiritual system for which many of Poe's tales and poems serve as allegories. It was his last major work and grew out of a two and a half hour lecture entitled "The Universe," delivered on February 3, 1848. Poe wrote the 150-page essay based on the lecture by May of that year.

In Eureka, Poe presages modern science with his own concept of the Big Bang.^[1] He postulated that the universe began from a single originating particle or singularity. This particle divides into all the particles of the universe. These particles seek one another because of their originating unity (gravity) resulting in the end of the universe as a single particle. Poe also expresses a cosmological theory that anticipated black holes^[2] as well as the first plausible solution to Olbers' paradox.^[3]

Critical reception

The publication of Eureka brought Poe a vehement anonymous censure, in the Literary Review. This was believed by Poe to have been written by John Henry Hopkins, Jr. (1820-1889), a young theological student, who had previously criticised the work as pantheistic and "a damnable heresy" that "conscience would compel him to denounce..."^[4]

Publication history

Poe persuaded George Palmer Putnam, who had previously taken a chance on Poe by printing his only novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket in England, to publish Eureka. Poe claimed this work was more important than Isaac Newton's discovery of gravity. Putnam paid Poe fourteen dollars for the work.^[5] Poe suggested an initial printing of at least one million copies; Putnam settled on 750, of which only 500 copies were sold that year.^[6]

References

1. ^ "Edgar Allan Poe's Eureka" URL accessed July 14, 2007
2. ^ "Poe Foresees Modern Cosmologists' Black Holes and The Big Crunch" URL accessed July 14, 2007