Eureka: A Prose Poem

by Edgar Allan Poe

The last of Edgar Allan Poe’s books to be published during his lifetime, Eureka, A Prose Poem is a strange book indeed, particularly within the context of his desire for the work to be judged only as a poem. Part scientific tract, part crazed speculation, Eureka reveals the heart of Poe’s aesthetic and literary concerns. Poe’s concept has a great deal in common with the Big Bang Theory of the creation of the universe. "…I propose to show that this Oneness is a principle abundantly sufficient to account for the constitution, the existing phænomena and the plainly inevitable annihilation of at least the material Universe." His exploration of the stars, planets, gravity, soul, body, and God is a remarkable phantasia of scientific thinking. Rarely available in a single volume edition, Eureka presents Poe as a brilliant American intellect, attempting to grapple with the most complex ideas.

Genres: Poetry, Philosophy, Classics, Science, Nonfiction, Literature, Essays

163 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1848

About the author

The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe’s reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry.

Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name.

The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_al...

Reviews

[Fernando · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Me he impuesto la tarea de hablar del universo físico, metafísico  y matemático -material y espiritual- de su esencia, de su origen, de su creación, de su condición presente y de su destino."

Edgar Allan Poe, había creído encontrar, casi un año antes de su muerte y en un evidente deterioro físico y psicológico, la chispa que encendió el universo con argumentos supuestamente reveladores e inspirándose en las teorías de científicos como Laplace, Hervey Allen y Alexander von Humboldt.
Es decir, establecer su propia teoría del Big Bang.
A lo largo de un texto ingenuo, divagante y por momentos incomprensible, Poe intenta darnos un concepto completo de la esencia del Universo, pasando en un párrafo del átomo a Dios, de las distancias de los planetas (¡medidos en leguas!), a la constitución de las galaxias y la via láctea.
Con esta idea en mente y el texto completo de Eureka en su poder, se presentó ante el editor Putnam pidiendo que se publicaran 5.000 copias de su ensayo, pero sólo imprimieron 500.
Increíblemente, y según algunos científicos, algunos de sus conceptos, prefiguraron lo que décadas más tarde relacionarían con los agujeros negros en el espacio, incluyendo, pequeñas y moderadas apreciaciones de Albert Einstein, quien celebró la audacia de la propuesta ensayística de Poe.
Lo más triste de todo este asunto era que cuando se presentaba a dar charlas en distintos lugares para publicitar su libro y sus teorías, la gente solo le pedía que recitara su afamado poema El cuervo, lo cual lo deprimía aún más...
Eureka, o ensayo sobre el Universo es uno de los textos más extraños, ambiciosos, complejos, difíciles, contradictorios y reveladores que escribió el genial autor norteamericano.

[Jess the Shelf-Declared Bibliophile · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sadly this was all kinds of not-meant-for-me. A few parts peaked my interest but most of it was like a literary great trying to be as wordy as possible while sounding scientifically knowledgeable. Oh wait, that IS what it was, haha!

[Vylūnė · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a chance this was a romantic attempt to follow intuition into explaining life and universe and everything while choosing to ignore inconvenient scientific discoveries. There is a chance this was an intricate mockery of then modern science by describing a universe ruled by the absurd laws of nature and (spoiler alert) dispersed God. Whichever way, it was a delight to read, absolutely enthralling and sneakily making me question my understanding of physics.

This book will make you feel like you're attending a physics lecture in 19th century so if that's not your jam be advised to steer away.

[Steve Rauscher · Rating 1 out of 5]

Years ago - 8, to be precise - I took a field trip with my honors American Literature class to a house Edgar Allan Poe lived in in Philadelphia. After the guided tour finished, we were led to the inevitable gift shop. There were copies of Poe's famous works everywhere, from the Rue Morgue to the Red death. All things I'd at that point conquered. Near the register, however, was this little book - essentially a long pamphlet - entitled 'Eureka.'

The tour guide saw my eyes wandering over its unknown cover, coveting its information, all new to me. She pulled me aside and told me that she had seen a handful of people - scholarly, upstanding people who wore glasses and contemplated newspapers while drinking tea - attempt to so much as read this work and that each one had in turn failed. Realize, she used the word "read." Not "comprehend," not "understand," not "kind of see the point to;" merely, read. Knowing this, I had to own this book. My friend Jess, another smart one, decided to buy a copy as well and race me through it.

Well, eight years and a partial college education later, I can say that I'm pretty sure I beat her.

You see, Eureka is quite literally impossible to read. It holds nothing in length. The difficulty exists not in a foreign or even made-up language. No, friends, the problem with 'Eureka' is that it is easily the most unnecessarily dense book I've ever put in front of my face.

For the record, I enjoy dense, when appropriate. I love verbosity. I welcome fragmented-yet-rambling syntax. Commas are my friend! What I hate - nay, loathe - is a quasi-philosophical rant made denser on purpose just to seem more intelligent and well-based than it ever could be based on its content alone.

At its core, 'Eureka' is a thesis by Poe that serves to prove his view that every atom in our known universe is a fragment of a higher power that spends its entire atomic existence gravitating back toward a central, universal point to reform the god that it originally came from.

Or something.

What makes it unreadable is that Poe writes it as if it's a true philosophical treatise, using the works of other renowned philosophers to bolster his idea and make it seem feasible, but then uses them in his own way, mostly just rewriting them. He goes so far as to create proofs and statements of truth from things that have never been proven or even generally taken as fact by science and then pages later refutes the truthfulness of the original idea (Gravity is repeated often, for example) without amending his own idea that derives its theoretical truth from the perceived truthfulness of the original idea he now assails as being false.

Confused? Me too! Here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS_6-I...

[Sébastien Bernard · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wild ride that proposes a Big Bang, mentions the possibility of relativity in the speed of light particles, and argues that there must be an 'anti-gravitational' force, e.g. dark energy. A very unique and intensely imaginative (un)scientific treatise on science praised by Einstein himself.

[Aleksandar Janjic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Да је Едгар Алан По највећи писац у историји људског рода није нам непознато, као ни чињеница да су његова дјела веома разгалила моје младалачко срце кад сам био млад. Почео сам да га читам мислим у седмом или осмом основне и вјероватно је његова кривица што сам стално добијао јединице из лектире у средњој - након његових дивних мрачних прича, прелазак на неке тамо Ане Карењине, Тихе Донове, Корене и Буденброкове био је више него болан, тако да сам те класике углавном прескакао. Понешто од пропуштеног сам надокнадио касније, рецимо ту Ану Карењину, али дошао сам до закључка да би много боље било да сам рецимо петсто пута прочитао Пад Куће Ашер или Гаврана.

Невертхелесс, По је несумњиво био величанствени геније, а то показује и ово његово посљедње дјело - које, иако носи поднаслов "пјесма у прози", није заправо ни пјесма ни прича већ филозофско-теолошка расправа о Свемиру, његовом почетку и крају и Суштини Свега. По поставља хипотезу да је све постало из једне вррррррло ситне тачкице, да се свемир шири, а да ће онда послије почети да скупља и да ће све да се врати у исту тачку - што је, како кажу, све са тачке гледишта тадашње науке, било једна потпуна бесмислица и наизглед бунцање некакве будале. Међутим, виђу ђавла, неких осамдесет година касније појави се теорија Великог Праска чија је сличност са описом изнесеним у Еуреци једноставно непристојна. Поов опис краја свега данас углавном одговара тзв. теорији великог сажимања, за коју не знам да ли је доказана или оповргнута (пошто нисам баш у току са науком овог типа) али знам да спада међу врло озбиљна разматрања којима се баве физичари и астрономи (или су се барем донедавно бавили).

Да у овој књижици има неких научних грешака потпуно је непристојно спомињати. Многи су добијали Нобелове награде за много безначајнија открића од оних које је По навео овде. Али није у питању само то што је он предвидио нешто што је наука потврдила много касније - једноставно, процес размишљања једног овако великог ума о једној овако величанственој теми, па то је напросто фасцинантно читање. Ја сам сто посто сигуран да би По, да је којим случајем одлучио да се бави науком умјесто прозом и поезијом, био вјероватно једно од највећих имена те људске дјелатности. Срећом по нас, а несрећом по себе и по науку, одлучио се за незахвалан и мизерно плаћен посао писца и завршио је како је завршио.

Ово је дјело које морате да читате мнооого пута, пошто није све на пенал. Мени је од научних елемената много мистериознији Поов став о Божанству, који је на почетку рецимо прилично деистички, а на крају (у, по мени, необичном заокрету), постаје врло приближан пантеистичком.

[Pedro Lucas de Azevedo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poe faz um ensaio astronômico que alude ao Big Bang (que só foi proposto décadas depois), é um texto filosófico, não científico, mas a intuição de Poe para conceitos astronômicos é impressionante.

[Dustyn Hessie · Rating 5 out of 5]

OMG! It's almost an abomination that I'm allowed to peer into these profound pages of metaphysical lore!

Reading Poe's Eureka is like seeping into the uncut highly "problematic" hemisphere of 18th/19th century Bones Philosophy - he really does not hold anything back. In an era like ours (where philosophy, like God, like almost everything else of essential human deepness and the whatnot, is dead) I have to say that reading Eureka was like excavating the grave of all of those - modernly dismissed as, "silly," "frivolous," - hot-convictions of the soul and coming to realize that the fermentations of old were still flaming of authenticity.

Poe's deathbed treatise was still boiling with truth after - What? 100 years! Poe's eloquent-philosophic prose poem really did have some marvelous convictions, (paraphrased): The extent of Beauty is the measure of this Book of Truths Truth-Value (in the preface); The culmination of the universe and mankind is the perfect consistency....

If you find it incomprehensible that human beings have souls, don't read this -
If you obtain modern science as a doctrine of values, don't read this -
If you detest the high-mindedness of the dying philosophers last breedings, don't read this -

On the contrary, everyone clever enough to rattle through a pinch of denseness and a smorgasbord of perspicacity ought to take look into this masterpiece of metaphysical genius.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 Stars rounded up to 4 Stars for its ingenious insights and uncanny intuitive predictions and in showing the readers his beliefs which were the foundations behind his writing A Descent Into the Maelström and MS Found in a Bottle. This is a book one does not gulp down but sips slowly.

"To the few who love me and whom I love – to those who feel rather than to those who think – to the dreamers and those who put faith in dreams as in the only realities – I offer this Book of Truths, not in its character of Truth-Teller, but for the Beauty that abounds in its Truth; constituting it true. To these I present the composition as an Art-Product alone: let us say as a Romance; or, if I be not urging too lofty a claim, as a Poem."
— Preface to Eureka, by Edgar Allan Poe

"The suggestion is made on occasion that in this work, Poe is being satirical or hoaxing, but the evidence strongly shows that Poe took his essay on cosmology very seriously indeed (aside from the intentionally humorous material in the first section). In a letter of July 7, 1849 to Mrs. Clemm, [Poe's aunt and mother-in-law] Poe wrote: 'I have no desire to live since I have done Eureka. I could accomplish nothing more.' "
https://www.eapoe.org/works/editions/...

In 1848 Poe issued Eureka ". . . an attempt to explain the nature of the universe on transcendental lines, surely under the influence of the Scottish astronomer John P. Nichol, who had recently lectured in New York. The book has been condemned because some of the philosophical terminology is irregular, but Poe did use his terms consistently and he early propounded the theory of the expanding universe." Poe, Edgar Allan. (1951). "Introduction" by T. O. Mabbott, The Selected Poetry and Prose of Edgar Allan Poe. Edited by T. O. Mabbott. New York: Random House. (p. ix)

"Eureka contains more than twenty ideas and concepts that were revolutionary in 1848, but that are now part of everyday science, like a ‘Big Bang’, an expanding universe [though Poe believed the universe would eventually contact], the unity of space and time, the velocity of light as the speed limit for electro-magnetic phenomena, the equivalence of matter and energy, and black holes as the final phase of stars and milky ways. It is also remarkable that in Eureka Poe dared to write about the principles of evolution, in which he attributed an important role to geologic and cosmic catastrophes. . . . But due to Poe’s popularity and profound influence in Europe during the period 1860-1930, it is not strange that his ideas inspired others to develop new ideas about the universe, like the Russian physicist Alexander Friedmann (1888-1925) who in 1922 proposed the ‘dynamic’ universe, and the Belgian physicist Georges Lemaître (1894-1966) who in 1927 developed the theory of the ‘Big Bang’. The ‘Free Library of Philadelphia’ and the ‘University of Pennsylvania’ own four letters that prove that also Albert Einstein read Eureka twice. In 1933, when he had just moved to the USA and his English was still weak, he mainly read the first part that contains Poe’s philosophical vision on science and logic. In two letters, written in German to the American Poe collector Richard Gimbel (Philadelphia), Einstein called this first part “eine sehr schöne Leistung eines ungewöhnlich selbständigen Geistes” (‘a very beautiful achievement of an extraordinary independent mind’). He also called Poe ‘a master’, ‘a wonderful man’ and ‘a creative son of America’. https://baltimorepostexaminer.com/edg... Einstein later, for whatever reason, denied reading Eureka however, these letters in his own handwriting prove otherwise.

"Lacking scientific proof, Poe said it was not his goal to prove what he says to be true, but to convince through suggestion." Meyers, Jeffrey. (1992) Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. New York: Cooper Square Press. p. 215.

"Poe's summary of scientific matters is in general excellent; he understands most available astronomical theory. His summaries of the arguments of different scientists, as the [Poe's] notes [to Eureka] indicate, are very competent. The scientific speculation and theorizing are consistently intelligent and are no more rhetorically overblown than other comparable statements of the era: Nichol gushes and Humboldt is very florid. There exists a literature by Poe fans about how Poe predicted twentieth-century physics and astronomy. This does not strike us as a fruitful argument; Poe did not magically predict Einstein or intuit subatomic physics. One can, however, say at least that Poe knew the sorts of basic questions that science was going to face. He did think through intelligently the implications of what was known in his day." Poe, Edgar, Allan. (2004). "Introduction." In Stuart Levine and Susan F. Levine (Eds.), Eureka. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. (xx-xxi)

My personal feelings about the essay Eureka is that it does not follow the scientific method [which Poe expressed such in his Preface] and therefore, is riddled with errors, however, it does contain some unexpected successes, among which is the mind blowing idea that the universe was generated from the explosion of a single primordial particle, an intuition of Poe that would anticipate the Big Bang theory by almost a century, which I admit is quite an intuitive feat in itself. Poe truly had a poetic nature in that he sought beauty and meaning in everything and sought to express it in the way he was truly gifted with which was his words that he expressed quite magnificently in his writings. Some claim Poe was an atheist, they obviously didn't read Eureka where Poe sees God everywhere in every molecule. Poe was not a follower of traditional religious beliefs but, nevertheless he was not an atheist as this essay expounds upon. Poe believed that the essence (the spirit) of God was in all matter.

I wholeheartedly feel the best interpretive understanding of Eureka is given by Daniel Hoffman: In questioning Poe's classification of Eureka as a prose poem he states: " How can a poem, which must be metrical, and not more than a hundred lines long, and should have as its subject the death of a beautiful woman, and express this subject as indefinitely (and therefore as spiritually) as possible, and be based on the hypnogogic repetition of a melancholy, single-word refrain, be made in prose? [he states Poe's own rules for poetry] In prose of demonstrative clarity, with hypotheses, proofs, and explanations of those proofs, one hundred and thirty pages in extent? A poem in such prose, whose treatment has neither meters nor refrains and whose subject has no death of a beautiful woman-but instead the birth, death, and rebirth of the entire universe! . . . This tale uses cosmogony as its materials, the terminology of science as its diction, but is itself neither a scientific treatise, nor despite Poe's protestations, it is in fact a description of the universe. It is the ultimately depersonalized and mechanical characterization of the psychic rhythm of existence. The facilities most intensely engaged in the creation and exposition of the cosmogony in Eureka are intuition and ratiocination-the very cast of mind we find in Poe's active heroes Monsieur Dupin and Legrand, whose powers, and the perspicuous expository style used to exhibit them, are, so to speak, now engaged to crack the great cipher of appearances and to detect the true patter of that greater life of the Universe of which the life of man is but an individuated and fragmentary example. What Dupin demonstrates about human action, Poe himself, as author of Eureka, demonstrates about all existence: the hidden rhythm of its processes, of which intuitive thought itself is the closest approximation." Hoffman, Daniel. (1978). "The Mind of God." Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe (pp. 273-293). New York: Avon Books. So Hoffman believes by Poe using ratiocination Eureka can be classified as a prose poem. I feel more inclined to classify it as an essay and rated it as such since it has also been subtitled as An Essay on the Material and Spiritual Universe.

[Lee Foust · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm really not at all sure what to think of this essay. Apparently it's Poe's last great work and he himself thought of it as an enormous breakthrough in thinking. Also it begins with some of his characteristic snideness, leading some readers to wonder if it wasn't a put on, one more jab at the transcendentalists whom Poe despised.

I will say it seems more serious that satirical to me--even just in its length: who would go to the trouble to pen such an elaborate joke? Plus the snideness is relegated to first of many, many pages. Still, I found the reasoning here very hard to follow. Poe begins with what seems like some quite sophisticated astronomy and physics for his day, beginning with gravity, positing what had then not yet been named but would come to be called the Big Bang, and takes us on a whirlwind discussion of matter, finally touching on entropy and calling up our very souls' participation in this wholly inexplicable (yet ostensibly here explained) dance of matter through the space he claims could not be infinite. It's not odd, but was disappointing to me personally, that God is always at the root of such discussions. Like flies we just fly head on into the glass every time. Thus I didn't really get his big breakthrough as most of this stuff I got in an undergraduate course on astronomy at uni back in the early 1980s.

[Andrew]

Hoo boy. This is, for a modern reader, a bit of fundamentally useless 19th Century crankery, an artifact of a different era of philosophical and scientific perception. If reading Darwin might feel unnecessary now, given the way that the scientific mission has so thoroughly taken on Darwin's ideas, this is the opposite-- the flotsam and jetsam of history that would remain unremembered if it wasn't for the name of the author.

[Tao · Rating 5 out of 5]

”...All Things and All Thoughts of Things, with all their ineffable Multiplicity of relation, sprang at once into being from the primordial and irrelative One.”

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poe describes the big bang 80 years before its "confirmation", talks ostensably about black holes & and synthesizes eastern philosophy with western cosmology.

The traditionally celebrated fiction writer does all this while explicitly arguing that imagination can be as important as fact and deduction for helping us understand the world around us.

Further, Poe seemed to think that "Eureka's" reputation would continue to grow after his death. Its reputation now proceeds it, with Albert Einstein calling the book "a beautiful achievement of an unusually independent mind." .... Still less than 1000 readers on goodreads.

[Madeline Church · Rating 2 out of 5]

wordy & sciencey. no thank u

[mick_paolino · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nel 1848 Edgar Allan Poe era uno scrittore affermato e riconosciuto come eccezionale romanziere eppure durante una conferenza tenutasi quell’anno a New York egli si dimostró essere anche un ottimo filosofo naturalista proponendo una dissertazione sull’origine dell’universo.

Nella sua intuizione convivono la teoria di Newton, l’ipotesi della nebulosa primordiale di Laplace, la teoria dell’atomo primordiale di Lemaître e il principio antropico. Ci vorranno parecchi decenni prima che teorie del genere vengano prese in considerazione in una teoria dal nome altisonante: Relatività.

Nonostante il linguaggio del saggio sia abbastanza tecnico e difficile da afferrare al primo colpo Eureka è una grandiosa dimostrazione del grande potere del metodo scientifico deduttivo: cento pagine di puro sapere.

[David Shapiro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mind bending! This book is well worth the patience it takes to read. Poe was way ahead of his time in his conception of the universe. I find it fascinating that he wrote this book towards he end of his days.

[David A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

E.A. Poe--inventor of the Big Bang Theory. This was a very, very smart man.

[Blair · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing blend of epic poetry and science, in true Poe fashion. It's a shame this piece isn't more well known.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps Poe's crowning achievement

[Masha8937 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ce livre a attiré mon attention dès lors que j’ai lu sur la page de couverture la description dithyrambique de Paul Valéry à son sujet. J’ai parcouru brièvement l’article élogieux de Valéry a fait paraître en 1923 dans la Revue européenne (qui a été publiée à la fin d’Eureka dans l’édition Folioclassique), et ai eu l’envie d’en découvrir plus sur cet ouvrage.
Eurêka, poème en prose, essai sur l’univers matériel et spirituel, publié en 1848 et traduit à l’époque par Charles Baudelaire, est le dernier ouvrage publié du vivant de Poe. L’écrivain y théorise et explique l’origine de l’Univers métaphysique et spirituel. En y mettant Dieu au centre de son œuvre, s’interrogeant sur la place de l’Homme, critiquant et mentionnant les scientifiques et penseurs de son temps, il montre et démontre sa pensée dans ce court texte. Ce livre m’a permis d’en apprendre plus sur ce sujet, connaître les grands concepts de l’époque (et me poussant moi-même à faire mes recherches) et voir Poe d’une autre manière dont il est décrit habituellement ( je dois admettre cependant que c’était la première œuvre de Poe que je lisais). Cet essai, bien qu’intéressant, m’a cependant parfois paru un peu redondant sur certains aspects et presque ennuyant, du fait peut-être de mon manque de savoir et de connaissances sur le sujet, dont je suis complètement ignorante. Je ne pense pas honnêtement avoir compris tout l’ouvrage, et bien qu’il me faudrait plusieurs lectures pour saisir l’envergure de Eureka, mes centres d’intérêts ne résonnant pas avec le texte, je ne le relirai pas tout de suite.

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Grandi aspettative immensamente deluse per questo libro. Non trovo nessun motivo per cui qualcuno dovrebbe ancora leggerlo nel 2023, a meno che non si tratti di un esperto di Poe e debba conoscere tutte le sfaccettature del suo pensiero. Uno scrittore di racconti si mette a fare il fisico/astrologo, sciorinando leggi di Newton, Laplace, Keplero e via dicendo; ma il tutto viene condito con una buona dose di metafisica abbastanza incongruente con le formule e i numeri. Il metodo usato è a tratti una forma pseudo-scientifica, a tratti insegue l'ipotesi (campata in aria) come unico barlume del progredire della scienza. Un libro che poteva essere interessante appena scritto, oggi se voglio scoprire di più sull'universo leggo un libro divulgativo a riguardo (e scritto da uno scienziato), se voglio elucubrazioni filosofiche leggo un trattato di filosofia (scritto da un filosofo), leggerò di nuovo Poe, ma i racconti, che almeno sono sicura li sappia scrivere.

[Alejandro Gomz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es genial cómo Poe explica de manera bella algunos temas del universo, como el Big Bang, la creación de los planetas y de alguna manera llega a sugerir la existencia del agujero negro que hay en el centro de la galaxia, muy recomendado para los que gustan de leer sobre el universo. Me gustó que al inicio explica el porqué de su razonamiento filosófico.

[Maryam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Finalmente l'ho finito!

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This may be truly be a text eight hundred years ahead of its time - and the crux is that these pure revelations, including the notion of the Big Bang, were discovered by a poet, an artist, far removed from the halls of science.

[Forked Radish · Rating 5 out of 5]

"A beautiful achievement of an unusually creative mind." Albert Einstein (translated from the original German)

The Genius of a Lunatic:
"Discarding now the two equivocal terms, "gravitation" and "electricity," let us adopt the more definite expressions, "attraction" and "repulsion." The former is the body; the latter the soul: the one is the material; the other the spiritual, principle of the Universe. No other principles exist. All phenomena are referable to one, or to the other, or to both combined. So rigorously is this the case—so thoroughly demonstrable is it that attraction and repulsion are the sole properties through which we perceive the Universe—in other words, by which Matter is manifested to the Mind—that, for all merely argumentative purposes, we are fully justified in assuming that matter exists only as attraction and repulsion—that attraction an repulsion are matter:—there being no conceivable case in which we may not employ the term "matter" and the terms "attraction" and "repulsion," taken together, as equivalent, and therefore convertible, expressions in Logic." (p. 38) and: "In Divine constructions the object is either design or object as we choose to regard it—we may take at any time a cause for an effect, or the converse—so that we may never absolutely decide which is which." leading to: "reciprocity of adaptation." (p. 119)—Brilliant understandings of the relativistic reality.
The Lunacy of a Genius:
""Each atom tends to every other atom &c. with a force &c.: the general result being a tendency of all, with a similar force, to a general center."" (p. 45) Apparently, Poe has forgotten about Galileo's famous 1589 Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment. To wit, if the preceding statement were true more massive objects would accelerate exponentially, when mutually attracted, in relation to less massive objects which is not the case.—Poe has become morassed in "determinate law" (p. 43).
The Big Bang is First Proposed*:
"...I am of the irretrievably by—gone Fact that All Things and All Thoughts of Things, with their ineffable Multiplicity of Relation, sprang at one into being from the primordial and irrelative One." (p. 46)—Unfortunately, the pivotal word is "irrelative" which is why both Poe's original, and Lemaître's plagerized version, are wrong. Actually, Lucretius alluded to the Big Bang, if only to refute it, in the first century B.C. with his famous "ex nihilo nihil fit".
The Multiverse Too:
"Let me declare, only, that, as an individual, I myself feel impelled to the fancy—without daring to call it more—that there does exist a limitless succession of Universes, more or less similar to that of which we have cognizance-" (p. 103)
...And the Spacetime Continuum:
"Space and Duration are one." (p. 118)
Finally, Poe even outdoes Einstein by rejecting the now thoroughly discredited "material ether" (p. 134) and even proposes an anthropogenic universal origin: "And now—this Heart Divine—what is it? It is our own."
* Erasmus Darwin supposedly alluded to the Big Bang, Big Crunch cosmology in his 1791 poem The Botanic Garden, but he actually alluded to the opposite; a Big Crunch, Big Bang cosmology, which is quite literally the opposite.

When is a tree both a tree and not a tree?
When it's a shoe tree.

[Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had heard some big claims for this book: like that Edgar Allan Poe had somehow anticipated a number of major developments in 20th century cosmology. It doesn't live up to those claims. It's a long ranting screed, illogical and inconsistent, making some lucky guesses among its claims. Celebrity physicists like Brian Cox probably receive three or four of these in the post every week. If you make enough guesses about the nature of the universe maybe some of them will match the knowledge or beliefs of later generations. But it hardly matters, if you arrived at your claims by such absurd methods that scientists must ignore you.

Eureka predicts the big bang theory, and the big crunch theory, and the notion of the eternal repetition of big bangs and big crunches. That's a pretty lucky guess, assuming we happen to be right about the big bang. But Poe does no 'working out' to arrive at this guess, it's all just a kind of intuition after reading lots of science books.

Poe also seems to make some pretty good guesses about the wider structure of the universe, namely that the Milky Way is a galaxy among many galaxies, which as I understand it was not known by conventional science until 50 or 60 years later.

He defends his 'gut feel' methodology of cosmological theorising by deriding evidence-based and reason-based science for about twenty pages... then he uses knowledge acquired by proper scientists using those methods to support his intuitions. On one page he invokes God as the power that made everything move apart following the big bang, and a few pages later he derides those idiots who think God makes the planets move around the sun. God is only an acceptable element of physics theorising when Poe invokes Him; when other people do, it's absurd.

He explains his theory of gravity: basically, everything in the universe wants to get back together after being separated at the big bang.

The book improves as it goes on... probably not many people know that, because the earlier part is so close to being unreadable. His summary of the prevailing theory of how the solar system formed, which I believe is still pretty much accepted, is pretty good. His vision of the meta-structures of clusters of clusters of star clusters is also pretty good, and bears a small (but only very small) resemblance to recent developments in cosmology which have found apparent structure at a vast cosmic scale.

The style is often obscure and long-winded. But the big ideas suggest that if Poe hadn't died so young, he might have pioneered another kind of fiction: the wide screen space opera. That would have been worth reading. Not this.

[Patrick Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Long for a poem!
Begins by imploring the reader to judge the work as a poem. No critic has yet agreed to this, to my knowledge.
Before Poe goes where he intends, a prelude has the narrator reading a letter he has received from 200 years in the future. Clever, and easy to dismiss. But as a poem, what does it symbolize?
Then Poe dives into astronomy as it is understood with telescopes and theory as of 1847-ish. And this is how the work is generally critiqued, as an essay on science, or the philosophy of science. But as a poem, what is the symbolism of the astronomical principles he describes?
The universe, Poe tells us, is filled with galaxies like ours. They have other peoples like us. They are alive--even rocks themselves are alive he writes. The universe is a struggle between two forces: gravity which attracts and electromagnetism which repels. Locally gravity wins and things are pulled closer until they mix in ways that are new. This is how new things happen, how new things are made. Yes it is full of collisions when gravity pulls bodies together! It hurts! But new elements are made from the struggle. (poetic, right?)
On the larger scale, things are pushed apart.
In the beginning was a big push outward, and then these local galaxies pulling inward. In time the inward pull would win out again, and everything would come together again. A new opportunity to make new stuff, never before seen.
In the final lines, this pushing outward, recombining parts, pulling together into a new unity, push, pull, he calls The Heartbeat Of The Universe. Very poetic!
20th Century scientists have noticed the original outward push resembles The Big Bang. I haven't seen anyone published say so yet, but the return to unity for another push, resembles The Big Bounce.
Is it okay if a poem, that pretends to have ways to speak to someone 200 years in the future, would accidentally predict things that actually turn out true about the universe? Sort of mystical.
When people take a work of fiction or poetry and literalize it, that becomes its denotative meaning. "It means this." But as a poem, it can mean more and more, as time goes on. It can mean different things to different people. It can resonate. In some ways fiction and poetry can be more "educational" than nonfiction or science writing.

They say that in his final year Poe read this aloud to a couple of audiences. It took several hours to read. They say his voice took on a hypnotic quality and that people exiting the theaters were in an altered state. Wouldn't that have been a blast? If I ever learn how to time travel, I'm going to one of those performances!

[Christy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hm. This "prose poem" is a confusing text, and much less interesting than Poe's other work. It is unclear to me and to literary critics whether this book is meant to be fiction or nonfiction or a combination of the two (and if a combination, where the line is to be drawn). It begins with the narrator quoting at length from a letter dated from the year 2848, but then it goes on to become a treatise (which seems to be from the perspective of Poe himself) on the relationship between God, creation, science, and the universe. He gets some of his science wrong but also predicts a version of the Big Bang theory, a version that depends upon God's divine touch, of course. His basic argument seems to rely on the idea that after this initial diffusion, eventually our universe, which is all part of God, must return to a unified state: "Think that the sense of individual identity will be gradually merged in the general consciousness--that Man, for example, ceasing imperceptibly to feel himself Man, will at length attain that awfully triumphant epoch when he shall recognize his existence as that of Jehovah. In the meantime bear in mind that all is Life--Life--Life within Life--the less within the greater, and all within the Spirit Divine."

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

This weird little beauty was nothing more or less than Edgar Allan Poe, an untrained scientist, attempting to explain...well...everything. It's not easy to read, but many of his ideas were actually ahead of their time. He actually posits the idea that the universe stretches far beyond the Milky Way (an opinion actually not widely held at the time!) and even posits an early variation on the Big Bang Theory (including the Big Collapse) that is not only imaginative, but actually a lot closer to the modern theory than you'd imagine.

He also discusses alternative universes (seriously!) and how planets were made and the way that gravity is the ultimate force. Obviously, many of the ideas here have been proven inaccurate, but they were in line with the science of his time. Reading this shows that there's a lot more to this writer than his superlative literary work (he may have invented American literary criticism) and his ooky spooky tales.

[David Walsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poe was a truly prophetic genius! Two years before he died he wrote this long 'prose poem', Eureka, which anticipated one of the greatest discoveries of the 20th Century by 80 years - The Big Bang. Edgar Allan Poe believed that all matter had once been concentrated in a single particle which then expanded to fill space ~ a theory not accepted by science until 1931. Eureka, his 'prose poem', goes on to predict the general theory of relativity; parallel universes; & the structure of the atom. Pretty good going for a poem that doesn't even rhyme.