Poe’s Words of Hope

Welcome to Celebrate Creativity- Episode 450 - Poe’s Words of Hope

When you hear the name of the 19th century writer, Edgar Allan Poe, what comes to mind?  Perhaps you picture a somber, extremely unhappy man scribbling tales of madness and murder in a dimly lit room.

In this episode, originally written for the voices through time series, we look at a different - even life affirming aspect of Poe.

Transcript

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Welcome to Celebrate Creativity- Episode 464 - Poe’s Words of Hope

When you hear the name of the 19th century writer, Edgar Allan Poe, what comes to mind?  Perhaps you picture a somber, extremely unhappy man scribbling tales of madness and murder in a dimly lit room. You might think of The Casque of Amontillado where Montresor burys Fortunato alive - note the following passage from the The Casque of Amontilladoas M   r. Edgar Allan Poe might have read I it.

It was now midnight, and my task was drawing to a close. I had completed the eighth, the ninth, and the tenth tier. I had finished a portion of the last and the eleventh; there remained but a single stone to be fitted and plastered in. I struggled with its weight; I placed it partially in its destined position. But now there came from out the niche a low laugh that erected the hairs upon my head. It was succeeded by a sad voice, which I had difficulty in recognising as that of the noble Fortunato. The voice said—

"Ha! ha! ha!—he! he!—a very good joke indeed—an excellent jest. We will have many a rich laugh about it over our wine—he! he! he!"

"The Amontillado!" I said.

"He! he! he!—he! he! he!—yes, the Amontillado. But is it not getting late? Will not they be awaiting us at the palazzo, the Lady Fortunato and the rest? Let us be gone."

"Yes,"I said, "let us be gone."

"For the love of God, Montresor!"

Yes," I said, "for the love of God!"

But to these words I hearkened in vain for a reply. I grew impatient. I called aloud—

"Fortunato!"

No answer. I called again—but but only thing was better than this agony anything was more tolerable than the duration oh shit almighty God no no they heard they they suspected they knew they were making a mockery of my horror this I thought and this I think they heard oh

"Fortunato!"

No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture and let it fall within. There came forth in return only a jingling of the bells. My heart grew sick—on account of the dampness of the catacombs. I hastened to make an end of my labor. I forced the last stone into its position; I plastered it up. Against the new masonry I re-erected the old rampart of bones. For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them. May he rest in peace!

Or from the narrator of The Tell Heart as he comments on a dead body that might be buried beneath the floor or might be a pigment of his imagination?

I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men — but the noise steadily increased. Oh God! what could I do? I foamed — I raved — I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder — louder — louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God! — no, no! They heard! — they suspected! — they knew! — they were making a mockery of my horror! — this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! — and now — again! — hark! louder! louder! louder! louder! —

“Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed! — tear up the planks! — here, here! — it is the beating of his hideous heart!”

These are the tales that have defined Poe’s legacy: stories of darkness, grief, and despair.

Many of you have listened to the earlier edition of this podcast called celebrate Poe where I really delve into the works of Edgar Allan Poe - I naturally decided to include Poe on this list as one of the world's greatest and most creative writers, but wanted to approach Edgar Allan Poe from a slightly different angle - not the dark and depressing image that we usually

associate with the writer.  And what if the man who gave us "Nevermore" also saw a glimmer of hope?

On this episode, we're diving into what is perhaps Poe's most ambitious work, Eureka - a word that means I have found it.  It’s not a short story or a poem, but a non-fiction book that Poe himself called a "Prose Poem" that tries to explain the universe. In it, he explores a radical idea: that the universe originated from a single divine particle and is expanding, only to one day collapse back into its original unity.

We'll discuss how this work, dismissed by many as a confused ramble, could be seen as a brilliant and prescient theory of the cosmos, hinting at concepts like the Big Bang and the ultimate fate of the universe. Forget the tormented artist; today, we're exploring Edgar Allan Poe, the visionary cosmologist.

Unlike most of Poe;s earlier works, Eureka directly challenges the listener's expectations and sets the stage for this podcast’s episode's theme of a different, more hopeful Poe.

Poe begins Eureka with a dedication that serves as a statement of his intentions. He writes:

"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.

What I here propound is true:—therefore it cannot die:—or if by any means it be now trodden down so that it die, it will 'rise again to the Life Everlasting.'"

Now this excerpt briefly redefines the work of the author.  Poe explicitly states that he wants this "Book of Truths" to be judged as a "Poem" or a "Romance," not a scientific treatise. This positions the entire work as a visionary, imaginative act rather than a dry academic one.

It uses a hopeful tone: The line about the work potentially being "trodden down" but then rising "to the Life Everlasting" is a stark contrast to the despair of his more famous tales. It speaks to a profound belief in the enduring nature of his ideas.

It connects "truth" and "beauty": Poe suggests that the "Beauty that abounds in its Truth" is what makes it "true." This highlights how Poe blended scientific inquiry with poetic intuition, a theme that resonates with modern discussions about the intersection of science and art.

Yes,  Eureka: A Prose Poem is a fascinating and complex piece that offers a unique perspective on it's author and his ideas, moving beyond the more common tragic and dark interpretations.  Now Eureka is a non-fiction work that Poe himself considered his most significant. Published in 1848, a year before his death, it's a cosmological treatise where he proposes a theory about the universe's origin and ultimate fate. He presents his ideas as a "prose poem," using an intuitive and speculative approach rather than a purely scientific one.

Eureka reveals a Poe who was deeply engaged with the scientific and philosophical questions of his time. He grappled with concepts such as gravity, the nature of space and time, and the relationship between the material and the spiritual. Poe demonstrates his belief in a unified, harmonious universe, which stands in stark contrast to the chaos and decay often depicted in his more famous Gothic tales.

The work also showcases his philosophical side. Poe rejected the purely rational and empirical approaches of many of his contemporaries. He believed in the power of intuition and imagination as tools for understanding the universe, seeing them as essential for grasping truths that science alone could not. He even anticipated some concepts of modern cosmology, such as the Big Bang and the heat death of the universe, albeit in a highly poetic and non-scientific way.  In fact, it is said that Albert Einstein read Eureka and was extremely impressed with its ideas.

Looking at Poe through Eureka reframes him from a mere writer of Gothic horror to a visionary thinker. It reveals his ambition to be more than just a poet or a storyteller—he sought to be a grand theorizer on the scale of a Isaac Newton. While the scientific community largely dismissed Eureka, it remains a testament to his intellectual breadth and his desire to seek order and meaning in the universe, even while exploring its darkest corners in his fiction.

Poe was certainly excited about his ideas, but let me bring it down a notch or two or three or four, and hopefully it might make a bit more sense or at least easier to understand.

Now - Imagine a giant, super-duper-tiny little dot.

Everything that exists—every star, every planet, every person, every animal—all of it was once squished together in this one tiny little dot.

Then, BOOM! The dot exploded!

All of its pieces went flying out into the darkness, like glitter from a firework. As they flew away, some pieces stuck together and became the stars and planets we see today.

Poe's big idea was that the universe is not just falling apart. He said that one day, the pieces will stop flying apart and start to come back together, like magnets pulling everything back to that one tiny spot where it all began.

So, while Poe is famous for writing scary stories, he also had a very big, beautiful idea about how the whole universe is like one big, connected thing that will always be together, even if it looks like it's far apart.

Now that we have the basic idea of Eureka down, let's talk about why this is such a surprising and important part of Edgar Allan Poe's life.

When most people think of Poe, they think of spooky stuff. They think of "The Raven," a sad bird that says "Nevermore." They think of "The Tell-Tale Heart," where a character imagines he hears a beating heart under the floorboards. They think of a guy who had a really tough, sad life.

But Eureka shows us a totally different side of him.

Imagine a puzzle. All of Poe's scary stories and sad poems are like a few of the dark, spooky pieces of the puzzle. They make you think he was a dark and unhappy guy.

Eureka, though, is like a new puzzle piece. It's a big, bright, beautiful piece that shows us a different picture. It shows us that Poe was also:

A "What If" Thinker: He wasn't just writing about ghosts and murder. He was also asking huge questions like, "Where did we all come from?" and "Where are we all going?" He was curious about the biggest mysteries in the universe.

A Hopeful Person: While he wrote about death and sadness, Eureka has a hopeful ending. The universe isn't just flying apart forever. It's coming back together. It's like he believed that even after things fall apart, they can become whole again. This is a very different idea from the never ending sadness in "The Raven."

A Smarty-Pants: He wasn't just making stuff up. He was reading books about science and thinking deeply about things. He wanted to be a famous thinker, not just a famous storyteller.

So, when you put all the pieces together, the sad stories with the big ideas from Eureka, you get a much bigger and more interesting picture of Edgar Allan Poe. He wasn't just a sad poet; he was a smart, curious, and maybe even a hopeful person who wanted to solve the biggest puzzle of all: the universe itself.

Now let's dig deeper into the mystery of why the man who wrote such dark stories might have also written something so grand and hopeful.

Now Imagine this: many of Poe's famous stories are about being alone.

In "The Raven," a man is all alone in a room, talking to a bird. He feels so lonely and sad about losing someone he loves.

In "The Tell-Tale Heart," a person feels alone with a terrible secret, and their guilt makes him feel even more out of control.

In "The Cask of Amontillado," a man traps another man in a wall, leaving him all alone to die.

These stories show people who are disconnected. They are cut off from other people and sometimes even from reality.

But then, you have Eureka.

In Eureka, Poe is telling us the exact opposite story. He's saying that everything in the universe is connected. We are all part of that one big, original dot that exploded. The stars are our distant cousins. The planets are our neighbors. We are all pieces of the same puzzle.

Think of it like this:

Poe wrote spooky stories that showed how things can fall apart and how people can feel all alone. It's like he was showing us the darkness and the chaos of the world.

But in Eureka, he was trying to find the hidden pattern. He was trying to say, "Even if things look messy and lonely, there is a secret, beautiful plan underneath it all. We are not just alone in the darkness. We are all part of a single, amazing story.”

This shows us that Poe was a thinker who looked at both sides of life: the sadness and loneliness he saw around him, but also the hope that everything was connected and would one day be whole again. It's like he was using his stories to show the problem and Eureka to offer a solution.

And many of the passages from Eureka are extremely optimistic in nature.

Poe's central idea is that everything came from a single point and is therefore connected. This is a very hopeful idea, because it is the opposite of being alone.

Here is another section from Eureka:

"In the original unity of the first thing lies the secondary cause of all things, with the germ of their inevitable annihilation.” 

Here Poe is saying that everything that exists—all the stars, planets, and even us—came from one tiny point. Because of this, we are all secretly connected, like different parts of one big family. This means nothing is truly alone.

And perhaps the most optimistic part of the entire work is Poe’s belief that the universe wouldn’t just expand forever. 

It would one day come back together, returning to its original state of unity. This is like a great cosmic "coming home” - sort of a giant return to oneness.

Here is another section from Eureka:

"The absolute Oneness of the diffused matter is the finale of the universe. In this re-uniting, the diffused consciousness of the universe will again become a single, individual consciousness, or what we may call God."

In other words, Poe believed that after everything flew apart, it would start to come back together again, getting closer and closer until it returned to a single, perfect point. He thought this "coming back together" was the universe's ultimate destiny and a beautiful, peaceful end. It's a hopeful thought that even after a great explosion, everything will return to being whole again.

Poe wrote Eureka to counter the idea of a chaotic, meaningless universe. He wanted to show that there was a beautiful, divine order to everything.

And here is another very short section from Eureka:

"The Universe is not a work of chance. Its laws are a divine plan, and its final purpose is its return to God.”

Let me repeat that - "The Universe is not a work of chance. Its laws are a divine plan, and its final purpose is its return to God.”

Poe thought it was silly to believe the universe was a big, messy accident. He believed it was created with a magnificent plan, like a beautiful piece of music or a perfect painting. Even with all its chaos, everything is moving toward a perfect and peaceful ending. This belief gives his work a sense of ultimate purpose and order, which is a very hopeful message.  

Now a Christian perspective might see Poe's idea of a "primordial particle"—a single, unified point from which everything originates—as a parallel to the biblical account of creation - a Biblical account that this podcast dealt with just a few episodes ago. In the first chapter of Genesis, God is a singular, unified being who creates the universe ex nihilo, or "from nothing." Poe's "first thing" acts as a kind of divine source, a starting point of unity from which all of the universe is dispersed, much like the Christian belief that a single, all-powerful God is the source of all existence.

And the "scattering" of Poe's primordial particle can be interpreted as a cosmic version of the "Fall" in Christian theology. In the Bible, Adam and Eve's disobedience leads to a broken, fallen world that is separated from its perfect, original state of harmony with God. Similarly, Poe's universe, in its current state of dispersal and disunity, is imperfect and separated from its original, harmonious state. This parallel allows a Christian to see the chaos and loneliness Poe so often wrote about as a reflection of a universe that has been separated from its ultimate, unified source.

The most profound Christian connection to Eureka is Poe's theory that the universe is destined to return to its original unity. This can be viewed as an echo of the Christian concept of redemption and the final reconciliation of all creation with God. Poe's idea that the universe is not random but is actively moving toward its final purpose—a return to a single, unified consciousness—resonates with the Christian belief that all of history is part of a purposeful divine plan. Poe's conclusion, that this reunion forms "what we may call God," provides a kind of unconventional eschatology (a theory about the end of the world) where all creation is ultimately restored to a perfect, harmonious state in God.

So we can think of such works as "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Pit and the Pendulum" as powerful counterpoints to Eureka. They represent the "down" side of humanity—madness, guilt, and despair—and serve as a reminder of the darkness Poe was so adept at exploring. But then, it as though Poe pivoted to writing Eureka as the grand, hopeful answer. It shows that even a mind that could conceive of such horror was also seeking a beautiful, unifying truth.

In summary, Poe wasn't just one thing. He was a complex person who saw both the light and the dark. He could explore the depths of human despair but also hold a profound, life-affirming belief that the universe was a single, beautiful thing that would ultimately find its way back to peace and harmony. Think of Poe's life. It was often filled with chaos and loss. He lost his mother at a very young age, was estranged from his foster father, and his beloved wife, Virginia, suffered from a long illness before she died. From the outside, his life looked like a series of tragedies.

Poe's stories like "The Pit and the Pendulum" reflect this feeling of being trapped and powerless against an uncaring world. The narrator is a helpless victim, subject to a cruel and random fate.

But Eureka shows us a Poe who was actively fighting against that feeling of chaos. He was looking for a deep, hidden order in the universe. He refused to believe that everything was just a random accident. He sought to prove that there was a magnificent design behind all the apparent mess.

The man who wrote about despair was also the man who created a beautiful, hopeful theory about the universe. He found a way to look past the tragedy in his own life and see a grand, purposeful design. Eureka isn't just an odd side project; it's the core of his philosophy, a testament to his belief in ultimate order and peace, even in a chaotic world

Sources include the poetry foundation, encyclopedia Virginia, Evermore by Harry Lee Poe, and The Complete Works of EAP

Join Celebrate Creativity - for episode 451 - Get ready — Celebrate Creativity is taking you on a journey through 25 of the greatest writers of all time.” “From Moses and Chaucer to the Holocaust and modern masters — discover 25 writers who changed the way we see the world.”

Thank you for listening to Celebrate Creativity.

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