Poe and the Stars

Tonight we leave the playhouse wing and walk—quietly—into a different kind of stage: a mirrored room, a window, and a tube of glass and brass pointed at the sky. 

Because when Edgar Allan Poe looks up, he doesn’t just want a story. He wants an explanation.

SFX: soft footsteps, a faint “gallery hum,” a distant night security beep.
Different exhibit tonight, folks. Same rule, though—no touching the artifacts… even when they start talking back.
Now a telescope, such as the one you see, can be an instrument.But in the hands of the curious—especially the young—it behaves like a toy in the best sense: not a trinket, but a machine that turns wonder into a habit.
And Poe… Poe was the kind of mind that didn’t outgrow wonder.He made literature from it.
He weaponized it.

NARRATOR (leaning into awe):At first, it’s simple: you look through the tube and the sky stops being a ceiling.The moon becomes a place with edges.Stars become objects, not decorations.
But Poe doesn’t stop at looking. He starts asking the dangerous question:“If the universe looks like this… then what must it be?”
And that’s how you get Eureka: not a poem, not a lecture, not quite a treatise—but Poe’s late-life attempt to tell the grandest story of all: how everything began, how it holds together, and how it might end.

Transcript

Welcome to Celebrate Creativity. This series is Conversations with Toys, and this episode is the Second of three episodes in a series called “Poe on a Spring”  This specific episode it's called. Poe and the stars

And as usual, let’s get the disclaimer out-of-the-way.

This podcast is a dramatization that blends historical research with fiction, satire, and imagined conversations between people, toys, and other objects. It is not a documentary and not professional advice of any kind. No character, toy, product, or brand depicted in this podcast is authorized by, endorsed by, or officially affiliated with any company, manufacturer, museum, or organization; references to specific names are for storytelling only and do not imply sponsorship or approval.

Now let's have some fun.

[SOFT, SLIGHTLY SPOOKY MUSIC UNDER — NOTHING TOO DARK]

Tonight we leave the playhouse wing and walk—quietly—into a different kind of stage: a mirrored room, a window, and a tube of glass and brass pointed at the sky.
 Because when Edgar Allan Poe looks up, he doesn’t just want a story. He wants an explanation.

SFX: soft footsteps, a faint “gallery hum,” a distant night security beep.
Different exhibit tonight, folks. Same rule, though—no touching the artifacts… even when they start talking back.
 Now a telescope, such as the one you see, can be an instrument. But in the hands of the curious—especially the young—it behaves like a toy in the best sense: not a trinket, but a machine that turns wonder into a habit.
And Poe… Poe was the kind of mind that didn’t outgrow wonder. He made literature from it.
He weaponized it.

NARRATOR (leaning into awe): At first, it’s simple: you look through the tube and the sky stops being a ceiling. The moon becomes a place with edges. Stars become objects, not decorations.
But Poe doesn’t stop at looking. He starts asking the dangerous question: “If the universe looks like this… then what must it be?”
And that’s how you get Eureka: not a poem, not a lecture, not quite a treatise— but Poe’s late-life attempt to tell the grandest story of all: how everything began, how it holds together, and how it might end.

NIGHT WATCHMAN: In this museum, we call that “moving from the toy shelf to the cosmos”… in one night.
Tonight we leave the playhouse wing and walk—quietly—into a different kind of stage: a mirrored room, a window, and a tube of glass and brass pointed at the sky.
Because when Edgar Allan Poe looks up, he doesn’t just want a story. He wants an explanation.

SFX: soft footsteps, a faint “gallery hum,” a distant night security beep.

NIGHT WATCHMAN (low, friendly):
Different exhibit tonight, folks. Same rule, though—no touching the artifacts… even when they start talking back.

NARRATOR:
A telescope can be an instrument.
But in the hands of the curious—especially the young—it behaves like a toy in the best sense: not a trinket, but a machine that turns wonder into a habit.

And Poe… Poe was the kind of mind that didn’t outgrow wonder.
He weaponized it.
He turned it into literature.

Edgar Poe
But I did not use a telescope until we moved into Moldavia.

Narrator
Then tell us about Moldavia - whatever it is?

Edgar Poe
Ah, Moldavia was a large two-story brick mansion on the southeast corner of Main and Fifth Streets in Richmond where the Allan family lived after Mr. John Allen inherited a great deal of money. The house sat on a big lot that ran toward Cary Street and included several outbuildings. It was built around 1800 by Molly and David Randolph; the nickname “Moldavia” comes from Mol-(ly) + Dav-(id). The house had an extremely
large porch, double-height veranda, a mirrored ballroom, an octagon-shaped dining room, and a wide mahogany stairway. 

So one can easily imagine teenage Edgar slipping away from a stiff dinner in that octagonal room, sneaking upstairs with my telescope.

When Poe lived there:
John Allan bought Moldavia in 1825, and Iived there until I left for the University of Virginia in 1826, and then came back there on later visits in 1827 and 1829. 

Permit me to express my experience in a different way

It was on the balcony of Moldavia that I developed a fascination with astronomy, spending time there with a telescope. 
there was a very respectable house
with a very peculiar name: Moldavia.

Two stories of brick on a Richmond corner—
a wide porch outside,
and inside, a ballroom lined with mirrors
that caught every candle twice.

The stairway was polished mahogany,
wide enough for grand entrances
and creaky enough for secret ones.

And above it all,
a balcony where the night air slipped in like a whisper,
just far enough away from the talk of money and merchandise
down in the octagon-shaped dining room.
  
You must understand—
while the grown-ups downstairs
were discussing tobacco, ships, accounts, and ledgers,
I had discovered something far more interesting.

John Allan brought the telescope back from England,
no doubt thinking it was an educational toy—
a telescope.

Night watchmen
Well how do you think John Allan pictured you?

Poe
He pictured me, I suppose,
as a dutiful young gentleman,
politely peering at church steeples and respectable rooftops
between lessons on commerce.

Instead, I carried that telescope up the stairs,
past the mirrored ballroom,
up to the balcony where the house fell quiet
and the city lights turned into tiny, trembling dots.

Up there, the tobacco and ledgers disappeared.
All that remained
were the stars—
sharp, cold, distant—
and the feeling that the universe was much larger
than any balance sheet downstairs.

NARRATOR (GENTLE, AMUSED): 
So while Mr. Allan counted profits,
young Edgar counted constellations—
a boy in a fine house with a borrowed telescope,
already more interested in the dark between the stars
than the numbers in the ledger.

NARRATOR (leaning into awe):
At first, it’s simple: you look through the tube and the sky stops being a ceiling.
The moon becomes a place with edges.
Stars become objects, not decorations.

Poe
No, I did not stop at looking. He starts asking the dangerous question:
“If the universe looks like this… then what must it be?” And that’s how you get Eureka: not a poem, not a lecture, not quite a treatise—
but my late-life attempt to tell the grandest story of all: how everything began, how it holds together, and how it might end.

Eureka is not a short story or a poem, but a non-fiction book that I called a "Prose Poem" that tries to explain the universe. In it, I explorea radical idea: that the universe originated from a single divine particle and is expanding, only to one day collapse back into its original unity.

For a few moments, Please forget Edgar Allan Poe the tormented artist; in this episode I want to explore, Edgar Allan Poe, the visionary cosmologist.

I began Eureka with a dedication that serves as a statement of myintentions. I wrote:

"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.'"

I clearly state that I want 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 mine more famous tales.

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

Block a
Wow Mr. Poe, Eureka is not an easy work to understand.

Yes,  Eureka: A Prose Poem may not be simple to understand at first, but I believe it is a fascinating and complex piece that offers a unique perspective on my ideas, moving beyond the more common tragic and dark interpretations.  Now Eureka is a non-fiction work that I considered my most significant. Published in 1848, a year before my earthly demise, it's a cosmological treatise where I propose a theory about the universe's origin and ultimate fate. I present my ideas as a "prose poem," using an intuitive and speculative approach rather than a purely scientific one.

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

I believe that. Looking at my ideas through Eureka reframes me from a mere writer of Gothic horror to a visionary thinker. It reveals mys ambition to be more than just a poet or a storyteller. While the scientific community largely dismissed Eureka, it remains a testament to my intellectual breadth and my desire to seek order and meaning in the universe, even while exploring its darkest corners in my fiction.

I was certainly excited about my 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.

Night watchmen
Yes, Mr. Poe, that does make it easier to understand. I like that approach.

Poe
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.

My big idea was that the universe is not just falling apart. I believe 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 I am most famous for writing scary stories, I 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.

I really do hope that you alphabet blocks have the basic idea of Eureka now.

Block a
Then maybe we should l talk about why this is such a surprising and important part of your earthly life.
Night watchmen
Yes, 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 you.

Imagine a puzzle. All of your scary stories and sad poems are like a few of the dark, spooky pieces of the puzzle. They make you think that you were 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 you were also:
 A "What If" Thinker: You weren't just writing about ghosts and murder. You was also asking huge questions like, "Where did we all come from?" and "Where are we all going?" You were curious about the biggest mysteries in the universe.

And while you 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 you 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.”

Edgar Poe
I wasn't just making stuff up. I was reading books about science and thinking deeply about things. I 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 me.  I wasn't just a sad poet; I was a smart, curious, and maybe even a hopeful person who wanted to solve the biggest puzzle of all: the universe itself.

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

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 what he believes is his 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, I try to tell the exact opposite story. I am 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.

Narrator
That is one side of you that I have never thought of before.

Poe
Ah, Think of it like this:

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

But in Eureka, I was trying to find the hidden pattern. I 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.”

I believe that I was a thinker who looked at both sides of life: the sadness and loneliness that I saw around me, but also the hope that everything was connected and would one day be whole again. It's like I 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.

My 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 I am 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 my 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, I 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. I 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.

I wrote Eureka to counter the idea of a chaotic, meaningless universe. I 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.”

I thought it was silly to believe the universe was a big, messy accident. I 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 my work a sense of ultimate purpose and order, which is a very hopeful message.  

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 that I explored. But then, it as though I 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, I wasn't just one thing. I like to think that I was a complex person who saw both the light and the dark. I 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. 

Narrator
Yes, Mr. Poe, all we need to do is think of your life.

Poe
Precisely.  Just Think of my life. It was often filled with chaos and loss. I lost his mother at a very young age, was estranged from his foster father, and my beloved wife, Virginia, suffered from a long illness before she died. From the outside, my life looked like a series of tragedies.

My stories often 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 writer who was actively fighting against that feeling of chaos. I was looking for a deep, hidden order in the universe. I refused to believe that everything was just a random accident. I sought to prove that there was a magnificent design behind all the apparent mess.

NIGHT WATCHMAN:
In this museum, we call that “moving from the toy shelf to the cosmos”…

Join celebrate creativity for the final episode in this series about bobble head Edgar Allan Poe - complete with a raven.

Sources include: The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar Allan Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance by Kenneth Silverman, Poe’s Richmond by Agnes M. Bondurant, and The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science by John Tresch

Thank you for listening to celebrate creativity.