Eureka: A Prose Poem - Analysis

Analysis

Eureka presents themes and sentiments similar to some of those in Poe's fiction work, including attempts at breaking beyond the obstacle of death and specifically characters who return from death in stories like "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "Ligeia". Similar to his theories on a good short story, Poe believes the universe is a self-contained, closed system. In coming to his conclusions, Poe uses ratiocination as a literary device, through his character C. Auguste Dupin, as if Poe himself were a detective solving the mystery of the universe. Eureka, then, is the culmination of Poe's interest in capturing truth through language, an extension of his interest in cryptography.

Eureka seems to continue the science fiction traditions he used in works like "MS. Found in a Bottle" and "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar". He further emphasizes the connection between his theory and fiction by saying that the universe itself is a written work: "The Universe is a plot of God", Poe says, and "the plots of God are perfect". Even so, Poe admits the difficulty in explaining these theories comes in part from the limitations of language, often apologizing for or explaining his use of "common" or "vulgar" terms.

Poe's decision to refer to the piece as a "prose poem" goes against some of his own "rules" of poetry which he laid out in "The Philosophy of Composition" and "The Poetic Principle". In particular, Poe called the ideal poem short, at most 100 lines, and utilizing the "most poetical topic in the world": the death of a beautiful woman. Poe himself suggested that the work be judged only as a work of art, not of science, possibly dismissing the seriousness of Eureka. Though he is using mathematical and scientific terms, he may really be talking about aesthetics and suggesting there is a close connection between science and art. This is an ironic sentiment when compared to his message in the poem "To Science" where he shows a distaste for modern science encroaching on spirituality and the artist's imagination. Poe also discusses several astronomy-related topics in Eureka, including the speed of the stars, the diameters of planets and distance between them, the weight of Earth, and the orbit of the newly-discovered "Leverrier's planet" (later named Neptune).

The work ventures into transcendentalism, relying strongly on intuition, a movement and practice he had despised. Though he criticized the transcendental movement for what he referred to as incoherent mysticism, Eureka is more mystical than most transcendental works. Eureka has also been compared to the theories of Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science and Joseph Smith, Jr., founder of Mormonism.

The essay is written in a progressive manner that anticipates its audience. For example, Poe uses more metaphors further into the work in the belief that the reader becomes more interested. Poe's voice crescendos throughout, starting as the modest seeker of truth, moving on to the satirist of logic, and finally ending as the master scholar.