GÉNESIS POÉTICA EN UN ESCENARIO SIN DESTELLO1

Abstract

This article examines Edgar Allan Poe’s posthumous Eureka: A Prose Poem (1848) as a boundary-crossing work in which literature, aesthetics, philosophy, and science converge, with special attention to its links to nineteenth-century astronomy. It first frames Poe’s international reception, emphasizing how recognition beyond the United States—particularly in France and the Spanish-speaking world—was shaped by translation and critical advocacy. It then develops a close reading of Eureka’s poetic-cosmological program: Poe presents “truth” as inseparable from beauty and intuition, challenging the restriction of knowledge to Baconian induction and Aristotelian deduction. The discussion connects this stance to later reflections on creativity and problem-solving, and to philosophical interpretations that place Poe within the German cosmological tradition (Kant–Schelling), where the universe is treated as an ordered totality encompassing matter and spirit. The article also evaluates Eureka’s prospective dimension by considering its qualitative anticipation of cosmological questions—most notably the darkness of the night sky associated with Olbers’ paradox—and Poe’s insistence on a universe with a beginning and an expansive history. The conclusion argues that, although Eureka’s scientific claims are necessarily contingent, the work remains significant for illustrating how artistic imagination can formulate conceptual problems and explanatory models that later resonate with scientific and technological developments.