A Descent into the Maelström: A Precursor of Eureka

 

Alejandro Marlo Valle Caraballo

 

Abstract

This study aims to interpret "A Descent into the Maelstrom" as a precursor of Eureka, and as a portrayal of Edgar Allan Poe’s cosmic vision. The tale is about a fisherman who survived a terrible whirlpool in Norway. The Maelstrom, as it is known, unleashes an exceptional fury, this time due to the influence of a hurricane. Poe wrote this story from elements that have aesthetic characteristics of the sublime, and the sublime is, at the same time, the source of the mental state of the fisherman and the narrator. This mental state leads the fisherman to realize that he can save himself, and in the narrator it causes a series of changes in their value system. The interpretation proposed in this study considers the story as a representation of Poe's stance against the scientific method promoted during the nineteenth century, and against the two axioms – deductive and inductive method - that claimed to be the only path to truth and knowledge. The correlation of the above elements and the correspondence between the scientific perspectives that Poe presented in the two works are taken into account. Poe proposes that the scientific method is insufficient to understand the universe, and gives great value to the imagination and intuition as complementary perceptions to achieve truth and knowledge.

 

Keywords

Sublime, positivism, Maelström, imagination, intuition, scientific method.

 

References

 

 

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