In his prose poem Eureka, Poe concludes that God and the human soul are pervasively present in the universe itself. Truth is intrinsic to reality, as it is to consciousness. The pedantic voice of the postscript knows and does not know the meaning of the ciphers found at Tsalal, “I have graven it within the hills, and my vengeance upon the dust within the rock.” Poe has brought the tale to a region that, in his place and time, was far beyond the common understanding, and perhaps beyond his own as well, except in its deepest reaches, where he knew that God is just.
From On Edgar Allan Poe by Marilynne Robinson | The New York Review of Books
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