Text: Edgar Allan Poe (ed. Stuart and Susan Levine), “Eureka (Preface),” The Collected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe — EAP: Eureka (2004), p. 5 (This material is protected by copyright)

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PREFACE.

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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 [[1.1]] — 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.” [[2.1]]

Nevertheless it is as a Poem only that I wish this work to be judged after I am dead.

E.A.P.