Influencing Daniel Hoffman: Eureka and the Seven Poes

Daniel Hoffman's evocative motif of seven versions of Poe emphasizes the frequent shifts and transitions in Poe's stories and poems, giving us an author in constant shift and transition. By keeping his own voice prominent in his book and connecting his own struggles and intellectual discoveries with Poe's texts, Hoffman tied his own identity to Poe's, making criticism a form of autobiography and self-expression. Hoffman emphasized Poe's growing interest in metaphysics and cosmology in his later work, and considered Poe's interest in these ideas crucial to an understanding of his philosophy. In “Eureka,” sometimes read as a satire, Hoffman focused on Poe's deeply serious tone, and argued that the work was best regarded as a symbolic allegory. Hoffman connected “Eureka” with Poe's inner drives, and analyzed it as a forceful expression of Poe's cosmological vision of a universe bound for an eventual collapse into utterly unified force existing beyond materiality.