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How far the power of words reaches?
Edgar Allan Poe: Words create the world
Page 3
AGATHOS. In the beginning only, he created. The seeming creatures which are now, throughout the universe, so perpetually springing into being, can only be considered as the mediate or indirect, not as the direct or immediate results of the Divine creative power.
OINOS. Among men, my Agathos, this idea would be considered heretical in the extreme.
AGATHOS. Among angels, my Oinos, it is seen to be simply true.
OINOS. I can comprehend you thus far- that certain operations of what we term Nature, or the natural laws, will, under certain conditions, give rise to that which has all the appearance of creation. Shortly before the final overthrow of the earth, there were, I well remember, many very successful experiments in what some philosophers were weak enough to denominate the creation of animalculae.
AGATHOS. The cases of which you speak were, in fact, instances of the secondary creation- and of the only species of creation which has ever been, since the first word spoke into existence the first law.
OINOS. Are not the starry worlds that, from the abyss of nonentity, burst hourly forth into the heavens- are not these stars, Agathos, the immediate handiwork of the King?
Cf. Rilke, Letter to a Young Poet | Plato, Whom are we talking to? | Kierkegaard, My work as an author | Emerson, Self-knowledge | Gibson - McRury, Discovering one's face | Emerson, We differ in art, not in wisdom | Joyce, Portrait of the Artist
