The story starts with Eiros waking up to the startling realization that the afterlife is real, and that he (or she - Poe doesn’t say) is in it. In this early instance of the cataclysmic-collision-with-celestial-object tale, Poe makes an odd mix of science and prophesy to capture the moment of “the speculative Future merged in the august and certain Present.” “Eiros and Charmion” shows us what happens when the unknown becomes the dramatically revealed known. Poe’s very short story about the End of the World is an apocalypse in both senses of the word. The word “apocalypse” not only means a cataclysm that ends the current world order, but also, from the word’s Greek root, a revelation of truth. Edgar Allen Poe’s The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion (1839)
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