ABSTRACT. The Vigil of Roderick Usher is one of Ion Barbu’s most emblematic and hermetic texts. However, its cryptic language contains a deeper truth that illuminates the Romanian author’s relation with Edgar Poe’s poetics and cosmology. It is his manner of paying homage to the American writer, in whom he sees a precursor of modern pure poetry, that kind of poetry which dreams of “travelling through the universe,” only to end up asking, like Novalis, “is not the universe in us?” pp. 162–198

Keywords: Ion Barbu; Henri Bergson; cosmology; (creative) emotion; duration; genius; knowledge; Poe; (poetic) creation; poetry; pure poetry; science; vital impulse