Neither regular nor irregular, it does seem to be the narrow loophole onto another space. Its 'singularity' consists in its being perfectly defined by the formula of the movement leading to it while escaping it. One can see why mathematicians call the point at the center of the vortex 'singular'-opposing it to the whole series of regular points leading towards it. It lets itself be fueled and propelled by asymptotic acceleration to that point, motionless indeed, but far from inert-that point that is kept vibrating by every tension in the psychic field. Between the two representations, the Cartesian system features a 'discontinuity,' and that discontinuity the imagination just cannot accept. But on the other hand, if one should want to force it into a graphic representation of its movement's terminal point, that point would fall, inert, on the origin. On the one hand, the movement toward infinity can be plotted as a curve that shoots up more and more vertically, closer and closer to the y-axis, and tends asymptotically toward a position defined by y=∞/x=0. Within the Cartesian coordinate system, the answer is yes. But a point that turns (on itself by now) at infinite speed-what is it? Is it a mere point? At the extreme point of the cone, the spiral would reach infinite speed. And so, the mathematical formula of the vortex does include the definition of its terminal state. Understandably, this leads to the conclusion that such a vortex 'cannot be physically achieved.' Physically, that is to say, in the physical world but mathematics is meta-physical in the sense that it can, indeed, that it must posit the infinite. Here is that definition: 'In fluid dynamics, a 'vortex' is a whirl model in which the speed of the whirling particles at every point is inversely proportional to the distance between that point and the center of the whirl.' 4 In other words, the speed increases as the spiral closes in towards its center in the near vicinity of that center (or of the vertical axis), it tends toward infinity. Visionary reason, indeed, and rational vision, too, since that very 'vortex' in its scientific definition offers a figure of acceleration to infinite speed. The fisherman without his watch is now revolving clockwise at accelerated speed in his orbit he has fallen onto a blank dial and is going to be awarded the dangerous privilege of contemplating the inaccessible axis where time gathers up in utter contradiction. 3 Indeed, awe and contemplation pervade the whole episode. Poe is organizing vertiginous space according to the rigorous law of the symmetry of contraries, a law that can be traced back to the topology of sacred space. That cone forms an ordered world, together with the other elements in the scene-the dark sky, the moon, the central mist, the belt of foam. He suddenly offers the fisherman an escape inside chaos by flinging him into the very cone of the whirl. What he will do is explore a new Reason, a more visionary one. But Poe is not just going to force reason away from its moorings, is not going to abandon his fisherman in the foaming cauldron. Let the self go and let go everyday space-losing familiar landmarks, even the regular marking of time (as when the fisherman throws his run-down watch into the ocean), experiencing the fear and temptation of loosening one's grip, of throwing oneself into the dizzying chaos of foam.

The new watchword is 'let go' and it will be renewed within the narration of the 'guide' and former fisherman, when the latter is forced into the Maelström. The foundations of 'reason'-in the sense of reasonableness-are going to be questioned. Try to 'reason' himself as he may, the general narrator now on top of the abrupt summit of Helseggen cannot 'divest of the idea that the very foundations of the mountain were in danger from the fury of the winds' ( Works, 2:578)-'reason,' 'foundations,' the key words are there. Pride of place is there given to the imagination (the narration, by the fisherman, of the supposedly actual adventure coming only second) and what is imagined is a vertical fall-free, unchecked, bottomless. Poe's tale offers itself from the start as an invitation to vertigo.

2 Summoned by these three experiences of the vortex, Reason must define its position-what if its very fidelity to its inner dynamisms was the one and only force that carried it into a vortex? 1 This reading is based on a distinction I intend to establish between three related realities: the physical vortex, an observable phenomenon the mathematical vortex, a formalization of the former the imaginative vortex, finally, that opens the mind to Space itself. Found in a Bottle' and was later transfigured in the treatise-cum-poem that crowns the whole oeuvre, Eureka. As the above title makes clear, it is essentially to a reading of 'A Descent into the Maelström' that you are here invited-bearing in mind that Poe's interest in an ultimate whirl first found expression in 'MS.

Descent space fiction