4 13 Ides of April

Deciphering Poe’s “Eureka”

413 Ides of April breaking the code

Edgar Allan Poe’s book “Eureka” - The last book Poe wrote, which is a 150-page prose poem. Edgar Allan Poe was very clear that you should not take Eureka literally and that it needs to be read as a prose poem. Why was it so important for him to have this book “copy written” by an attorney before copy writing was popular?

Edgar Allan Poe was the best at coding messages within documents. He was fluent in 7 languages and was considered a master of the ancient languages, Latin, Greek, Hebrew and his passion was with Egyptian Hieroglyphs.

Right before Thomas Jefferson’s death, did he show Edgar Allan Poe how the Jefferson disk worked? Did this get Edgar Allan Poe interested in ciphering messages?

The Jefferson disk, also called the Bazeries cylinder or wheel cypher as named by Thomas Jefferson, is a cipher system using a set of wheels or disks, each with the 26 letters of the alphabet arranged around their edge. The order of the letters is different for each disk and is usually ordered randomly. Each disk is marked with a unique number and a hole in the center of the disks allows them to be stacked on an axle. The disks are removable and can be mounted on the axle in any order desired. The order of the disks is the cipher key, and both sender and receiver must arrange the disks in the same predefined order. Jefferson's device had 36 disks

Since he was a master of so many languages it gave him the ability to write his coded message by using a wide range of synonyms, misspelling a word or even just making up a word.

Edgar A. Poe went to West Point and was really good at cryptographic and then he became an editor of the newspaper. He would put letters and articles in the paper for people to try to cipher them. At this time this was the easiest and cheapest way to write to a bunch of people and yet it was still a secret private message. Edgar Allan Poe wrote cryptographic articles to challenge his readers.  He wanted them to send in their codes and he would break them and tell his readers how it was done.  WB Tyler is one of the people that would send in codes to be broken and we now know it was Edgar Allan Poe that was sending these into the newspaper using that name.  Poe published two ciphers in December 1839.  In 1985, Professor Louis Renza proved that WB Tyler was actually Edgar Allan Poe.  In 1992 Professor Terence Whalen solved the first cipher, which turned out to be a passage in Joseph Addison’s 1713 play “CATO”.  This play premiered on April 14, 1713. The play Cato was the story of Cato the Younger CATO committing suicide and not dying as he rips the bandaged away and pulls out his entrails and then dies on April 13, 46 BC. Brutus later killed Caesar with the same dagger

The second code was much harder to crack and in July 2000 was finally decoded using a poly-alphabetic substitution cipher.  This is what was decoded that Poe wrote hidden within knowing that it may not be decoded until after he was gone. 

            “Ye who read are still among the living; but I who write shall have long since gone my way into the region of shadows.  For indeed strange things shall happen, and secret things be known, and many centuries shall pass away, ere these memorials be seen of men. And, when seen, there will be some to disbelieve, and some to doubt, and yet a few who will find much to ponder upon in the characters here graven with a stylus of iron” EAP Shadow – A Parable

Edgar Allan Poe “presents his Eureka as an offering to those who feel rather than those who think – to the dreamers and those who put faith in dreams as the only realities.  I offer this Book of Truths, not in its character of Truth-Teller, but for the Beauty that abounds in its Truth; constituting it true.”  These are hints on how to read or decode Eureka as not for what the actual literal content but to be read as a poem.  Line by line.  Why are some words chaptalized in the middle of a sentence, why was spelling and grammar a big issue and the font type that changed all of sudden?  Poe states in the introduction “What I here propound is true: -- therefore it cannot die: or if by any means it be now trodden down so that it die, it will “rise again to the Life Everlasting.”  Then he finishes the introduction by saying “Nevertheless it is as a Poem only that I wish this work to be judged after I am dead.”  He once said that he will be the most famous person to ever lived on earth but for reasons not yet known and these reasons will not come to light for another 2000 years.  Is Eureka, Edgar Allan Poe’s confession? Edgar signed copies of Eureka with his handwritten comments correcting the printer’s errors, are these corrections needed to decode Eureka?

After Eureka was published, he wrote “I have no desire to live since I have done Eureka, I could accomplish nothing more.” He told a friend that “he believed his contemporary generation was unable to understand it but that it would be appreciated, if ever, two thousand years later.” Why would it take so long, two thousand years for us to finally understand the impact Eureka has?

Poe also wrote in Eureka (paraphrasing Kepler), “ I care not whether my work be read now or by posterity. I can afford to wait a century for readers when God himself has waited six thousand years for an observer. I triumph. I have stolen the golden secret of the Egyptians. I will indulge my sacred fury.” We have waited more than a century, it’s time we read Eureka the way Poe intended it to be read.

Therefore, the first word is as important as the last word on a page, and the first word on a line is as important as the last word on that line. He had Eureka copied written to preserve the way it was written; he knew some publishers will try to condense the number of pages in order to save money and the true meaning would be lost.

Edgar Allan Poe wrote “An Enigma” which is a poem sonnet that has conceal an anagram of Sarah Anna Lewis. Using the first letter of the first line, then the second letter in the second line, and so on, he spells out her name. These letters all have a predetermined order and a predetermined place in every line of the poem in order to spell out her name. Poe also sends a cryptography valentine poem to Frances Sargent Osgood as well using this same method.

Poe also used a method called “steganography” which needs an agreement between the sender and receiver on how it is written and how to extract the message. This can be as simple as taking the first letter of each sentence or the first letter from each line. This can be complex since the hidden message has predetermined positions within another text of letters. In “Eureka” Poe talks about Champollion the person who deciphered the Egyptian hieroglyphs, Poe then states, “that he himself has stolen a golden secret from the Egyptians”.

Here are a few things to look at before trying to decode Eureka. Poe finished Eureka on April 9, 1845. Before publishing it, Hopkins tries to edit it correcting the spelling and changed the ending. On May 22, 1848, Putnam agrees to publish Eureka and it was published on June 15, 1848, with 500 copies of a duodecimo format produced. You must only look at first edition published in 1848 by the George P. Putnam firm. However, there are four copies that Poe marked in his handwriting his comments and revisions. Poe receives possession and inscribes it with his corrections and sent on July 15, 1848, to Mary Osborne. This first copy is now in the Alderman Library at the University of Virginia. The second corrected copy he sent to Sarah Helen Whitman and is now at the J. K. Lilly Library at University of Indiana. The third copy with his corrections was the Nelson-Mabbott, somehow Griswold acquired the third copy before Poe’s death on October 7, 1849, and it is now at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin. The forth copy that Poe corrected in the summer of 1849 right before this death while in Richmond, this is known as the Susan Jaffe Tane copy that is being held in a private collection in New York.

I have found on the internet a dissertation from Roland W. Nelson submitted in August 1974 to the Bowling Green State University in order to receive his Doctor of Philosophy degree. The dissertation is called “The Definitive Edition of Edar Allan Poe’s Eureka: A Prose Poem. Roland Nelson outlines each of the four corrected copies and compares them to one another.

Another thing to look for is facts that Edgar Allan Poe knew to be true at the time and stated them incorrectly on purpose in Eureka. For example, he was well aware of how fast the speed of light was at that time so why in Eureka he was not as accurate.

Look for items that stick out. Misspelled words, words in a different language, change in font type, changing to bold and italic for no reason. the use of compound words, sometimes he hyphenates words that do not need to be hyphenated and sometimes he should have hyphenated a word but he does not. The change in font style could be an indication that a new key is required for that section. Usually, the key is the first sentence of the chapter or the first sentence on that page. Why did he underline some words and phrases? Why are some words capitalized in the middle of a sentence.

Please, help in deciphering Eureka, join my blog and let’s work together to solve this mystery.

Let’s read this book the way Poe intended it to be read.

For more on Edgar A. Poe’s deciphering, see also the page on Edgar A Poe & Joseph Smith

Edgar Allan Poe and cryptography: Are there hidden messages in Eureka? - Baltimore Post-Examiner (baltimorepostexaminer.com) René van Slooten is a leading ‘Poe researcher’, who theorizes that Poe’s final treatise, ‘Eureka’, a response to the philosophical and religious questions of his time, was a forerunner to Einstein’s theory of relativity. He was born in 1944 in The Netherlands. He studied chemical engineering and science history and worked in the food industry in Europe, Africa and Asia.The past years he works in the production of bio-fuels from organic waste materials, especially in developing countries. His interest in Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Eureka’ started in 1982, when he found an antiquarian edition and read the scientific and philosophical ideas that were unheard of in 1848. He became a member of the international ‘Edgar Allan Poe Studies Association’ and his first article about ‘Eureka’ appeared in 1986 in a major Dutch magazine. Since then he published numerous articles, essays and letters on Poe and ‘Eureka’ in Dutch magazines and newspapers, but also in the international magazinesLike in ‘Eureka’, where Poe first mentions Champollion (who deciphered the Egyptian hieroglyphs), and then states that he himself has stolen a golden secret of the Egyptians.

And with the knowledge of hidden messages, it also becomes understandable and plausible why some stories contain subtle hints about hidden, ‘double’ or ‘deeper’ meanings, like the suggestion that ‘Eureka’ should be read like a poem after Poe’s death.  And, quite often, such intriguing stories are preceded by a motto or introduction that has a suggestive sentence of 24, 25 or 26 letters that might be the key-phrase that has to be used in deciphering  the secret message. This is the case with ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’; ‘The Assignation’; ‘The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade’; ‘The Unparalleled Adventure of one Hans Pfaall’; ‘How to write a Blackwood article’ and ‘The Business Man’.

Most probably there are more hints to be found upon a closer examination of other stories as well. In the case of ‘Eureka’ there are a few other indications for hidden messages. In the first place the often bad style and sometimes weird construction of paragraphs and sentences. And in the second place the fact that Poe left notes for many corrections in a second edition, but these notes show that he did not change a sentence or even a word of the original text, although ‘Eureka’ is his second longest work (only the novel ‘Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket’ is a bit longer). Obviously Poe had to protect something, and it will be clear that, if ‘Eureka’ contains steganography, like in the above poem for Anna Sarah Lewis, such an intricate scheme will collapse immediately if even small changes in content are made.

Edgar Allan Poe Joseph Smith in 413 Ides of April — 413 Ides of April