Reading Secrets

‘… the notion of a secret is paradoxical. Jaques Derrida has formulated the paradox as follows: ‘There is something secret. But it does not conceal itself’ (Derrida 199b, 21).

Abraham Cowley (1618-1667)

Exile in Paris, 1644-1656

‘But the chief testimony of his fidelity was the laborious service he underwent in maintaining the constant correspondence between the late king and the queen his wife. In that weighty trust he behaved himself with indefatigable integrity and unsuspected secrecy; for he ciphered and deciphered with his own hand the greatest part of all the letters that passed between their majesties, and managed a vast intelligence in many other parts, which for some years together took up all his days and two or three nights every week.’

Future looked promising as a scholar, but the outbreak of the British civil war corrupted this.

Royalist affiliations led him to flee Cambridge and write for the Royalist cause.

Writing satires in Oxford for the Royalist cause.

Comes to the attention of the royal family, a secretary to the queen. Flees to Paris with her.

Steganography

The practice of concealing a message within another message or a physical object. The word comes from the Greek steganographia, which combines the words steganos meaning ‘covered or concealing’, and -graphia meaning ‘writing’.

Cryptography/Cryptology