EMILY DICKINSON’S
SECRET LANGUAGE

“I think I should mention that, in the course of my painstaking analysis of the symbols, similes and parables contained in Emily Dickinson’s poems, I have come to discover the central fact in the life of the poet. This unsuspected, incredible fact provides the master key to the hidden freight in almost all of her poems. Without this key they cannot be fully understood except in their small part, until now.

In discovering this fact I have achieved the real break through in the mystery that surrounds the life and the poems of Emily Dickinson. The fact and the freight are sensational and dismaying. I have long debated with myself, whether to keep them secret, for a long time well might pass, before somebody else discovers them. I have convinced myself that they should be revealed." 1

1 Hans Werner Lüscher – in a letter addressed to Thomas J. Wilson, Editor of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, on April 19, 1962.

Hans Werner Lüscher (HWL)