Lou Andreas-Salomé

Infobox Person
name = Lou Andreas-Salomé


image_size = 150px
caption = "Lou Andreas-Salomé"
birth_name = Louise von Salomé
birth_date = Birth date|1861|02|12
birth_place = St. Petersburg, Russia
death_date = Death date and age|1937|02|05|1861|02|12
death_place = Göttingen, Germany
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nationality = Russian
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Lou Andreas-Salomé (née Louise von Salomé) (February 12, 1861 St. Petersburg – February 5, 1937 Göttingen) was a Russian-born psychoanalyst and author. Her diverse intellectual interests led to friendships with a broad array of distinguished western luminaries, including Nietzsche, Wagner, Freud, and Rilke.

Life

Early years

Lou Salomé ( née Luíza Gustavovna Salomé - Луиза Густавовна Саломе) was born in St. Petersburg to an army general and his wife, Salomé was their only daughter; she had five brothers. Although she would later be attacked by the Nazis as a "Finnish Jewess," her parents were actually of French Huguenot and Northern German descent. cite book
last = Powell
first = Anthony
title = Under Review: Further Writings on Writers, 1946-1990
publisher = University of Chicago Press
date = 1994
pages = 440
isbn = 0226677125 ]

Seeking an education beyond a typical woman's station of that time and place, when she was seventeen Salomé persuaded the Dutch preacher Hendrik Gillot, twenty-five years her senior, to teach her theology, philosophy, world religions, and French and German literature. Gillot became so smitten with Salomé that he planned to divorce his wife and marry her. Salomé and her mother fled to Zurich, so she could acquire a university education. The journey was also intended to be beneficial for Salomé's physical health; she was coughing up blood at this time.

Rée, Nietzsche and later life

Salomé's mother took her to Rome, Italy when she was 21. At a literary salon in the city, Salomé became acquainted with Paul Rée, an author and compulsive gambler with whom she proposed living in an academic commune. After two months, the two became partners. On May 13, 1882, Rée's friend Friedrich Nietzsche joined the duo. Salomé would later write a controversial 1894 study, "Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werken", of Nietzsche's personality and philosophy. [Salomé, 2001] The three travelled with Salomé's mother through Italy and considered where they would set up their "Winterplan" commune. Arriving in Leipzig, Germany in October, Salomé and Rée separated from Nietzsche after a falling-out between Nietzsche and Salomé, in which Salomé believed that Nietzsche was desperately in love with her. In 1884 Salomé became acquainted with Helene von Druskowitz, the second woman to receive a philosophy doctorate in Zurich.

A fictional account of Salomé's relationship with Nietszche is described in Irvin Yalom's novel, "When Nietzsche Wept". [Yalom I (1992) When Nietszche Wept [http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=1260] . Basic Books ]

Marriage and relationships

Salomé and Rée moved to Berlin and lived together until a few years before her celibate marriageMark M. Anderson, "The Poet and the Muse", "The Nation", July 3, 2006, p. 40-41.] to linguistics scholar Carl Friedrich Andreas. Despite her opposition to marriage and her open relationships with other men, Salomé and Andreas remained married from 1887 until his death in 1930. The distress caused by Salomé's co-habitation with Andreas caused the morose Rée to fade from Salomé's life despite her assurances. Throughout her married life, she engaged in affairs or/and correspondence with the German journalist Georg Lebedour, the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, on whom she wrote an analytical memoir, [Andreas-Salomé, 2003] the psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud, and Viktor Tausk, among others. Accounts of many of these are given in her volume "Lebensrückblick".

Her relationship with Rilke was particularly close. Salomé was fifteen years his senior. They met when he was 21. They were lovers for several years and correspondents until Rilke's death; it was she who began calling him "Rainer" rather than "René"; she taught him Russian, to read Tolstoy (whom he would later meet) and Pushkin. She introduced him to patrons and to many other people in the arts and remained his advisor, confidante and muse throughout his adult life.

Lou Andreas-Salomé died of uremia (kidney failure) in Göttingen on February 5, 1937.

Work

Salomé was a prolific writer, and wrote several little-known novels, plays, and essays. She authored a "Hymn to Life" that so deeply impressed Nietzsche that he was moved to set it to music. Salomé's literary and analytical studies became such a vogue in Göttingen, the German town in which she lived her last years, that the Gestapo waited until shortly after her death by uremia in 1937 to burn her library. Salomé is said to have remarked in her last days, "I have really done nothing but work all my life, work ... why?" And in her last hours, as if talking to herself, she is reported to have said, "If I let my thoughts roam I find no one. The best, after all, is death." [Peters, 'My Sister, My Spouse', p. 300] She wrote more than a dozen novels and other non-fiction studies such as "Henrik Ibsens Frauengestalten" (1892), a study of Ibsen's woman characters.

Notes

References

*Salomé, Lou: "Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werke", 1894; Eng., "Nietzsche", tr. and ed. Siegfried Mandel, Champagin IL: University of Illinois Press [http://www.press.uillinois.edu/f01/salome.html Univ. of Illinois Press] , 2001
* "You Alone Are Real to Me: Remembering Rainer Maria Rilke", tr. Angela von der Lippe, Rochester NY: [http://www.boaeditions.org/books/youalone.html BOA Editions] , 2003
* "Sigmund Freud and Lou Andreas-Salome: Letters", New York: Norton, 1985
* "The Freud Journal", Texas Bookman, 1996
* Peters, H. F., "My Sister, My Spouse: A Biography of Lou Andreas-Salome", New York: Norton, 1962
* Binion, R., "Frau Lou: Nietzsche's Wayward Disciple", foreword by Walter Kaufmann, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968
* Vollmann, William T., [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/14/books/review/14VOLLMAN.html Friedrich Nietzsche': The Constructive Nihilist] , "The New York Times", August 14, 2005.
* "Le diable et sa grand-mère" [1922] , tr. and annotated by Pascale Hummel, 2005
* "L'heure sans Dieu et autres histoires pour enfants" [1922] , tr. and annotated by Pascale Hummel, 2006
* Foerster-Nietzsche, Elisabeth, "Friedrich Nietzsche et les femmes de son temps" [1935] , tr. and annotated by Pascale Hummel, Paris: Michel de Maule, 2007

External links

* [http://www.lou-andreas-salome.de Lou Andreas-Salomé] (A comprehensive site in German)
* [http://www.fabula.org/revue/document1503.php Entretien autour de Lou Andreas-Salomé] (Interesting interview in French)
* [http://www.fabula.org/revue/document3755.php Entretien autour de Friedrich Nietzsche et son temps]
* [http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?authoruid=11784&golist=true&exact=true English-language page details list of her works on Literary Encyclopedia]