Lou Andreas-Salome

Lou Andreas-Salomé, registered at birth as Luíza Gustávovna Salomé (transliteration of Луиза Густавовна Саломе; Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, 12 February 5, 1861-Göttingen, Germany, February 5, 1937), was a Russian writer and psychoanalyst, with liberal leanings.

She was a shrewd collaborator in the philosophical works of Friedrich Nietzsche, his friend, critic and close adviser, but not his partner, since she finally joined Paul Rée, a mutual friend and of whom both were partners in intellectual work. She was the author of several books, a psychoanalyst, a disciple and collaborator of the closest circle of Sigmund Freud, and a spiritual company of artists and writers of the turn of the century XIX and early XX.

Biography

She was born in Saint Petersburg, the daughter of Gustav von Salome, a general in the Imperial Russian Army, and his wife Louise Wilm von Salome. Louise (Luíza) was the youngest daughter of the couple and the only woman after five boys, she was baptized with her mother's name and in her childhood she was affectionately called by the Russian diminutive Ljola and later Lou. At the age of seventeen and in search of an education beyond the typical for a woman in that place and time, she convinced the German preacher Hendrik Gillot, twenty-five years her senior, to teach her theology, philosophy, religion and French and German literature. Gillot fell in love with Lou Salomé, to the point that he planned to divorce her wife and marry her.

In September 1880, he traveled with his mother to Zurich in order to register to study at the university. Switzerland was at that time the only German-speaking country where women were allowed to pursue a university degree without restrictions. Although her mother did not look favorably on her daughter's plans, she had to finally give in to Lou's deep desire to study.The trip was also made to benefit the physical health of the young woman, who at that time coughed blood.

Ree and Nietzsche

Salome, Paul Rée and Nietzsche.

Two years later, at the age of 21, he moved to Rome with his mother. There she met Paul Rée (who would be her lover for a while) and Friedrich Nietzsche (later, in 1894, he would write a controversial study, Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werke ), about Nietzsche's personality and philosophy.) with whom he would establish an intellectual trio.

The three of them traveled with Salome's mother through Italy, and decided they should establish their commune Winterplan. When they arrived in Leipzig, Germany, in October, Salomé and Rée parted company with Nietzsche, after a dispute between Nietzsche and Salomé, in which Nietzsche surprisingly proposed to her, believing he had found in Lou the only woman who would be capable of marriage. to understand it. She did not accept it and instead proposed to both men in love to join in a triad of production and intellectual work. A photo in which the three of them appear, with Lou driving the car, came to be an allegory of this pact. According to investigations into the history of psychoanalysis, Nietzsche would have included in Zarathustra regarding this matter (and precisely this photo that caused a great scandal) the phrase «Are you going with women? Don't forget the whip."

Salomé and Rée's travels and studies continued, until in 1887 she would meet Carl Friedrich Andreas, whom she would marry. Despite her opposition to the marriage and his opposition to her open relationships with many other men, Salome and Andreas remained married from 1887 until Andreas's death in 1930. He is said to have blackmailed her into committing suicide if she did not agree. marry him and that they always lived in separate houses and did not maintain intimate relations.

Rainer Maria Rilke

His relationship with Rilke was particularly close. Salome was fifteen years older. They met when he was twenty-one. They were lovers for several years and corresponded until Rilke's death. Proof of their long and intense relationship are the love letters that were written and that are still preserved. It was she who began calling him Rainer, instead of René; she taught him Russian, reading Leo Tolstoy (whom he would later meet) and Aleksandr Pushkin. She introduced him to important men and many others in the field of the arts, and remained his advisor and confidant throughout her adult life.

Sigmund Freud

In 1911, she met Sigmund Freud and was immediately interested in psychoanalysis, becoming the first woman to be accepted into the Vienna psychoanalytic circle. Both would maintain a friendly relationship of deep respect and affection for the rest of their lives. Starting in 1915, she began to undergo psychoanalytic consultation in the German city of Göttingen, until, at the age of 74, her health prevented her from doing so.

It was a modesty and uncommon discretion. He never talked about his own poetic and literary productions. It was evident that he knew where the real values of life should be sought. Whoever approached him received the most intense impression of the authenticity and harmony of his being, and he could also prove, for his astonishment, that all female weaknesses and perhaps most human weaknesses were alien to him, or had overcome them in the course of his life.

Sigmund Freud, Lou Andreas-Salomé (February 1937).

Work

She was a prolific writer, writing several little-known novels, romances, plays, and essays. She wrote romances and corresponded with the German journalist Georg Lebedour, the Austro-Hungarian poet Rainer Maria Rilke, and the psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Viktor Tausk, among others. She accounts for many of them in her book Lebensrückblick.

Lou Andreas-Salomé published these works according to An Encyclopedia of Continental Women Writers.

• Im Kampf um Gott1885.
• Henrik Ibsens Frau-Gestalten1892.
• Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werken Wien1894.
• Ruth1895, 1897.
• Fenitshcka. Eine Ausschweifung1898,1983.
• Menschenkinder1899.
• Aus fremder Seele1901.
• Ma1901.
• Im Zwischenland1902.
• Die Erotik1910.
• Drei Briefe an einen Knaben1917.
• Das Haus. Eine Familiengeschichte vom Ende des vorigen Jahrhunderts1919, 1921, 1927.
• Die Stunde ohne Gott und andere Kindergeschichten1921.
• Der Teufel und seine Grossmutter. Traumspiel1922.
• Rodinka. Eine russische Erinnerung1923.
• Rainer Maria Rilke. Buch des Gedenkens1928.
• Mein Dank an Freud: Offener Brief an Professor Freud zu seinem 75 Geburtstag1931.
• Lebensruckblick. Grundriss einiger Lebenserinnerungenened. E. Pfeiffer, 1951, 1968.
• Rainer Maria Rilke - Lou Andreas-Salomé. Briefwechseled. E. Pfeiffer, 1952.
• In der Schule bei Freuded. E. Pfeiffer, 1958.
• Sigmund Freud - Lou Andreas-Salomé. Briefwechseled. E. Pfeiffer, 1966.
• Friedrich Nietzsche, Paul Rée, Lou von Salome: Die Dokumente ihrer Begegnunged. E. Pfeiffer, 1970.

Others further add:

• Jesus der Jude (1895)
• Eine Ausschweifung (1898)
• Vom frühen Gottesdienst (1913)
• Zum Typus Weib (1914)
• Anal und Sexual (1916)
• Psychosexualität (1917)
• Narzißmus als Doppelrichtung (1921)

Contributions

Restless and non-conformist, she wanted to break with the role that society and family had assigned her, and from a very young age she took an active part in the most avant-garde intellectual circles in Europe until she became the author of a prolific and diverse body of work (literary, critical, philosophical and psychoanalytic) that he only partially published during his lifetime.

His thought mixed Freudian psychoanalysis with the philosophy of Nietzsche and his studies were based mainly on narcissism and female sexuality.

It is about a woman who lived her life with extreme freedom, unusual for her time. She was a liberated woman icon of the early XX century. The freedom of spirit that characterized her and so disconcerted her time was the expression of a woman eager for knowledge who knew how to defend her intellectual, sentimental and, in short, vital autonomy despite the social constraints of her time. She influenced lovingly and intellectually in some of the fundamental men of the last hundred years.

Death

Lou Andreas Salomé died in 1937 in Göttingen, his last city of residence, at the age of 76, due to kidney failure. The Gestapo confiscated his library a few days after his death, but his works remained - more than a dozen novels and numerous studies - as well as copious correspondence with the brilliant men of his life. And her example of a woman who always fought for her intellectual freedom.

It is said that Salomé highlighted in her last days that «I really have done nothing but work all my life, work... why?». And in her last hours, as if she were talking to herself, she has been reported to have said: “If I let my thoughts wander, I would find none. The best, after all, is death."

Works about L. Andreas-Salomé

• Lou Salome, opera by Giuseppe Sinopoli, premiered in 1981. Bayerischen Staatsoper München.
• Al di la del bene e del malLiliana Cavani's film, 1977, with Dominique Sanda.
• The most beloved, 2004, edition of Grupo Editorial Mexico, book and thesis of María Elena Sarmiento.
• Biographical film Lou Andreas-Salomé: The Audacity to be Free, of 2016, of Cordula Kablitz-Post.