Summary
Lou Andreas - Salome: My Life
Lou Andreas-Salomé was at the turn of the 20th century the prototype of the »independent female mind«: a brave, self-contained, marvelous personality that inspired numerous top intellectuals and artists, but also people in general eager for new spiritual knowledge. Today, her name is not so much associated with her extensive literary and journalistic oeuvre - poetry, short stories, novels, essays and articles - as with physical and spiritual connections with numerous 20th-century intellectuals, greats such as: Friedrich Nietzsche (she refused his marriage proposal), Rainer Maria Rilke (they were in a relationship for many years), Sigmund Freud (she attended his seminars, they corresponded for years)... Memories of spending time with them, with Tolstoy, Schnitzler, Hamsun, Wagner, Adler, Rée, marriage to Andreas, childhood in Russia... and her whole life too rich in memories, feelings and spiritual-intellectual discoveries, she summarized in an intriguing and extremely interesting read. The text of the life of this intellectual femme fatale is a balanced collection of essayistic and theoretical considerations, as well as vivid biographical reminiscences. Lou Andreas-Salomé was self-willed, "more than emancipated", she lived and wrote according to her own rules, so in My Life she does not write her life as a bare chronology, but writes about it openly, but measuredly and meaningfully. Her life was, in fact, her greatest art, and this book is the best confirmation of that.
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