Rainer Maria Rilke – Andreas-Salomé Lou (2022)

Lou Andreas-Salomé, the daughter of a French general in the Russian army, who spent her childhood in St. Petersburg, an author of several books and many articles and reviews, met Rilke in May 1897 as a mature thirty-six-year-old woman, very intelligent and attractive. From their meeting, an intellectual friendship between the writer and the twenty-two-year-old poet was born, which soon grew into a romantic relationship. The enamored aesthete washes dishes for his beloved and chops wood for the stove. He experiences such blissful love for the first time – and also the last. The great poet of love, whose mother's upbringing and years spent at a military gymnasium convinced him of his own physical inferiority, becomes significantly more self-confident in the romantic sphere than in other interpersonal relationships, which often burden him. Previously, he spent time in cafés, editorial offices, and at premieres, but now he can live alone for months. Nature becomes a great experience for him. Under his lover's influence, he changes his name from René to the German variant Rainer, and his previously mediocre handwriting now appears energetic, elegant, relaxed – and resembles her script. 'I came to you poor, I came to a wealthy woman almost like a child. You took my soul in your arms and comforted it... you kissed me on...