Lou Andreas-Salomé met Rilke at the Munich apartment of a mutual friend. At the time, Rilke was a twenty-one-year-old art history student whose poetry was virtually unknown. Salome was a thirty-six-year-old established author whose circle of admirers included Friedrich Nietzsche. Rilke and Salome became lovers and for three years, they spent nearly every day together. They traveled widely, to Italy, to the Ukraine, and to Russia, where, in the spring and summer of 1900 the couple met Leo Tolstoy and Boris Pasternak. Their relationship broke off suddenly when, in the autumn of that year, Rilke abruptly married Clara Westhoff, a young sculptress fresh off a summer of studying with Rodin in Paris. Still—Rilke and Salome’s friendship endured and their correspondence continued.
Below is a letter from their only exchange in 1925, when Rilke was rapidly succumbing to the cancer that would kill him within a year.
To Andreas-Salomé
Chateau de Muzot s/Sierre (Valais)
Last day of October, 1925
Dear Lou,
You wrote me, back when the Elegies were finished, saved, present and at hand—that I should not be alarmed if, as part of a reaction, things should one day go badly for me; and I remember still that I answered bravely. But now I am alarmed nonetheless: you see, for two whole years I have been living increasingly in the very midst of an alarm, whose most palpable cause (a self-induced stimulation) I invariably, with devilish obsession, exacerbate just when I think I have overcome the temptation to indulge it. It is a horrible circle, a ring of evil magic that encloses me as into a picture of Hell Breughel. Now, beginning a month ago, phenomena have appeared that are almost certain to maintain me in that particular phobia which besets so many people these days . . . My staunch, faithful nature has been so weakened by the duration and intensity of this affliction that now an overpowering anxiety manages to dispossess me of myself constantly. I don’t know how I can go on living like this.
It was two years ago that I first, observing the hateful inclination to indulge this habit outwitted and overgrew my will, sought out medical advice at the Valmont Sanatorium about Montreux. I found there an attentive physician (Dr. Haemmerli) who is still quite young (and whom, by the way, people already travel long distances to consult, even from as far away as India): the founder of Valmont, Dr. Widmer, is an old man; the whole repute of the institution now really rests on the experiences that Haemmerli’s patients take with them and relate in praise of him. I too can only praise his responsiveness, his patience, his shrewd feeling for when and when not to intervene; but he saw (and sees) my situation in so much brighter a light than the one in which I, again and again and ever more frequently, trapped in an atmosphere of doom, feel condemned to endure and overcome it. I remained from the end of 1924 into January of this year again under his observation in Valmont, and traveled from there to Paris on January 8–, not quite sharing that expectation with which Dr, Haemmerli tried to brace me : that so complete a change of surroundings and all influences would at on e blow jolt me out of the rhythm of that senseless temptation, and that then all the reflexes that had been cast into my body would die out of their own accord. But victory did not come and neither did relief. I suppose the obsession to do oneself that old harm with all its aftereffects and menaces proved stronger, more powerful that Paris: it turned into the suffering of a long defeat, and if, far beyond my limit, I did remain there until August, it was only from shame at returning just as ensnared into my tower, whose complete isolation, I feared, would allow these miserable devils to have their way with me even more perversely. Now that, since the end of September, new phenomena (nodules along the inner lip, which Haemmerli considers cysts, through other doctors gave different—placating?—interpretations) have joined the previous ones, I briefly saw Haemmerli again—in Zurich, where we both happened to be staying at the same time—and again the distance between his objective assessment and the subjective primary color )it scarcely changes any longer) of my condition was enormous.
My dear Lou: (you have so many old dictionaries of the language of my lament in your possession), does this give you some picture of my defeat? No doubt it is due to something over-simple in my nature that it could come about under such absurd conditions. Do you see someone in the ambit of your world who might help me? I see only you—but how actually to reach you? I could travel now only with difficulty, could you do it? All the way here? As my guest? If only for a few days . . . ? (That is a question I have been holding back now for a year.) If only I had called out long ago. Or if I had gone there and stepped for a moment into my old hard sandals: I would have become “upstanding”: like the tin soldier who has been welded back onto his level platform. But I stand ever so crooked and your first glance at this page will have told you, love, at which angle.
Rainer
Greetings to all that is forever precious, forever yours!
P.S. : Valmont is only about three hours from here, but a longer stay there would be impossible for me this year because of its very steep prices; and Dr. Haemmerli is too much in demand to write me regularly enough to keep me a little above water that, much to my despair, often rises over my hear. He did, when we met in Zurich, consider taking Dr. Meder into his confidence—but not in a way that envisioned any psychoanalytic treatment.
Write me, dear Lou, if you can, a word. As it is, for so long nothing has come your way in response to something I received. Now I send you this shabby bank note of distress: give me a gold coin of concern in exchange for it!
Second postcript:
More than a month later, on December 8: Dear, here it is after all, this letter, it has been on my desk all the time, reminding me of the calamity I’ve called down upon myself—just as back then in Rome with that note and its ИЗДОМАИ! (I found the latter in the Paris boxes that were saved.) I’m sending you all of this because it is all as true as when I first wrote about it; even the phobia, maintained not only by the little nodules along the inner lip but also by all kinds of other discomfort in the mouth, throat, and on the tongue, has increased! Last week I was almost on my way to Valmont, but unfortunately Dr. Haemmerli just then had to leave on a trip (he’ll be in Berlin for ten days at the [Hotel] Kaiserhof), on his way out leaving only a written note, advising Maeder again, in case I might be over-anxious, to wait until his, Haemmerli’s, return. Advise me; but I don’t really want to call you now, because any day I may rush to Zurich; and besides, the winter has now grown so harsh that traveling from you to me would be no simple matter. But a few lines, please?
R.
From Rainer Maria Rilke and Lou Andreas-Salomé: the Correspondence. Translated by Edward Snow and Michael Winkle. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. 424 pp.
FURTHER READING
At the Atlantic magazine, Maria Popova wrote an essay concerning Rilke’s love letters.
Here’s a requiem Rilke wrote for his good friend and painter, Paula Modersohn-Becker.