Rainer Maria Rilke and Lou Andreas-Salomé: The Correspondence

The complete extant correspondence between a key fin-de-sicle intellectual and one of the most revered poets of the twentieth century. He would become one of the most important poets of the twentieth century; she was the ber-muse of Europes turn-of-the-century thinkers and artists. In this never-before-translated collection of letters spanning almost thirty years the poet Rainer Maria Rilke and Lou Andreas-Salom a writer and intellectual fourteen years his senior pen a relationship that moves from that of lovers to that of mentor and protg to that of deepest personal and literary allies. From the time of their first meeting and consequent affair to Rilkes death in 1926 Rilke and Salom reeled through extremes of love pain annoyance desire and needyet guided each other in one of the most fruitful artistic exchanges in twentieth-century literature. Despite illness distance and emotional and psychological pain they managed to cultivate through strikingly honest prose an enduring and indispensable friendship a decades-long heartfelt dialogue that encompassed love art and the imagination.