How do I imagine love?


That is quite uncomplicated--very simple and wholesome. I would compare it with things that are least demonic or romantic, like the daily bread that is blessed and stills our hunger, like the stream of air that comes into our homes to refresh us. In short, with that which is most important, most beautiful and most natural, on which we most depend and about which we do not need to engage in empty rhetoric.


Lou Andreas-Salome, Fenitschka
Translated by Dorothee Einstein Krahn
(University Press of America, 1990), p. 19

Lou Andreas-Salome (1861-1937) was a novelist and a pioneering psychoanalyst to whom Freud sometimes referred patients. She was also a confidante of Nietzsche and Rilke. 'Lou Andreas-Salome: The Audacity to Be Free', a film based on her extraordinary life, is now available on iTunes, Vimeo, Google Play and Amazon.


Andreas-Salomé's novella, 'Fenitschka', is set in St. Petersburg in the 1890s (Painting by Eugene Lushpin)

No comments:

Post a Comment