The gods still reign

Don't talk to me

of civilization

and its decline:

the gods still reign.

These lines, translated by Julia Vickers, come from a poem Lou Andreas-Salome (1861-1937) wrote as a teenager. Salome went on to become a prominent German novelist, critic and pioneering psychoanalyst. A new film by Cordula Kablitz-Post tells the story of her extraordinary life. It was released in the United States in Spring 2018 and is now available on iTunes, Vimeo and Amazon.

• Lou Andreas-Salomé's 'Prayer to Life'
• Trailer for 'Lou Andreas-Salome: The Audacity to Be Free'
• A behind-scenes look at the film

A human being in love

"A human being in love, regardless of the exalted state of both his spirit and soul, remains a priest in his robes who has but a dim idea of what it is he's celebrating."

--Lou Andreas-Salomé

from Looking Back, translated by Breon Mitchell (New York: Paragon House, 1991), p. 132.

Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861-1937) was a German novelist and a pioneering psychoanalyst to whom Freud sometimes referred patients. She was also a confidante of Nietzsche and Rilke. Raleigh Whitinger and I have published the first English translation of Andreas-Salomé's sixth and final novel, Das Haus (see the first link below for details).

The photo shows the author with her husband, Friedrich Carl Andreas (1846-1930), a scholar of Persian literature. 

• The first English translation of Das Haus
  
• Other quotes from the author
  
• A film about Andreas-Salomé by Cordula Kablitz-Post
  
• VIDEO: Watch or download the film at Vimeo

Katharina Lorenz is one of four actresses who share the film's title role