In the night, unable to sleep . . .

      In the night, unable to sleep on the overcrowded train, it became clear that he was really going for the sake of his childhood, hoping to find something in those old streets: a doorway, a tower, a fountain, anything to induce some joy or sorrow by which he might recognize himself again.

Rainer Maria Rilke, "A Story Told to the Dark" (from Stories of God, 1900), translated by M.D. Herter Norton

The bridge in the photograph is in Prague, where Rilke spent the first 21 years of life. He then went to Munich to study art history and there met Lou Andreas-Salome, who became his lover and, for the rest of his life, his most trusted confidante. Her support, through Rilke's long periods of doubt and depression, enabled him to complete the Duino Elegies. A new film tells the story of their relationship.

• The story of Rilke and Salome comes to the screen
• The Duino Elegies at 100
• "You must change your life": Rilke's encounter Ancient Greece

A great yearning

'Don't you think that a great yearning is like the birds' heading south -- a sign that somewhere life is in bloom?'

Lou Andreas-Salomé

Menschenkinder (1899); translated by Raleigh Whitinger

The Human Family, p. 173 (University of Nebraska Press)

Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861-1937) was a prominent German novelist and a pioneering psychoanalyst to whom Freud sometimes referred patients.

A 2016 film told the story of her extraordinary life, and Raleigh Whitinger and I have just published the first English translation of her 1921 novel, Das Haus under the title Anneliese's House (Boydell and Brewer). 

• VIDEO: How to watch the film
• My review of the film
  
• Anneliese's House from Boydell and Brewer
  
• Lou Andreas-Salomé on love
• 'A Prayer to Life' by Lou Andreas-Salomé

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