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Angela von der Lippe is a novelist, essayist, translator, and former trade publishing executive at W.W. Norton. She has published the historical novel The Truth about Lou, based on the life of Lou Andreas-Salome, muse to Nietzsche, Rilke and Freud, and she has edited and translated the first English language edition of Salome's memoir of Rilke, entitled You Alone are Real to Me: Remembering Rainer Maria Rilke.
Current projects include a novel--an intimate portrait of C.D., the seeker of Origins, through the eyes of the woman who knew him best-- from which 'A Dog's Life' is a snippet. And she is now in the process of refining and completing a memoir (with the working title When I'm Sixty-four) that chronicles the mother-daughter homecoming/caregiving experience from the inside and lays down an elder's last testament for end-of-life dignity.
Angela lives with her husband and two dogs, Rory 'the little Red King' ruby Cavalier puppy, and his Blenheim older brother Win, in coastal Rhode Island. In addition to her work as an elder advocate and ombudsman on Aquidneck Island, she volunteers at the Sachuest Wildlife Preserve in Newport County. She is also a founding member of the Writers' Circle --a Newport writers' group that originated in the hallowed halls of the country's oldest private library, and continues to this day at the the Redwood Library in Newport.
Current projects include a novel--an intimate portrait of C.D., the seeker of Origins, through the eyes of the woman who knew him best-- from which 'A Dog's Life' is a snippet. And she is now in the process of refining and completing a memoir (with the working title When I'm Sixty-four) that chronicles the mother-daughter homecoming/caregiving experience from the inside and lays down an elder's last testament for end-of-life dignity.
Angela lives with her husband and two dogs, Rory 'the little Red King' ruby Cavalier puppy, and his Blenheim older brother Win, in coastal Rhode Island. In addition to her work as an elder advocate and ombudsman on Aquidneck Island, she volunteers at the Sachuest Wildlife Preserve in Newport County. She is also a founding member of the Writers' Circle --a Newport writers' group that originated in the hallowed halls of the country's oldest private library, and continues to this day at the the Redwood Library in Newport.
Revered in her lifetime by Friedrich Nietzsche, Rainer Maria Rilke and Sigmund Freud for her brilliance as well as her charm, Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861-1937) has been posthumously viewed largely as a serial muse and femme fatale—alternately conniving, manipulative or nurturing, here sexually rapacious, there incapable of intimacy. These differing portraits, delivered as truth, cry out for the muse herself to speak. With this scrupulously researched fiction, drawn from the biographies, the letters and their lacunae, and from some remarkable but neglected literary sources, Angela von der Lippe tells Lou’s story in her own voice.
***For Scenes from this novel, see the new website page above
"Lives Lived and Lost in Wartime" on the theme of War resonating through time***
In her debut novel, THE TRUTH ABOUT LOU: A Novel After Salomé (Counterpoint; December 1, 2008; $14.95 paper back) Angela von der Lippe utilizes her skills as novelist and literary detective to give us a fascinating, emotionally nuanced portrait of who Salomé actually was. Von der Lippe seeks to capture what motivated Lou in her relationships, and what drew her to these towering cultural icons and them to her. She explores the life experiences underlying Lou’s writing—some eight novels and formidable critical works, including a book on Ibsen’s women (1892), the first work on Nietzsche’s ideas (1894), and an exquisite memoir of Rilke, published the year after his death (1927). Finally, she examines Lou’s perplexing sexuality as it emerges in her relationships: at 16, a traumatizing encounter with a married pastor; her lifelong unconsummated marriage with the much older Carl Andreas; at 36, her affair with the 22-year old Rilke, her first lover; and from that, a pregnancy never explained, which becomes pivotal to the novel. In her literary sleuthing, von der Lippe has uncovered plausible evidence for her fictional invention of a child lost to the world, separated by wars and the devastation of the Holocaust.
The novel opens with writer Anna Kane, rummaging through a hatbox of her grandmother’s personal effects—hatpin, corsage, dictionary, postcards and a priceless volume of Rilke’s poems inscribed to Lou, bequeathed to her by her grandmother (who escaped Poland before the occupation in 1939). Researching Lou’s life, Anna sets out to unravel the connections between Lou and her grandmother. Summoning the muse’s voice, she writes Lou’s life story, beginning in Imperial Russia and ending in the menacing dawn of Hitler’s Germany, tracing Lou through the twists and turns of her relationships, hints of a lover, a child, a mentor, listening to her boldly expounding on religion, feminism, analysis—all the while pursuing her character, filling in the pieces, following the clues to a startling discovery.
Interview with Lewis Frumkes about The Truth about Lou
http://lewisfrumkes.com/radioshow/angela-von-der-lippe-interview
Critical commentary for THE TRUTH ABOUT LOU
“Only someone profoundly gifted both as a novelist and as a literary critic could have given us this persuasive narrative. Angela von der Lippe makes plausible Lou Andreas-Salomé’s varied fascinations for Nietzsche, Rilke, and Freud. Yet this eloquent and uncannily perceptive novel does even more than that. It evokes, with vivid force, the cultural world forever destroyed by Hitler.” -Harold Bloom
"A heartfelt illumination of the fabulous career of a new age woman from another age, this lingering meditation on love, limit and loss will chime in the reader's imagination for months afterward."
--John Kerr, author of A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud and Sabina Spielrein
"The truth is often best told from the undusted corners. Angela Von der Lippe manages to dignify the process of fiction, while also bringing forth a cast of history's best characters. This is an alternative history, and also an alternative fiction, told with style, bravura, grace, depth and power."
--Colum McCann, author of Zoli and Dancer
“This fabled historic novel tells a fabled period: Lou Andreas-Salomé in vital years with Nietzsche, Rilke, and Freud that mirror Lou’s devotion to philosophy, poetry, and psychology. Angela von der Lippe slips out secrets with dramatic splendor in a fascinating and major narration. Lou will live.”
--Willis Barnstone, award-winning poet and translator, author of the Gnostic Bible, Indiana University
“Von der Lippe animates a woman who is beguiling and bold and whose intellect and social attitudes were well in advance of her time.” -Library Journal
“…Every year, reading about her, I promised myself to read her. It hasn't happened yet, but now here comes The Truth About Lou, where in her own voice (as channeled by Angela von der Lippe) the famed inspirer of visionaries sets forth her tumultuous psyche for further use. It's a perilous journey (at least as fraught as her trip with Rainer Maria Rilke, her young lover, from Berlin to her native Russia) and one that is rewarding if one is willing to obey her breathless lyricism. Lou Salome had a great name, famous lovers, and a splendid (reflected) posterity. Angela von der Lippe, a scholar as well as a novelist, has translated the love letters between Rilke and Salomé, thus spending a great deal of time in the most intimate space possible, that between two lovers. What she knows, she tells. A fascinating read.”
--Andrei Codrescu, novelist, poet and NPR commentator
“Lou is an intelligent and moving evocation of an extraordinary woman's life. Von der Lippe subtly marries the 'real' with the imaginary in a gripping recreation of the woman who was the turn of the 20th century's thinking 'femme fatale'.
--Lisa Appignanesi, author of Mad, Bad and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors, and Freud’s Women, President PEN UK
“A rich reimagining of Lou’s life…full of wonderful vignettes. Von der Lippe has found an ingenious way of telling this story, one that will delight those familiar with its outlines and undaunting to those with only a passing familiarity with the famous names drifting through…a marvelous novel.”
--Michael Harrington, Philadelphia Inquirer
“Imaginative and ambitious…Lou’s story is a storm of passionate ideas and opera-sized emotions in a time when intellectual women were viewed with scorn…it satisfies.”
--Tess Allegra, Historical Novel Review
Further Commentary
"Perhaps the most intriguing and meaningful responses to the novel came not from critics or published media but from two completely unexpected sources--from Rilke's only surviving grandson and his wife in response to a copy sent to the Rilke Archive and from a great grand nephew of Lou. In the former case, the plausibility of the novel's premise (namely, a pregnancy and a lost child) was confirmed and in the latter, a cache of Lou's personal letters and family lore were delivered to me for my interpretation. Both underscored literary fiction's power to unearth forgotten truths. The 'afterstory' of the novel is recounted in my essay "Lives are Nothing if not Imagined."--AvL
********************
***For Scenes from this novel, see the new website page above
"Lives Lived and Lost in Wartime" on the theme of War resonating through time***
In her debut novel, THE TRUTH ABOUT LOU: A Novel After Salomé (Counterpoint; December 1, 2008; $14.95 paper back) Angela von der Lippe utilizes her skills as novelist and literary detective to give us a fascinating, emotionally nuanced portrait of who Salomé actually was. Von der Lippe seeks to capture what motivated Lou in her relationships, and what drew her to these towering cultural icons and them to her. She explores the life experiences underlying Lou’s writing—some eight novels and formidable critical works, including a book on Ibsen’s women (1892), the first work on Nietzsche’s ideas (1894), and an exquisite memoir of Rilke, published the year after his death (1927). Finally, she examines Lou’s perplexing sexuality as it emerges in her relationships: at 16, a traumatizing encounter with a married pastor; her lifelong unconsummated marriage with the much older Carl Andreas; at 36, her affair with the 22-year old Rilke, her first lover; and from that, a pregnancy never explained, which becomes pivotal to the novel. In her literary sleuthing, von der Lippe has uncovered plausible evidence for her fictional invention of a child lost to the world, separated by wars and the devastation of the Holocaust.
The novel opens with writer Anna Kane, rummaging through a hatbox of her grandmother’s personal effects—hatpin, corsage, dictionary, postcards and a priceless volume of Rilke’s poems inscribed to Lou, bequeathed to her by her grandmother (who escaped Poland before the occupation in 1939). Researching Lou’s life, Anna sets out to unravel the connections between Lou and her grandmother. Summoning the muse’s voice, she writes Lou’s life story, beginning in Imperial Russia and ending in the menacing dawn of Hitler’s Germany, tracing Lou through the twists and turns of her relationships, hints of a lover, a child, a mentor, listening to her boldly expounding on religion, feminism, analysis—all the while pursuing her character, filling in the pieces, following the clues to a startling discovery.
Interview with Lewis Frumkes about The Truth about Lou
http://lewisfrumkes.com/radioshow/angela-von-der-lippe-interview
Critical commentary for THE TRUTH ABOUT LOU
“Only someone profoundly gifted both as a novelist and as a literary critic could have given us this persuasive narrative. Angela von der Lippe makes plausible Lou Andreas-Salomé’s varied fascinations for Nietzsche, Rilke, and Freud. Yet this eloquent and uncannily perceptive novel does even more than that. It evokes, with vivid force, the cultural world forever destroyed by Hitler.” -Harold Bloom
"A heartfelt illumination of the fabulous career of a new age woman from another age, this lingering meditation on love, limit and loss will chime in the reader's imagination for months afterward."
--John Kerr, author of A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud and Sabina Spielrein
"The truth is often best told from the undusted corners. Angela Von der Lippe manages to dignify the process of fiction, while also bringing forth a cast of history's best characters. This is an alternative history, and also an alternative fiction, told with style, bravura, grace, depth and power."
--Colum McCann, author of Zoli and Dancer
“This fabled historic novel tells a fabled period: Lou Andreas-Salomé in vital years with Nietzsche, Rilke, and Freud that mirror Lou’s devotion to philosophy, poetry, and psychology. Angela von der Lippe slips out secrets with dramatic splendor in a fascinating and major narration. Lou will live.”
--Willis Barnstone, award-winning poet and translator, author of the Gnostic Bible, Indiana University
“Von der Lippe animates a woman who is beguiling and bold and whose intellect and social attitudes were well in advance of her time.” -Library Journal
“…Every year, reading about her, I promised myself to read her. It hasn't happened yet, but now here comes The Truth About Lou, where in her own voice (as channeled by Angela von der Lippe) the famed inspirer of visionaries sets forth her tumultuous psyche for further use. It's a perilous journey (at least as fraught as her trip with Rainer Maria Rilke, her young lover, from Berlin to her native Russia) and one that is rewarding if one is willing to obey her breathless lyricism. Lou Salome had a great name, famous lovers, and a splendid (reflected) posterity. Angela von der Lippe, a scholar as well as a novelist, has translated the love letters between Rilke and Salomé, thus spending a great deal of time in the most intimate space possible, that between two lovers. What she knows, she tells. A fascinating read.”
--Andrei Codrescu, novelist, poet and NPR commentator
“Lou is an intelligent and moving evocation of an extraordinary woman's life. Von der Lippe subtly marries the 'real' with the imaginary in a gripping recreation of the woman who was the turn of the 20th century's thinking 'femme fatale'.
--Lisa Appignanesi, author of Mad, Bad and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors, and Freud’s Women, President PEN UK
“A rich reimagining of Lou’s life…full of wonderful vignettes. Von der Lippe has found an ingenious way of telling this story, one that will delight those familiar with its outlines and undaunting to those with only a passing familiarity with the famous names drifting through…a marvelous novel.”
--Michael Harrington, Philadelphia Inquirer
“Imaginative and ambitious…Lou’s story is a storm of passionate ideas and opera-sized emotions in a time when intellectual women were viewed with scorn…it satisfies.”
--Tess Allegra, Historical Novel Review
Further Commentary
"Perhaps the most intriguing and meaningful responses to the novel came not from critics or published media but from two completely unexpected sources--from Rilke's only surviving grandson and his wife in response to a copy sent to the Rilke Archive and from a great grand nephew of Lou. In the former case, the plausibility of the novel's premise (namely, a pregnancy and a lost child) was confirmed and in the latter, a cache of Lou's personal letters and family lore were delivered to me for my interpretation. Both underscored literary fiction's power to unearth forgotten truths. The 'afterstory' of the novel is recounted in my essay "Lives are Nothing if not Imagined."--AvL
********************
Never before available in English, You Alone Are Real to Me documents the relationship between Salomé and Rainer Maria Rilke that spanned almost 30 years. Salomé gives an intimate account of Rilke's poetic development from the early romantic poems to the sculpted new poems and the final breakthrough of the Elegies. From their romantic beginnings to the later twists and turns of their separate lives, Rilke appealed to Salomé during times of crisis in his writing as well as in the intimate matters of his life. Salomé captures both the summit and the abyss of Rilke's creative struggle. The memoir offers a stunning portrait of Rilke, as we in the English-speaking world have never really seen him. Richly illustrated with photos, this book is an indispensable work on the author of The Duino Elegies, as well as a rich resource for the growing interest in Salomé.
Lou Andreas-Salomé was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, but lived most of her life in Germany as a famous novelist, memoirist (of Rilke, Nietzsche, and Ibsen), friend to Freud and critic. She was praised by Freud as the smartest woman he had ever met, and prized by Rilke as "one of the most wonderful people who have come my way . . . without the influence of this extraordinary woman my whole development would not have been able to take the paths that have led to many things." Salomé wrote his memoir in 1927, a year after Rilke's death.
NEW EDITION REISSUED AND AVAILABLE in paperback and Kindle formats through www.amazon.com
Lou Andreas-Salomé was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, but lived most of her life in Germany as a famous novelist, memoirist (of Rilke, Nietzsche, and Ibsen), friend to Freud and critic. She was praised by Freud as the smartest woman he had ever met, and prized by Rilke as "one of the most wonderful people who have come my way . . . without the influence of this extraordinary woman my whole development would not have been able to take the paths that have led to many things." Salomé wrote his memoir in 1927, a year after Rilke's death.
NEW EDITION REISSUED AND AVAILABLE in paperback and Kindle formats through www.amazon.com
The Critics
The New York Times
[Andreas-Salomé] created a credible and complex portrait of the poet as a man who longed to transcend mortality, often tormented by his own physical existence. Without direct expression of feeling, she conjures the man and his profound importance to her as poet and dear friend in this unusually thoughtful memoir, superbly translated from the German by Angela von der Lippe.
--Paula Friedman (available through UK Carcanet edition)
The Los Angeles Times
Lou Andreas-Salomé's You Alone Are Real to Me is a memoir that revives our faith in the subtlety and dignity of the genre. If the purpose of the memoir is to make the past live again, then this evocative meditation on Rainer Maria Rilke is nothing less than a resurrection of the great poet's internal life…. The translation, by Angela von der Lippe, has captured the velocity and intensity of insight and the direct, searching style of the original work. We hear Andreas-Salome’s voice almost as if she were composing her thoughts before us: finally, the reader seems to tune in on a conversation between two linked and radiant souls… — Carol Muske-Dukes
Library Journal (starred review)
The brilliant, Russian-born, and still mesmerizing Andreas-Salome (1861-1937) was a cosmopolitan and indomitable thinker who became both muse and interlocutor for Nietzsche (whose marriage proposal she rejected), Freud, and Rilke, three of the greatest modern minds. In 1897, she took the 22-year-old Rilke as her lover, and she remained his confidante and witness to his inner transformations until his death from leukemia in 1926 at age 50. A year after Rilke's death, Andreas-Salome drew on their friendship and extensive correspondence to write an intimate, respectful, yet penetrating account of the great poet's life and work. Her interpretations of the poems advance a kind of pan-Rilkeanism, where belief in the power of art and observation of the world become indistinguishable. With the exception of Rilke's own correspondence, this book comes closest to capturing Rilke's sense of his work. In this elegant translation, it surpasses many of the available Rilke biographies and will prove useful and rewarding for scholars and poetry lovers alike. Strongly recommended for all academic and larger public libraries
--Ulrich Baer, NYU
American Book Review
This peculiar, thoughtful abstruse, understated, evasive, fascinating, irritating, impersonally intimate and intimately impersonal memoir by Rilke’s muse…is a narrative of the poet’s inner life. All such ventures by anyone who is not the liver of the life are obviously limited, but Salome comes as close to knowing the other as anyone can…That is why this memoir is so coherent, so harmonious… there is a marble-like tranquility to the writing, not the tranquility of recollected passion-storms, an ambiance of abstraction not far removed from that in Rilke’s mature poetry…Reading these passages, I’ve come to feel happy on the poet’s behalf, happy that he had someone he could cherish so well from his inhuman distance. I hope and suspect that she also found her fulfillment. Now they both lie dead. Has she too gained all that she promised him?
--William Vollman
From the Scholars and Poets
At last, Angela von der Lippe’s superb translation of and insightful Introduction and Afterword to Lou Andreas-Salome’s memoir of Rilke do justice to subject and memoirist both. This is, after all, not just a remembrance of a major poet; it’s a glimpse of that poet through the eyes of a woman who was herself a significant figure of her time. Lou, who made existence comprehensible for Rilke, here makes Rilke’s life comprehensible to us, and von der Lippe’s ear for both voices is as sensitive as her scholarship is scrupulous. What pleasure!
--Robin Morgan
Written a year after Rilke’s death, Lou Andreas-Salome’s memoir reveals an astonishing sympathy for Rilke’s poems and a vigorous, straightforward understanding of the poet himself. It is an exhilarating guide and the best possible introduction one could have to the poems. In fact, because it sheds so much light on the elusive sources of Rilke’s poetry, it is essential reading for anyone seriously interested in the great poet’s work. Angela von der Lippe’s Introduction and Afterword are brilliant, and her translation is masterful.
--Mark Strand
You Alone are Real to Me is eloquent and superbly nuanced. Von der Lippe’s introduction and afterword are critically splendid.
--Harold Bloom
****************
The New York Times
[Andreas-Salomé] created a credible and complex portrait of the poet as a man who longed to transcend mortality, often tormented by his own physical existence. Without direct expression of feeling, she conjures the man and his profound importance to her as poet and dear friend in this unusually thoughtful memoir, superbly translated from the German by Angela von der Lippe.
--Paula Friedman (available through UK Carcanet edition)
The Los Angeles Times
Lou Andreas-Salomé's You Alone Are Real to Me is a memoir that revives our faith in the subtlety and dignity of the genre. If the purpose of the memoir is to make the past live again, then this evocative meditation on Rainer Maria Rilke is nothing less than a resurrection of the great poet's internal life…. The translation, by Angela von der Lippe, has captured the velocity and intensity of insight and the direct, searching style of the original work. We hear Andreas-Salome’s voice almost as if she were composing her thoughts before us: finally, the reader seems to tune in on a conversation between two linked and radiant souls… — Carol Muske-Dukes
Library Journal (starred review)
The brilliant, Russian-born, and still mesmerizing Andreas-Salome (1861-1937) was a cosmopolitan and indomitable thinker who became both muse and interlocutor for Nietzsche (whose marriage proposal she rejected), Freud, and Rilke, three of the greatest modern minds. In 1897, she took the 22-year-old Rilke as her lover, and she remained his confidante and witness to his inner transformations until his death from leukemia in 1926 at age 50. A year after Rilke's death, Andreas-Salome drew on their friendship and extensive correspondence to write an intimate, respectful, yet penetrating account of the great poet's life and work. Her interpretations of the poems advance a kind of pan-Rilkeanism, where belief in the power of art and observation of the world become indistinguishable. With the exception of Rilke's own correspondence, this book comes closest to capturing Rilke's sense of his work. In this elegant translation, it surpasses many of the available Rilke biographies and will prove useful and rewarding for scholars and poetry lovers alike. Strongly recommended for all academic and larger public libraries
--Ulrich Baer, NYU
American Book Review
This peculiar, thoughtful abstruse, understated, evasive, fascinating, irritating, impersonally intimate and intimately impersonal memoir by Rilke’s muse…is a narrative of the poet’s inner life. All such ventures by anyone who is not the liver of the life are obviously limited, but Salome comes as close to knowing the other as anyone can…That is why this memoir is so coherent, so harmonious… there is a marble-like tranquility to the writing, not the tranquility of recollected passion-storms, an ambiance of abstraction not far removed from that in Rilke’s mature poetry…Reading these passages, I’ve come to feel happy on the poet’s behalf, happy that he had someone he could cherish so well from his inhuman distance. I hope and suspect that she also found her fulfillment. Now they both lie dead. Has she too gained all that she promised him?
--William Vollman
From the Scholars and Poets
At last, Angela von der Lippe’s superb translation of and insightful Introduction and Afterword to Lou Andreas-Salome’s memoir of Rilke do justice to subject and memoirist both. This is, after all, not just a remembrance of a major poet; it’s a glimpse of that poet through the eyes of a woman who was herself a significant figure of her time. Lou, who made existence comprehensible for Rilke, here makes Rilke’s life comprehensible to us, and von der Lippe’s ear for both voices is as sensitive as her scholarship is scrupulous. What pleasure!
--Robin Morgan
Written a year after Rilke’s death, Lou Andreas-Salome’s memoir reveals an astonishing sympathy for Rilke’s poems and a vigorous, straightforward understanding of the poet himself. It is an exhilarating guide and the best possible introduction one could have to the poems. In fact, because it sheds so much light on the elusive sources of Rilke’s poetry, it is essential reading for anyone seriously interested in the great poet’s work. Angela von der Lippe’s Introduction and Afterword are brilliant, and her translation is masterful.
--Mark Strand
You Alone are Real to Me is eloquent and superbly nuanced. Von der Lippe’s introduction and afterword are critically splendid.
--Harold Bloom
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