Left are the cover images used for the Freud-Lou correspondence. Lou was is shown to be young, and beautiful, while Freud is presented as a serious older man. The images suggested a relationship between a teacher and a student.
It was Nietzche's idea that the 'holy trinity' (himself, Ree and Lou) should be photographed for posterity, with Lou kneeling in carriage holding the reigns whipping the men along. The finishing touch was a sprig of lilacs fastened to the whip. The holy trinity image was a forerunner of the type of sado-masochistic entanglement between the sexes that would so repel and yet fascinate Lou. That she was cast as a dominatrix was unconventional even by the standards of Germanic bohemian life and it was an imago which was later transposed into the lasting image of Lou as a sort of intellectual groupie and femme fatale. At least this was how the gossip mongers of European society had her cast. When she finally dashed Nietzsche's dream of marrying her because she was neither ready to be nurse maid or disciple, Nietzsche's contempt manifest itself in forceful backlash because he believed her to have led him on. He always located his Zarathrustra arising out of the Lou affair; it was his riposte.
Quilt by Dinah Prentice: The Everyday Life of Lou Andreas-Salome
Pandora’s Box continues to be a cult classic. It was revived in 2 film festivals in 2003. 17th International Leeds Film Festival 2003 Pandora's Box (Büchse der Pandora, Die) Director: Georg Wilhelm Pabst, Germany, 1929, 100 mins
The classic silent film Pandora's Box is the ultimate cinematic treatment of obsession. Boasting superlative direction by Pabst and an iconic performance by the dazzling Louise Brooks, the film is an adaptation of F. Wedekind's Lulu plays. Lulu's irresistible, but innocent sexual allure surrounds her with lovers and admirers, ruthless competitors for her affection who drive her away from Berlin to London and eventually into the arms of Jack the Ripper. Screening with live organ accompaniment by City of Leeds organist Simon Lindley.
Belfast Film Festival 2003
Pandora's Box (with new live music score) 1929 - Germany - 110 min. - Feature, B&W, Silent
Featuring a new live score by artist John Matthews and musician Barry Cullen.
G.W. Pabst's most famous film featured his first, star-making collaboration with American actress Louise Brooks in a complex exploration of sexual psychology and Weimar Germany's social decadence. Working from Frank Wedekind's play in Pabst's trademark realist style, Pandora's Box has since come to be seen as a hypnotic masterwork, remarkable for its frank treatment of sexuality and the sympathetic, inscrutable, fascinating presence of Brooks
E
ven if she was unfairly cast as a femme fatale by Nietzsche, she became nigh on frozen into the role by the German playwright Frank Wedekind who based his central character 'Lulu' on her. Lulu was the lead female in his stage play; 'Pandora's Box' (1894) and was modelled on LAS after Wedekind made affectionate advances in her direction when he met her in Paris in 1894 (Wedekind's stage play was adapted for the opera of the same name by the Austrian composer Alban Berg. The opera played in London in May-June 2005). HF Peters describes Lou Salome at the time of her meeting with Wedekind as: "Occasionally her bright blue eyes had a gleam of hardness. By way of softening her angular appearance she preferred to wera large soft collars or wide sleeved peasant blouses. For the rest she dressed simply, shunned stays and corsets and those other fashionable devices which imprisoned the bodies of most women of her generation". (Peters, 1963: p192). Wedekind had taken refuge in French capital after his disturbing & grotesque play The Spring Awakening caused a minor scandal in Germany. The play tackled a range of themes about adolescence including scenes of violent sexual perversion: spanking, rape and suicide. Lou's rebuttal of Wedekind's advances in Paris were recounted in her novel Fenitschka. In the novel the suitor is portrayed as foolish and apologetic for his ungentlemany behaviour having tried to seduce the heroine Fenitschka. Wedekind, executed his own literary rendering of the event with his character 'Lulu' which has sometimes been translated literally as 'Lou Lou', seemingly emphasising her. Lulu became Germany's favourite femme fatale and Louise Brooks played her in the 1928 film of Wedekind's stage play. It was a part that Marlene Dietrich had sort to secure for herself. The film director GW Pabst had been the first to make a serious film about Freud in 1926 Secrets of the Soul and so the film of Pandora's Box was under pinned by Pabst's already primed psychological interest in Freudian models of sexuality.
“The publication at last of Lou Andreas-Salome’s book Die Erotic (1910) in English is very welcome. Also welcome is the book’s introduction by Gary Winship detailing Andreas-Salome’s close involvement with Nietzsche, Rilke and Freud; her ethic of sexual continence and mental eroticism; and her pioneering account of the erotic less a matter of interior pleasure than as a way of establishing relations with others”. – Janet Sayers, Emeritus Professor, University of Kent.
“With a compelling introduction by Gary Winship, the translation and publication of Die Erotic shows why a writer so deeply concerned with the politics of sexuality was destined to become such an important innovator in psychoanalysis; a source of inspiration and judicious criticism for Freud and one of his most intimate friends and collaborators”. – Ivan Ward, Director of Education, Freud Museum.
In fact at their time of meeting in 1910 both were of a similar age (circa 50). To the right here are the portraits that would have more accurately captured the meeting of the two of them. These portraits convey something altogether more genuine, that LAS, while still beautiful, was worldly and probably more battle weary than Freud. Freud, though still posed with trademark cigar in hand, was perhaps less serious, believing his greatness to be still ahead of him.
Freud Museum Conference June 8th 2013
The Modern Erotic
speakers include Susie Orbach, Gary Winship, Suzi Godson.
Details.
