(Lou Andreas Salome)
Many may not agree with this, but I don’t care. Others will.
Lou Andreas Salome writes about her own life in her book ‘Ma vie’ (Mein Leben or my life). To say the truth I don’t know whether she wrote it in French or German, I did read it myself in French but it could have been written in German (she spoke both languages and actually died in Paris about 1933.) If you read between lines you may be surprised by her wicked twisted mind, starting very young she manages almost to turn half the world up side down.
Born from a Jewish doctor family, the Stein, living in White Russia near to the Zar (her father was attached doctor to the zar), she organizes at the age of 17 a mariage for herself with a Dutch married priest, the ceremony of she creates herself.
(Russian Icon)
Thrown out of her family (she seems to loose her name) and probably even of Russia, she travels to Germany, Italy and Switzerland. In Italy she gets to know Nietzsche, who wants to marry her, and she refuses, saying that she’d rather prefer to live in community with several people. I don’t think Nietzsche was ever in love with her: latest statements of a German biographer whose name is Krüger or Kröger or similar, affirm and quite clearly demonstrate Nietzsche was homosexual: he would just have needed the social cover and cuts all relationship with her after her refusal.
(Friedrich Nietzsche, Paul Ree and Lou Andreas Salome)
As someone called Andreas (last name), a German, does try suicide after her refusal to marry him, she finally gives in and becomesAndreas, attaching the biblical Salome (intellectual author of John the Baptist’s murder) to her name probably pushed by sympathy. This will not stop her love affairs, from Rilke to Rilke and others, she spends her life at her husband’s back. She will even introduce herself in Russia again, in order, she says, to visit Tolstoij. Coming back from one of her excursions, she asks her husband whether he doesn’t want to know anything about her life: he refuses, keeping at least at that moment the last reminders of German dignity.
That I don’t like her ‘interpretation’ of life is just a very subjective thing, in evidence.
116 comments
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July 20, 2007 at 10:01 am
Valery
Just have a glance at the article in wikipedia!
December 21, 2007 at 6:45 pm
Lou
all this is insane, and you are sick!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
what a pity
December 22, 2007 at 12:17 am
*AsK4Ten
If you say so. But it is all taken of her own description of her own life in her autobiography. If you thus mean that she’s insane and sick and that all that is a pity, I do absolutely agree with you on that point.
January 13, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Lou
Lou was a saint, I don’t know where you’ve found all this disgusting stuff.
It’s unworthy to post that. You should delete this page. I’m really horrified.
January 13, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Lou
Lou has JEWISH origin, Salomé is a French name, with a jewish background.
Your page is frightening, you may have trouble due to antisemitism!
January 13, 2008 at 7:12 pm
*Ask 4 Ten
You see what makes the problem. What makes you think that Lou was a saint? I really don’t mind have another opinion on the subject, but the kind ‘I say it thus it’s true’, is not really very deep, is it? On the other hand, you don’t make largest proof of tolerance, as you think I ’should’ delete this page. Mind other people sharing my opinion, too?
The fact that Lou does have a jewish origin, even more, is a jew, doesn’t change anything to anything. Or do you think, just because you’re a jew you’re allowed to do whatsoever? That’s not very fair. Concerning antisemitism, you may read the article on ‘Semmelweiss’ (put the name into search), where precisely very definite qualities of a jew are underlined.
Salome is a fake name, as her actual name was Stein, as she says herself in her autobiography, were most of the ‘horrible stuff’ is taken from.
Mind getting informed before making a scandal out of nothing?
What is an evidence, on the other hand, is that my point of view, which is, to say the truth, somewhat touched by bitter irony, is not supposed to give back any kind of definite truth, but just be some sketching of a story that may move one or the other to thought, if it still exists.
January 14, 2008 at 9:10 am
Lou
I AM LOU ANDREAS-SALOMÉ, back 100 years later. So I guess I know who I am.
You should read the French wikipedia and interviews about her.
Lou was the female Christ, and therefore of course soiled because of this purity. Many people just can’t stand someone being too ‘perfect’. That’s how your paper sounds. You just can’t stand it her being ‘too much’.
Comment on comment: be careful not to be closed into a psychiatric hospital for schizophrenia. Mind the truth? I think that Lou Andreas Salome’s writing does lead to exactly that kind of schizoid exaltation, which I esteem dangerous for most of the people. You’re just the proof for the fact that I’m right. I don’t think many people may want to end up like you, and I esteem it of intellectual responsibility to slightly indicate such a possibility, leaving it in eaches hands to do with what I think what he/she wants.
You must have been tired up by so many commnets and legal researches. You may excuse that I take some off, as I esteem you occupy too much space. If you want, just write some kind of article on your idol that may proof in definite ways that I’m completely wrong instead of agressing my peaceful Sunday mornings. I don’t mind freedom of speech and opinion, although you see how easy it is to erase contrary opinions, but I really but really detest arbitrary agressions. See why I don’t like Lou Andreas Salome?
January 14, 2008 at 9:15 am
Lou
I am not a Jew.
In which way do you think she is ‘horrible’? I just don’t get the point.
She inspired many men, was their muse, was deeply admired by the Freud family, she was sexually involved with very few or only one (Rilke). Nietzsche himself wrote that she might be considered a ‘misunderstood angel’.
Could you, please, at least delete the title of your page: it is not acceptable to make this reachable this way on Google.
Comment on comment: you see what the real danger is? That people are mislead in their opinion of others by irreal idealization, which does though keep in the depth the intrinsec message of an author or character, so that people are troubled in their moral appreciation of reality. I think it is of obligation to point at features that may clearly show what someone is at, and then, yes, life is the choice of each of us. I’m really not going to play judges what other people’s life is concerned, but I really don’t like the constant dirtying of what other people consider holy, as it was Salome’s case. If you want yourself to be respected, you may start respecting others, too, even if you don’t understand it at all.
January 14, 2008 at 9:16 am
Lou
she died in 1937 in Germany (Göttingen)
January 14, 2008 at 9:24 am
Lou
Nietzsche was certainly homosexual, I agree, we all sense that, it is so obvious. He was mostly hebephrenic, childish, immature. And Lou was 15 years younger than him.
Did you see the movie by Liliana Cavani, which is interesting, but contains many mistakes? Any way I like the portrait of Nietzsche in it.
Since you seem to read French, you truly have to read the two ‘Interviews’ whose links are available on Wikipedia.fr (Entretien autour de Lou Andreas-Salomé ; Entretien autour de Friedrich Nietzsche et son temps).
Just a question: would you like someone in 80 years after your death to publish a page like this ‘The horrible Ask 4 Ten’???
I really wouldn’t like to.
ONLY THE PUREST, the WISEST, the NICEST are the targets of libellous statements. That’t what you’re doing here. Alas.
January 14, 2008 at 11:28 am
Lou
The HORRIBLE SONJA KASTEN
She just can’t stand a woman to be ‘too much’ and deeply feels like soiling the great mind of Lou A-S.
She never read the books of Lou, almost all about God, miracles, graces, signs, etc.
She has decided to make a huge amount of libellous statements on Lou available on the Web.
SK is truly a very special and extraordinary person. She thinks she has the right to diffame anyone.
Sonja is unique.
Comment on comment: thanks for the compliment. I do really rather agree on it. But mind, I really don’t think Salome was too much nor a great mind. I have read her autobiography, as said, and yes, some works on God and miracles, but I don’t think that is forbidden by law, is it?
January 14, 2008 at 11:37 am
Lou
PORTRAIT OF THE HORRIBLE SONJA KASTEN
“Due to the psychic stress resulting of having so much perilious information on a personal site, we have decided”
SK mainly, mostly and only exists on Google and on the blogs she creates. She doesn’t publish books or papers, but spends her days posting ‘perillous information’ on the blogs, about anything, everything, etc.
SK needs to show that she exists, although she is not sure she really does.
Well…
SK truly should delete the page The horrible Lou… or she may have some trouble with the law.
Comment on comment: you’ve well studied my procedure. How do you know though that I haven’t published anything else? And if I haven’t, does it take accuracy from what I say?
Law will never trouble me, precisely because I do respect it. A judge may. But you will be troubled by law, sooner than later. See the point?
January 14, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Lou
THE HORRIBLE SONJA KASTEN
THE HORRIBLE SONJA KASTEN
THE HORRIBLE SONJA KASTEN
THE HORRIBLE SONJA KASTEN
THE HORRIBLE SONJA KASTEN
THE HORRIBLE SONJA KASTEN
Comment on comment: I’ve never said no. It’s much better to get such a comment of your mouth, even 80 years laters, than a positive one which may associate my thought to … such a way of dealing with reality.
January 14, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Lou
some law :
Blogueurs et responsabilité
Par Eolas, lundi 30 mai 2005 à 17:42 :: General :: permalien #135
Vaste sujet, que je ne vais certainement pas couvrir exhaustivement avec cette note (il y aurait matière à mémoire, voire à thèse). Je n’ai pas la prétention de faire une thèse exhaustive sur la question, juste ordonner quelques réflexions fondées sur les textes, la jurisprudence et mon humble avis.
Écrire et publier sur un blog, c’est engager sa responsabilité sur le contenu de ce qui y est écrit. Et déjà apparaît le premier problème : ce qui y est écrit n’est pas forcément ce qu’on a écrit en tant que taulier du blog. Les commentaires font partie intégrante du blog, sauf à les interdire purement et simplement (par exemple : feu le blog de Maia mazaurette, avant qu’elle ne devienne responsable du courrier du coeur de jeunes hard core gamers), ou le vénérable Standblog (vénérable bien que je ne comprenne rien à 90% des billets), mais dans ce cas est-ce encore vraiment un blog, ou à les “modérer” selon le terme en vigueur, c’est à dire les valider avant publication (exemple : Big Bang Blog), ce qui est en fait une véritable censure au sens premier du terme : c’est à dire une autorisation a priori, et peut cacher parfois un choix arbitraire, même si c’est la solution la plus sure : je l’emploie moi même en cas d’absence prolongée.
La première question est celle de la responsabilité ès qualité de blogueur, c’est à dire de la réglementation applicable à quiconque met son blog en ligne, quel que soit le sujet abordé par icelui, y compris si aucun sujet n’est abordé.
La deuxième question qui se pose, chronologiquement, est la responsabilité du bloguéditeur (j’aime bien les néologismes quand c’est moi qui les invente), c’est à dire liée au contenu de ce qui est publié. Peut-on tout dire sur son blog, et si non, quels sont les risques ?
1. : Le statut juridique du blog.
La réponse est dans la LCEN, ou Loi pour la confiance dans l’économie numérique, de son petit nom n°2004-575 du 21 juin 2004, dans son prolixe article 6 (si vous trouvez la Constitution européenne trop longue et incompréhensible, lisez cet article 6 : vous verrez que le législateur français peut faire mille fois mieux).
Mon confrère Éric Barbry a publié dans le journal du net un article faisant le point sur la question auquel je renvoie pour l’essentiel : il est d’excellente qualité.
En substance, la LCEN distingue trois types d’intervenants dans la communication en ligne : le fournisseur d’accès internet (FAI), qui est personnel à chaque internaute, l’hébergeur du service (celui qui est propriétaire du disque dur) et l’éditeur du dit service (qui publie, met en forme, gère le site). Alors que le FAI et l’hébergeur sont en principe irresponsables du contenu d’un site (il y a des exceptions, mais c’est hors sujet dans le cadre de ce billet), c’est l’éditeur qui assume cette responsabilité. D’où ma censure (j’assume le terme) de certains commentaires que j’estime diffamatoires, malgré les cris d’orfraie de leur auteur. Si le commentaire est diffamatoire, c’est moi qui encours les poursuites, et je n’ai pas vocation à servir de paratonnerre judiciaire à qui que ce soit.
Exemples : Dans le cas de ce blog, l’hébergeur est Free. S’agissant de Publius, l’hébergeur est Typepad. S’agissant du contenu des billets, je suis l’éditeur de ce blog, et éditeur de mes seuls billets sur Publius (Paxatagore assumant en plus une responsabilité globale en cas d’inaction de notre part, Publius étant ouvert à son nom).
Éric Barbry soulève une hypothèse très intéressante : l’éditeur d’un blog a-t-il le statut d’hébergeur des commentaires ou celui d’éditeur ? La LCEN est muette là dessus, le législateur n’ayant à aucun moment des travaux envisagé l’hypothèse des sites instantanément modifiables par quiconque (ce qui recouvre, outre les commentaires des blogs, le fonctionnement des wikis). La jurisprudence devra y répondre, et cette réponse sera très importante : en effet, si l’éditeur a une responsabilité de tout ce qui est publié, donc une obligation de surveillance, qui pourrait impliquer par prudence le principe des commentaires modérés a priori, en revanche, l’hébergeur n’est pas responsable de ce qui apparaît en commentaire sauf absence de réaction à une notification conforme à l’article 6, I, 5° de la LCEN. Le statut d’hébergeur appliqué au blogueur vis à vis des commentaires serait très protecteur pour celui-ci, mais se heurte à des difficultés qu’Eric Barbry détaille. Au juge de trancher. Je surveille et vous tiens informés.
Pour résumer les obligations de tout blogueur, il doit :
-déclarer son identité à son hébergeur ou à son fournisseur d’accès en cas d’hébergement direct par le fournisseur d’accès (c’est le cas de ce blog). Chez les hébergeurs payants, cette formalité est assurée en même temps que la souscription, le paiement par carte bancaire impliquant une vérification du nom associé. Un hébergement gratuit sous un faux nom est désormais un délit. Sanction : 1 an d’emprisonnement et 75.000 euros d’amende, article 6, III, 1° et VI, 2°.
-Faire figurer sur le site le nom du responsable, ou en cas de site non professionnel et anonyme (comme celui-ci), la mention de l’hébergeur qui a les coordonnées du responsable, à qui il est possible d’adresser la notification prévue par l’article 6, I, 5° de la LCEN. C’est la rubrique “mention légale”, je vous conseille tout particulièrement celui de ma consoeur Veuve Tarquine, qui est désopilant (bon, pour un juriste). Sanction : 1 an d’emprisonnement et 75.000 euros d’amende, article 6, III, 1° et VI, 2°.
-Publier gratuitement et sous trois jours à compter de la réception un droit de réponse de toute personne nommée ou désignée dans un billet ou un commentaire, sous la même forme de caractère et de taille, sans que cette réponse ne puisse dépasser la longueur de l’écrit initial (sauf accord de l’éditeur, bien sûr). Dans le cas d’une mise en cause par un commentaire, la personne en question pourra y répondre directement par un commentaire la plupart du temps, bien sûr. Sanction : 3.750 euros d’amende, article 6, IV de la LCEN.
2. la responsabilité pénale du blogueur en raison du contenu de son site.
Là, deux problèmes distincts peuvent se poser : la responsabilité pénale du blogueur et sa responsabilité civile. Dans le premier cas, on entre dans le droit de la presse et de l’édition, qui s’applique à internet comme à tout écrit mis à disposition du public. Dans le deuxième, se pose surtout la problématique du blogueur vis à vis de son employeur.
La responsabilité pénale du blogueur :
Conseil préliminaire : si vous êtes cité en justice pour des délits de presse, courrez chez un avocat compétent en la matière, et vite.
Certains écrits sont pénalement incriminés en eux même : la liberté d’expression est une liberté fondamentale, certes, mais il n’existe aucune liberté générale et absolue. Rappelons la rédaction de l’article 11 de la déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen :
La libre communication des pensées et des opinions est un des droits les plus précieux de l’Homme : tout Citoyen peut donc parler, écrire, imprimer librement, sauf à répondre à l’abus de cette liberté dans les cas déterminés par la Loi.
En l’espèce, la loi qui s’applique est la loi du 29 juillet 1881 sur la liberté de la presse, avec les adaptations apportées par la LCEN aux spécificités du support informatique.
Les provocations.
Sont interdits de manière générale l’apologie des crimes contre l’humanité commis par les puissances de l’Axe, l’incitation à la haine raciale ainsi que la pornographie enfantine. Tout blogueur a une obligation de surveillance de son site et doit rapporter promptement aux autorités compétentes de telles activités sur son site qui lui seraient signalées. Sanction : un an de prison, 75.000 euros d’amende (article I, 7°, dernier alinéa de la LCEN, article 24 de la loi du 29 juillet 1881). Pensez donc absolument à fermer tous les commentaires et trackbacks quand vous abandonnez un blog mais le laissez en ligne.
Au delà de cette obligation de surveillance, les écrits du blogueur lui même ou des commentaires peuvent lui attirer des ennuis.
Outre les faits déjà cités, sont prohibés la provocation à commettre des crimes ou des délits. Si appeler au meurtre de telle personne ne viendrait pas à l’esprit de mes lecteurs, j’en suis persuadé, pensons aux appels à la détérioration lancé par les anti-pubs dans un site hébergé par la société OUVATON.
Sanction : si la provocation est suivie d’effet, vous êtes complice du crime ou délit et passible des mêmes peines. Si la provocation n’est pas suivie d’effet, vous encourez 5 ans de prison et 45.000 euros d’amende si l’infraction à laquelle vous avez provoqué figure dans la liste de l’alinéa 1 de l’article 24 de la loi du 29 juillet 1881 (meurtres, viols et agressions sexuelles, vols, extorsions, destructions, dégradations et détériorations volontaires dangereuses pour les personnes, crimes et délits portant atteinte aux intérêts fondamentaux de la nation prévus par le titre Ier du livre IV du code pénal).
Bon, jusque là, rien de préoccupant, je pense qu’on peut trouver des idées de billet où il ne s’agira pas de nier la Shoah ou appeler au meurtre.
Injure, diffamation
Les faits les plus souvents invoqués sont l’injure et la diffamation, définis par l’article 29 de la loi du 29 juillet 1881. C’est le cas de l’affaire Monputeaux, que je traiterai prochainement en détail.
Là, ça se complique. Je vais donc, pour illustrer mes propos, imaginer un personnage pour lui faire subir les pires avanies, disons un chef d’entreprise dans le domaine du blog, que j’appellerai Louis Le Grand, connu pour être un grand amateur de parapente, et PDG de la société d’hébergement de blog SeptInclus S.A.
Toute ressemblance avec une tête de turc bien connue des blogueurs serait vraiment totalement, mais alors totalement fortuite (air innocent).
La diffamation, donc, est définie ainsi : toute allégation ou imputation d’un fait qui porte atteinte à l’honneur ou à la considération de la personne ou du corps auquel le fait est imputé. e.g. : “Louis le Grand est un escroc”.
L’injure est toute expression outrageante ne contenant l’imputation d’aucun fait. e.g. : “Louis le Grand est un connard”.
Tout d’abord, il faut que la personne soit identifiée ou au moins identifiable. Inutile qu’il soit identifiable par des milliers de personnes. Un groupe restreint suffit, du moment qu’il peut subir un préjudice du fait d’être reconnu par ce groupe comme le milieu professionnel dans lequel il évolue (par exemple : un chercheur dénoncé auprès de la direction du CNRS comme étant un terroriste international, mais là j’exagère avec mes exemples : personne n’oserait faire une chose pareille).
Si le blogueur dit “Louis le Grand est un escroc”, il n’y a pas de problème, il est clairement identifié. S’il dit “le VRP parapentiste de SeptInclus est un escroc”, il n’est pas nommé, mais reste aisément identifiable. Le blogueur ne peut pas prétendre devant le tribunal qu’en fait, il parlait de quelqu’un d’autre.
Un problème peut apparaître face à des expressions plus ambiguës, du genre “le chantre du commerce dans la blogosphère”, ou l’emploi des seules initiales (“Ce crétin de LLG…”) . Dans ce cas, c’est au plaignant d’apporter la preuve que c’est bien lui qui était visé, les tribunaux allant parfois jusqu’à exiger, pour les cas vraiment ambigus, la preuve que le plaignant a été identifié comme la personne visée par des lecteurs.
Une fois que la personne visée est identifiée, le propos diffamatoire doit lui imputer un fait qui porte atteinte à son honneur ou à sa considération. Le critère jurisprudentiel est simple : le fait diffamatoire doit pouvoir faire l’objet d’une discussion contradictoire et d’être prouvé. Sinon, c’est une injure.
Dans mon exemple, dire que” Louis Le Grand est un escroc” est une diffamation, puisqu’on lui impute un délit, susceptible de preuve, le fait d’être traité de délinquant portant atteinte à l’honneur ou à la considération.
En cas de poursuite judiciaires, les moyens de défense sont les suivants :
- A tout seigneur tout honneur : la prescription. Aucune poursuite ne peut être intentée pour injure ou diffamation trois mois après la publication. Seule peut interrompre cette prescription un acte de poursuite judiciaire : assignation au civil, citation au pénal, tenue d’une audience où comparaît le plaignant. Concrètement, à Paris, la 17e chambre, spécialisée dans ces domaines, convoque des audiences relais à moins de trois mois, uniquement pour que la partie civile comparaisse et indique qu’elle maintient les poursuites, jusqu’à la date retenue pour l’audience définitive. Une lettre de mise en demeure, émanât-elle d’un avocat, n’interrompt pas la prescription. La preuve de la date de publication est libre, la jurisprudence recevant comme présomption simple la mention de la date à côté du billet. C’est au plaignant de rapporter la preuve, en cas de litige, que la prescription n’est pas acquise. C’est TRES casse gueule : si vous voulez poursuivre quelqu’un pour diffamation, prenez un avocat, vous n’y arriverez pas tout seul.
- Démontrer que le plaignant n’était pas visé par les propos, car seule la personne visée peut déclencher les poursuites ;
- Démontrer que les propos ne sont pas diffamatoires, ou injurieux, voire, et là c’est vicieux, que les propos diffamatoires sont en fait injurieux, ou vice versa, car aucune requalification n’est possible, et on ne peut poursuivre sous les deux qualifications cumulativement.
En effet, imaginons qu’un blogueur, commentant le lancement par SeptInclus d’un service de blogs pour enfants et adolescents, traite dans un de ses billets Louis Le Grand de pédophile, le 1er janvier (prescription au 1er avril). Louis Le Grand fait citer en diffamation ce blogueur le 1er février (interruption de la prescription, elle est reportée au 1er mai, en fait au 2 puisque le 1er est férié). Le tribunal convoque les parties le 1er mars (cette audience interrompt la prescription, le délai de trois mois repart à zéro, et elle est donc reportée au 1er juin), et fixe l’audience de jugement au 1er mai (soit bien avant la prescription, tout va bien). Le 1er mai, le blogueur soulève qu’il ne s’agissait pas d’une accusation d’agression sexuelle, mais juste d’une moquerie sur ce nouveau produit : c’était donc en fait une injure. Or l’injure n’a pas été poursuivie dans le délai de trois mois qui expirait le 1er avril et est donc prescrite Si le tribunal estime que c’était effectivement une injure, le blogueur est relaxé.
Vous comprenez pourquoi il vous faut absolument un avocat ?
- La bonne foi et l’exception de vérité. L’exception de vérité est soumise à de strictes conditions de formes (délai de dix jours pour produire les preuves) et de domaines (il existe des faits dont la loi interdit de tenter de rapporter la preuve, des faits anciens par exemple), la bonne foi permettant aux juges d’atténuer cette sévérité quand les faits sont vrais, et que le diffamateur a agi légitimement et avec prudence (par exemple, il a dénoncé un candidat à des élections au sujet de faits graves commis plus de dix ans auparavant mais qui le rendent peu qualifié pour être élu : Cass. crim., 15 févr. 1962).
Le blogeur et son employeur
Ce paragraphe s’applique aussi par extension à toute personne exerçant une autorité hiérarchique ou assimilée sur le blogueur : supérieur hiérarchique, ministre pour un fonctionnaire, professeur pour un écolier.
Ce qu’un blogueur écrit chez lui, en dehors des heures qu’il doit consacrer à son activité professionnelle ou scolaire, peut-il entraîner une sanction disciplinaire pouvant aller jusqu’au licenciement ou le renvoi de l’établissement ? J’évacue la question de l’employé qui blogue depuis son bureau en utilisant le matériel de l’entreprise : il s’agit d’une faute, qui peut entraîner légitimement une sanction pouvant aller jusqu’au licenciement si cet abus va jusqu’à nuire à son travail. Je ne garde l’hypothèse que du blogueur qui blogue à des heures autorisées (heure de la pause, ou chez lui le soir ou le week end).
Beaucoup de blogueurs, croyant à leur impunité, s’y sont frottés à la légère, et s’y sont brûlés les ailes. Les exemples les plus connus nous viennent d’outre atlantique avec par exemple Queenofsky, hôtesse de l’air chez Delta Airlines licenciée pour avoir posté des photos d’elle en uniforme de la compagnie, mais des Français aussi ont eu des mauvaises surprises.
Face à la nouveauté du phénomène, autant des blogueurs dépassent les bornes sans forcément en avoir conscience, autant des employeurs prennent des sanctions parfois discutables.
Alors qu’en est-il ? Le principe est que la sphère privée est séparée de la sphère professionnelle (qui inclut la sphère scolaire). Aucun salarié ne peut en principe être puni pour un comportement qu’il a dans sa vie privée ou en dehors de ses heures de travail ou d’étude.
Certaines professions font exception à cette règle, à commencer par la mienne. Mais les membres de ces professions sont généralement bien informés de leurs obligations déontologiques. Ces obligations varient d’ailleurs tellement d’une profession à l’autre que je n’en ferai point le recensement.
Mais la séparation sphères privée et publique n’est pas parfaitement étanche. Ainsi en est il lorsque le blogueur parle de son travail sur son blog. Là commence le danger.
A ce jour, aucune réponse certaine ne peut être apportée sur ce qui est permis ou ce qui ne l’est pas. La loi est muette sur ce sujet, et la jurisprudence inexistante sur les blogs : la cour de cassation n’ayant pas encore eu à statuer sur une telle question, et la disparition récente de la dispense de ministère d’avocat au Conseil pour les pourvois en matière sociale n’est pas de nature à rendre une telle décision probable dans un avenir proche) . Ca ne veut pas dire qu’il y a vide juridique (je déteste cette expression que je trouve stupide : le vide juridique n’existe pas). La question du comportement du salarié dans sa vie privée a été abordée.
Juriscom rappelle que le principe dans un arrêt du 16 décembre 1998 est que le comportement du salarié dans sa vie privé ne justifie pas de sanction disciplinaire, sauf si ce comportement cause un trouble caractérisé dans l’entreprise. Le mot caractérisé est important : ce trouble n’est pas laissé à l’appréciation de l’employeur, qui doit justifier sa décision de sanction fondée sur ce trouble et le cas échéant en apporter la preuve devant le juge si la sanction est contestée.
Rappelons également que le salarié, qui est lié contractuellement à son employeur, a à l’égard de celui-ci une obligation de loyauté, qui rendrait fautif tout dénigrement et critique virulente publics même en dehors des heures de travail. Le journal de Max, par exemple, constituerait une cause de licenciement, et même aisément qualifiable en faute grave à mon sens (sans compter les délits qui y sont racontés, en supposant qu’ils reposent sur un fond de vérité), du fait de la violation de l’obligation de loyauté et du trouble dans l’entreprise que son blog provoquerait, s’il était identifié.
Enfin, rappelons un point essentiel : un licenciement, même qualifié d’abusif par le Conseil des prud’hommes, reste définitif. Donc si votre employeur vous vire à cause de votre blog bien que vous n’ayez jamais franchi les limites de la légalité, vous recevrez une indemnité, mais vous resterez chômeur. Soyez donc très prudents et tournez sept fois votre souris dans votre main avant de poster.
Blog et vie privée
Dernier terrain sensible, et j’arrête là cette note : la question de la vie privée. L’article 9 du code civil pose le principe du droit de chacun au respect de sa vie privée et donne au juge des référés le pouvoir de prendre les mesures nécessaires pour mettre fin à une telle violation. Ne parlez pas de la vie privée d’une personne dénommée ou aisément identifiable (mêmes règles que pour la diffamation) sans son autorisation. Ne diffusez pas non plus son image, ni le son de sa voix. Je précise que capter l’image d’une personne dans un lieu privé ou la voix de quelqu’un parlant à titre privé ou confidentiel sans son consentement est un délit pénal.
Si vous voulez raconter des horreurs sur votre ex, veillez à ce qu’il ou elle ne soit pas identifiable. Et si vous bloguez à visage découvert, le mieux est de ne pas aborder ces sujets. Vive l’anonymat.
Si ces limites peuvent sembler nombreuses, même toutes conjuguées, elles ne limitent pas considérablement la liberté d’expression des blogueurs. La plupart de ces limites tiennent au bon sens.
De fait, dans la plupart des cas de blogs menacés de poursuites par des personnes mécontentes s’estimant mises en cause, les poursuites annoncées échoueraient immanquablement. Dans bien des cas, elles visent juste à effrayer le blogueur, qui est un impécunieux notoire et préfère mettre hors ligne un billet plutôt que d’engager quelque frais pour se défendre. Ce n’est pas donc la loi qui menace la liberté d’expression, que la frilosité et l’ignorance des blogueurs eux même.
Puisse cette note vous réchauffer un peu et vous éclairer sur ce que vous pouvez faire.
Commentaire sur commentaire:
La loi francaise n’est pas encore valide en Equateur. Mais c’est bien intéressant pour vous, car si vous estimez que dire horrible est difamatoire, je puis me dire alors, ‘difamée’ selon vos propres lois?
January 14, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Lou
DEFAMATION, DEFAMATION
Defamation Standards
Blogging is a form of expression and, like other types of communication, can be both false and defamatory. Unlike more traditional forms of speech, however, the ease and speed of blogging mean that a click of the mouse potentially will publish the writer’s thoughts to millions of readers. Accordingly, bloggers should be – but almost universally are not – familiar with basic legal issues inescapable in a medium in which every thought can be read by an Internet audience of untold millions.
The standard for defamatory speech is the same whether the medium is paper or the Internet.6 A statement is defamatory if it “tends to harm one’s reputation so as to lower him or her in the estimation of the community or to deter third persons from associating or dealing with him or her.”7 There are three elements to a defamation claim: 1) a false and defamatory statement concerning another; 2) made in an unprivileged publication or broadcast to a third party; and 3) with fault amounting to at least negligence on the part of the speaker.8 Significantly, Wisconsin’s retraction statute, Wis. Stat. section 895.05(2), which requires a person allegedly the subject of defamation to give a newspaper, magazine, or periodical a “reasonable opportunity to correct the libelous matter” before the person commences a civil action, does not apply to speech on the Internet.9
A public official or public figure10 claiming he or she has been defamed and seeking damages is subject to a higher standard than a private figure plaintiff. A public figure defamation plaintiff must prove by clear and convincing evidence, that the speaker made the allegedly defamatory statement with actual malice – that is, either with knowledge that the statement was false or with reckless disregard as to the truth of the statement.11 Proof of actual malice is required because public officials and public figures have greater opportunities to effectively counter false statements than do private individuals and, thus, they must meet a higher standard to prove a defamation claim.12 The U.S. Supreme Court established the actual malice standard to reinforce “a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide open….”13
At the least, blogs raise questions about the traditional definition for “public figure”: will a private individual who happens to be a widely-read blogger be classified as a public figure in the eyes of the law?14 For example, since blogs often discuss other blogs and bloggers, a widely-read blogger may bring a defamation claim based on false and defamatory statements made by another in response to the blog.
By their nature, blogs may not fit within the private/public framework that the U.S. Supreme Court constructed for defamation law more than 30 years ago. Unlike traditional means of publication and broadcast – newspapers, magazines, television, and radio – blogs can help level the playing field for private and public figures. The distinguishing feature of many blogs is the interactive ability of readers to post comments in response to blog entries. Since anyone can start a blog – or respond to a blog posting with his or her own comment when the blog gives readers that opportunity – the private/public figure distinction may no longer be as meaningful for defamatory blogs. Indeed, both private and public figures have the same means and access, at least on the Internet, to counter false statements.
In John Doe 1 v. Cahill, a recent blogging defamation case, the Delaware Supreme Court acknowledged the “unique democratizing medium” of the Internet.15 “Unlike thirty years ago, when `many citizens [were] barred from meaningful participation in public discourse by financial or status inequalities and a relatively small number of powerful speakers [could] dominate the marketplace of ideas,’” the court wrote, “the [I]nternet now allows anyone with a phone line to `become a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from any soapbox.’”16
Blogs also are unique in that, when they allow comments or responses to a blog posting, the comments or responses are immediately accessible to the same audience as is the original allegedly false and defamatory statement. A blogger can respond directly to statements by others and potentially speak to the same target audience that heard the false and defamatory speech in the first place.
For now, it is likely that the traditional defamation standards, including the private/public figure distinction, will continue to apply to defamation cases involving blogs. The very accessibility of blogs, however, may lead courts to reevaluate defamation law standards.
Comment on comment:
Before using such sophisticated terms, remember two things: defamatory is a false statement. What is said about Salome isn’t false, except if she was making up her own life. ‘Horrible’ is referred to a subjective apprehension: I think that it is horrible (the ‘horrible’ having more than one slight ironical touch). A subjective opinion is never defamatory, except if you’re lying about your tastes and likings. Or would you say ‘I don’t like mustard’ is defamatory?
January 14, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Lou
if you give me a postal address, I’ll send to you some stuff to read which may help you to change your mind
January 14, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Lou
you can write to
messengers@graffiti.net
which may allow more privacy
I really don’t want a quarrel here, since I’m sure that if we had the opportunity to meet, we might have a lot to share in a positive way.
January 14, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Lou
Not later than this morning I got a message from Rudolph Binion, who wrote a book on Lou in the 1960s. This man is now over 80.
We’ve been in touch for several months: he told me last year he regrets some negative statements on Lou he put in this volume.
You really have to read my numerous books to improve your opinion on this matter.
January 14, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Lou
I truly look forward your deleting the word ‘Horrible’ in the title
when one googles LAS, it appears among the answers; I don’t find it acceptable, in her name, in mine.
Thanks.
January 14, 2008 at 11:33 pm
*Ask 4 Ten
I’m sorry not to be in the obligation to follow your advice.
January 15, 2008 at 9:49 am
Lou
I’m sorry to see that you are a very stupid, immature, ignorant and stubborn person, who seemingly has a lot to hide (an ugly psychiatric past, maybe worse, why did you flee to Eq.?), etc., and spends her life soiling persons worth admiring and worshipping.
January 15, 2008 at 11:44 am
Lou
Mistakes and ignorance of Sonja Kasten according to her own statements:
“To say the truth I don’t know whether she wrote it in French or German”
she wrote all her books in German
“actually died in Paris about 1933″ wrong, she died in Germany (Göttingen) in 1937
“Born from a Jewish doctor family, the Stein” wrong
“Thrown out of her family” wrong
“I don’t think Nietzsche was ever in love with her” jealousy of SK
“As someone called Andreas” very vague
“attaching the biblical Salome (intellectual author of John the Baptist’s murder)” wrong, Salomé is a French name, of her origin/family
“she asks her husband whether he doesn’t want to know anything about her life: he refuses, keeping at least at that moment the last reminders of German dignity.” insane
ALL THIS CONTAINS A HUGE AMOUNT OF INSANITY !!!
January 15, 2008 at 4:55 pm
*Ask 4 Ten
Be careful not to be sued for public insult.
January 15, 2008 at 5:15 pm
*Ask 4 Ten
It’s true that I’m very patient, because I could cut short to this somewhat violent conversation and take healthy distances from such agressif behaviour, if there were not other people who may be mislead by your somewhat propagandistic style.
First: I made a stay as volonteer at the psychiatric hospital of Lape in Istanbul, which made me know quite a lot about psychic illness, basis of studies on the grammatical support for detection of a certain type of schizophrenia (said: intelligent schizophrenia)
Second: I didn’t flee to Ecuador, I was offered a job as language teacher by the German School of Guayaquil and am working quite happily and quite successfully, I must say, as web page designer
Third: as you well pointed out in one of your eternal exposures on law, this type of program is a ‘blog’, it is thus not suspended to scientifical criteria as articles published in newspapers or specialized reviews. As I have been working long on what may shortly be called ‘oral tradition’, which is to say, the diforming of facts and stories by the very fact of letting time pass, memory and repetition, I often do talk ‘out of memory’, in order to study later possible deviations from the original texts and try to get a clue about the meaning of it
Fourth: precisely the ‘lack of precision’ in memory is underlined by ‘around’, ‘about’, etc. but I don’t think this is the most important point. You see, there are things I do remember very well, which I think not even worth the while mentioning, usually, such as the fact that , (she says) she figured out the Dutch priest was her father and established a relationship with this married man on these basis. I think it is sufficiently shocking as moral background so as to justify to avoid too direct mentioning of such facts. On the other hand, it is to my understanding necessary to somehow indicate to a reader of the character that he may be confronted to facts that may shock his/her understanding, which should be obtained by the allusive reference to a certain number of happenings and underlining of some other in a somewhat charicatural way.
I frankly don’t think there may be anything excessively admirable in such moral dispositions.
For what is of Nietzsche, you admit yourself he was homosexual. To state he was never too much in love with Salome, is thus not excessively surprising, even from your own positioning.
Her family surrounding does not show the name ‘Salome’ anywhere. Her family was the to the imperial family linked in white Russia living doctor Stein family, reference of which is made in the book by saying that her family had received some imperial present in reward of services.
The extremely conservative social environment of the Russian Imperial family should certainly not tolerate such behaviour as openly shown by Salome in her youth, and may explain hers leaving Russia. Her change of name may point into the direction of thinking she may have been excluded from her family and even forbidden the use of name.
I don’t see anything far too far from actual biographical data if you’re slightest in knowledge of fewest historical facts and social environments.
January 15, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Lou
You truly should read ALL HER BOOKS (in French translations, if you wish), with interesting comments.
You can read Stéphane Michaud’s Lou. L’alliée de la vie, which I like, although there are some lacks.
And, if you find time for that, please, google LAS, and see how full of admiration (almost) all her readers are.
You can read also all the correspondence. Her diaries, etc.
January 15, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Ou
You truly should read ALL HER BOOKS (in French translations, if you wish), with interesting comments.
You can read Stéphane Michaud’s Lou. L’alliée de la vie, which I like, although there are some lacks.
And, if you find time for that, please, google LAS, and see how full of admiration (almost) all her readers are.
You can read also all the correspondence. Her diaries, etc.
January 15, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Ou
I really don’t get yet why all this (this or that) makes her ‘horrible’?
truly…
that’s the point
please, come back in a few weeks or months when you’ve read all her work
then we may talk again
best!
January 20, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Ou
nternet et vie privée
LE MONDE | 02.11.07 | 13h41 • Mis à jour le 02.11.07 | 13h41
Consultez les dépêches vidéo des agences AFP et Reuters, en français et en anglais.
Abonnez-vous au Monde.fr : 6€ par mois + 30 jours offerts
Tout ce qui est interdit aux médias classiques écrits et audiovisuels est permis sur Internet. Cette constatation inquiétante est renforcée par le jugement du tribunal de grande instance de Paris qui, le 29 octobre, a débouté des plaignants dont la vie privée, en l’espèce leurs préférences sexuelles, avait été dévoilée sur Wikipedia. La législation actuelle laisse la porte ouverte à ce type d’abus. Le tribunal s’appuie sur le fait que l’encyclopédie électronique n’assurerait qu’un hébergement technique. C’est oublier que Wikipédia, dont le succès est considérable, est devenu l’un des dix premiers sites mondiaux : n’importe quel article ou élément d’article diffusé par son canal est dans l’instant mis à disposition de millions d’internautes. Seul un contenu “manifestement illicite”, comme la pédopornographie, doit être supprimé lorsqu’il est porté à la connaissance des sites “hébergeurs”. Mais l’outing forcé, la diffamation, échappent à la loi.
Le Net est bien sûr un outil formidable de travail et de communication. Mais, tout comme la “bulle” spéculative Internet avait gonflé jusqu’à la démesure avant d’éclater, l’euphorie suscitée par ce nouvel espace mondial de liberté a suscité un vertige collectif qui a longtemps masqué ses effets pervers. Sans même compter les possibilités accrues de fraude et d’escroquerie et les risques d’addiction, Internet devient en effet une arme de diffusion massive de ragots et de fausses nouvelles. Un instrument pratique et redoutable de vengeances anonymes, parfois de menaces. De tout temps, la rumeur a pu détruire des vies et des réputations. Internet démultiplie cet effet, offrant des possibilités nouvelles aux “corbeaux” de tous ordres.
Si rien n’est fait, c’est une sorte de Big Brother mondial à l’envers qui va se mettre en place. Nul ne sera à l’abri de la divulgation, à la vitesse de l’électronique et sans possibilité de réagir, d’épisodes réels ou inventés de sa vie privée, avec ou sans intention de nuire. Déjà, on sait que des employeurs potentiels peuvent récolter sur la Toile, en toute discrétion, des “informations” plus ou moins exactes sur des candidats à l’emploi. Des écrivains ou des journalistes sont désignés à la vindicte publique ou cibles de “cyber-enquêtes”.
Il devient urgent d’adapter le droit à cette nouvelle réalité. La nature immatérielle d’Internet, sa capacité à se jouer des frontières compliquent la tâche du législateur. D’autant que les citoyens ont pris goût aux possibilités qui leur sont offertes, et que les moteurs de recherche sont devenus un outil de base pour la quête de documentation. Mais il est essentiel de trouver un équilibre et de le faire respecter. Faute de quoi, sous couvert de transparence, c’est une régression démocratique, un recul des droits de l’individu qui vont s’installer au coeur de la société.
January 20, 2008 at 5:26 pm
*Ask 4 Ten
Et alors? je vois que tu adores les articles a l’allure tabloïde, scandaloïde et … difamatoire.
Car, sans savoir ou bien a pu etre publié cet article la, si sur internet ou sur papier, il est évident qu’il contient des éléments difamatoires envers wikipedia, par example. Wikipedia est assez sérieux comme programme, bien plus serieux que cet article lá, et que je sache ne contient en aucun cas des éléments difamatoires de l’ordre que cela ne soit. Des aspects de la vie privée de certains individus sont relévés seulement dans le cas ou cela ne soit de notoriété publique, c’est a dire, que la personne en question ait affirmé en publique qu’il n’en soit d’une maniere ou d’une autre.
Ainsi, par example, Yves Saint Laurent ou Ricky Martin ont fait une manifestation publique concernant leur orientation sexuelle, mais quoi, que je sache 1.) l’homosexualité n’est pas interdite par loi 2.) l’affirmation d’un fait n’est jamais difamatoire 3.) le respect de la maniere avec laquelle une personne gere sa vie privée est assurée par le fait que l’on considere si c’est lui meme qui décide a rendre ce fait publique
En aucun cas, que je sache (et je fréquente assez ce programme) on ne pourrait dire qu’ils se laissent surprendre par des commerages, des difamations et autres tendances perverses. Ce qu’on ne peut cependant pas dire de cet article la, a la tete jaunatre, vulgaire et peu informé.
Et pour revenir sur notre chere Lou Andreas Salomé, c’est elle, j’insiste, qui s’étale sur sa propre vie privée dans ses ouvrages. Il est certain que, puisque nous n’étions pas la au moment des événements, il se peut que Lou n’ait tout inventé, c’est une évidence. Mais dans ce cas (qui est pour moi, d’ailleurs, le seul valide pour un ouvrage littéraire) il existe un personnage qui signe ‘Lou Andreas Salomé’ racontant sa vie sous modalité de ‘je’, dont les exploits sont, a ma maniere d’entendre, ‘horribles’, qu’ils soient inventés ou pas.
January 21, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Ou
Une femme de tempérament, mystérieuse, admirablement entière, volontaire et profondément heureuse de vivre.
Elle disait : « Etre une femme et accepter le destin à dominante érotique de la femme, c’est en même temps se priver de tout ce dont un être humain est capable par ailleurs. » Elle en fera son leitmotiv et un choix de vie. Lou Andreas-Salomé était une femme difficile à comprendre mais saine et radieuse, une femme à lire, à découvrir.
(quotation)
January 21, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Ou
Lou: The Story of a Free Woman
Françoise Giroud
Translated by Robin Mackay
[work in progress - please contact with any corrections, suggestions
robin[AT]thoughtonfilm.com]
Updated 2 February 2005
to Albina du Boisrouvray
Millions of lines have been written on the subject of Lou Andreas-Salomé. This
woman, born in 1861 in St Petersburg, had no claim to celebrity, despite an
abundant enough oeuvre in the German language which attracted notoriety in its
time.
But she lastingly crossed the path of three men who were to become famous:
Nietzsche, Rainer Maria Rilke, Sigmund Freud. A flamboyant trio who in a certain
sense drew her into the sky where the stars shine.
Given this peculiar circumstance, and above all the fact that this superb creature had
been their intellectual equal, Lou Andreas-Salomé begins to excite our curiosity.
Biographies and essays appear, and continue to do so.
Must we join them? I do not possess any unknown information, any new document
to reveal. But the sources of all who have written on the subject of Lou are the
same: her “Journal”, her autobiography, her correspondence, the heroines of her
novels, her essays. Now, she censored herself in these texts, realising that she
would be, after her death, an object of curiosity. In addition to her other talents, she
was a good liar. Or rather, she had a rich and fertile imagination.
All this means that one remains here and there unsatisfied by what one reads,
frustrated by a morsel of truth that one pursues without quite grasping it, maybe
because her biographers, abundantly well-informed as they are, seem not to have
the boldness to approach her frankly.
I do not pretend to know better than the erudite scholars of Lou Andreas-Salomé,
one of the most intriguing woman of all, but only to propose an interpretation in
some respects a little different.
Page 2
I
Firstly, then, from whence the name of this diva or courtesan?
The Salomés, relatively numerous in France in the 15th and 16th centuries, were of
the Sephardic Jews driven out of Spain and Portugal by the Inquisition, who
sometimes ended up in Holland, like the family of Spinoza, but who were dispersed
most often on the edges of the Mediterranean, almost within the Ottoman Empire,
particularly hospitable to them.
In France, a certain number found refuge in Avignon, where their existence, whilst
not warmly welcomed, was relatively untroubled. We find an André Salomé
recorded in Baux in the 1500s. He had many children, and the family flourished.
We do not know how he was converted to protestantism when the reformed religion
began to spread wildly. But this was at nearly the same time that another well-know
Jew, Nostradamus, also decided to become Christian.
Alas! they had exchanged one persecution for another; the protestants were to
become very soon the butt of all aggression. In Provence, Richelieu was to
demolish the Chateau at Baux. They had to flee, or perish.
The Salomés thus arrived in a Germany already ravaged by the troops of Louis XIV,
ending up in the Palatinate colony where the French had maintained their own
language.
Once more, they showed themselves bold, hard workers. The great-grandfather of
Lou became a bourgeois of Tallinn. Then, observing the formidable economic
development of Russia under Catherine, he decided to set up in business in Saint
Petersburg. Great prosperity repaid his foresightedness and that of all the Salomés.
Thus we arrive at Lou. She is born in a majestic state apartment situated in the
building of the general staff of Saint Petersburg. A host of servants, a French
governess, an English governess…Her father is already fifty-three; but, apparently,
no stars on his shoulders. A valorous captain during the Warwaw insurrection, he
could have capitalised on having the eye of the Tsar. But health problems had
distanced him from leadership; he stayed in the administration and, until now, hasn’t
passed the grade of colonel, which is in itself not so bad.
At the requisite age, Gustav Salomé had requested and received a modest – but
hereditary – title of nobility, accorded to good servants of the Empire. An
administrative formality, in fact, and there we have Lou’s aristocratic origins. She is
not a snob: she dreams, her imagination running away with her. Besides, these little
fantasies have some justification : she will know her father by the name of General
von Salomé, consul of the Tsar, her mother will call him “the general”; and she
herself will benefit on her passport from an identical title by proxy…general! The
administration is more easy and prodigal with its favours than the military hierarchy.
Page 3
Less “fabulous” than his daughter described him, Gustav von Salomé is
nevertheless handsome, elegant, full of panache: a real incarnation of the romantic
generation to which he belongs. His house at St Petersburg is reputed for its high
level of intellectual conversation…and he is crazy about his little girl, born after five
boys, for whom he is the very image of God the Father.
At her birth, the child will be named Louise, like her mother, but, within the family,
they will always call her Liolia, the Russian version of Louise. Lou will appear later,
we shall see in what circumstances.
Madame von Salomé is lovely, charming, an excellent house-mistress, a perfect
wife, but rather overshadowed by an irrepressible daughter who does not and never
will come down to earth – not by caprice, but by nature.
One day, when she is with her mother at the beach and watches her swim, she asks:
“Mouchka, go under, please!”
“But I’ll die,” responds her mother, “suffocate!”
“So ? Nitchevo! ” replies the little girl.
Later on, Madame von Salomé would organise teas and receptions so that Lou could
entertain the young well-born girls who are among her classmates – but she will cut
school, with her father’s knowledge, and will be bored with these chattering, frivolous
creatures who know how to talk about nothing but clothes and future marriages,
which just makes her laugh. How can one marry? On this point also, she will decide
her intransigeance in advance of her life, and make a joke of marriage…But we shall
return to this.
Her five brothers adore her; joyous and affectionate, they are her playmates, her
companions in every way. All her life she will preserve a vision of the men she has
lost: her brothers. Never has a woman – who we would today call “feminist” – had a
more tender, communicative relationship with men. On condition that they don’t
touch her.
An important, even capital, episode of her young life: she loses confidence in God,
in the existence of God.
Until then raised in a very pious family, she thinks that this God resembles her
Father, for whom she maintains a true devotion, that he is good, kindly,
understanding, and that he hears her when, in the evening, before going to sleep,
she recounts the events of her day. But, one day, a servant tells her that a couple of
beggars had wanted to come into the house, that he had chased them and that they
were found dead, melting in front of the door. The ‘men’ were in fact snowmen: the
servant had meant to joke with her. But she doesn’t understand it as such, and is
horrified. How does one melt? And where does the melted part go to? Where?
She interrogates God. Silence. And a thought penetrates her, makes her ill: what if
God doesn’t exist?
At seventy, she would still be interrogating and would say to her lover Freud that it
Page 4
had never ceased to preoccupy her: that it was impossible to her eyes that God did
not exist, but still, she doubted…
Neither Freud nor Nietzsche, who both played such a rôle in her philosophical and
intellectual formation, would remove this vague belief that never answered to any
dogma, any more than they would relieve that cruel unbelief with which she had had
to live.
Lou is indeed a beautiful young girl: long arms, narrow hips, huge clear eyes, small
straight nose, sensual mouth, long blonde hair, high forehead. But she has still a flat
torso and the shape of an adolescent more than of a young woman. Today, we
might suspect her anorexic.
We don’t know when the metamorphosis occurred, when physical maturity caught up
with the intense effervescence of spirit. A word of Nietzsche mentioning the false
breasts that she had worn beneath her blouse even when she was already twenty-
three seems to indicate that it was late, but this woman, otherwise so narcissistic,
never speaks of her body. Basically, she doesn’t allow it a separate existence apart
from her soul…
It is clear that the narrowing gap between the slowing development of her body, of its
secretions, of its emotions, and that of its spirit took nothing away from its seduction,
on the contrary. She was destined to be desired in all her ambiguity for many years,
and to appear the more desirable in proportion to her inaccessibility.
Her first love was to be chaste and perverse. He was called Heinrich Gillet. A Dutch
pastor, he was the tutor of the Tsar’s children and the incumbent of a Lutheran
church in Saint Petersburg. Blonde, splendid, blessed with an enchanting voice, a
favourite of society women who flocked to hear his sermons on Sundays, he was
aged forty-one and married.
At sixteen or seventeen, Lou had to prepare for her confirmation. She began this
preparation with another pastor, a Reverend Dalton, but violently rebelled against his
dogmatism. Anyway, since God didn’t exist, what was she doing there anyway?
Dalton repeated to her that she was to be a Christian adult; She responded “I’m
neither an adult, nor a Christian!” Dalton had never been so shocked as at such
obstinacy.
One of her parents took Lou one Sunday to hear Gillot. There, it was instant
enchantment. She procured his address, sent him a letter in which she asked for an
interview – “not for reasons of religious doubts,” she specifies. He exults: “You have
come to me….” and envelopes her in his arms like a great cloak. At that precise
moment, Gillot is her father, her God, he is Man…
This affair will last for two years. It is she who will end it. It’s always she who ends it.
But what sort of affair is it, exactly? A clandestine affair, evidently, but they saw
each other every day at Gillot’s office, very close to the Salomé residence, where
Lou comes and goes as she pleases. Who would try to stop them?
Page 5
Gillot quickly realised that Lou was an exceptional young person and that one must
capture her spirit to keep her. Theoretically, she was there to prepare for her entry
into the German Lutheran Church and to become at the same time a member of the
German community. Now, she holds back with every fibre of her being. This same
assimilation will cut the intimate ties which bind her to Russia; and what does one
become when one makes a sacred vow without believing it, when one betrays one’s
own integrity?
Gillot does not push her; in fact his own knowledge of religious preparation is
somewhat hazy. But he is extremely cultured. Her exercise books show that she
studied the history of religions with him, that he spoke of philosophy, of metaphysics,
of logic, of the Old Testament, of Descartes, Pascal, Port-Royal. he had her read
Kant, Leibniz, Rousseau, Voltaire. She absorbed everything, and more.
This enforced training, the fact that she had assimilated this knowledge, would
distinguish her later as a most rare case amongst women of her generation: a
“valuable interlocutor,” a true partner in intellectual pursuits. This she was, for
Nietzsche and for Freud.
Sometimes, she even edits Gillot’s Dominican sermons for him and one of them
causes a scandal. It seems incredible that this situation can go on, but she loves
him, she is his child, and he desires her. He sits her on his knee. A large girl of
seventeen, it’s not really quite her place…What they really did, we don’t know. Some
furtive caresses, perhaps? Occasionally, he embraces her madly. But Gillot’s
sorrow is that Lou is indifferent to physical passion. It’s likely that she ignored it just
long enough, and that is the key to the characteristic direction of this young woman’s
life.
She likes men but, in a word, they have no effect on her, unless repulsive. She has
a powerful intellect, she has no body. She doesn’t want one.
One day, Gillot, in a trance, embraces her, takes her in his arms and asks her to
marry him. She discovers that he has even made the necessary preparations for the
marriage. She is confounded. Once again God, her god, has collapsed, and there
is nothing to be done. She expresses it to him sadly: “I will always be your child”; but
she will never see him again, they cannot see each other any more. She must leave
St. Petersburg.
He is amazed when she reveals her plan: to enrol at Zurich University, one of the
first to admit women as students.
Zurich is a rallying centre for young Russians, intoxicated by revolutionary ideas and
sexual liberty. But it’s not this that interests Lou: she wants to work with Aloïs
Biedermann, the greatest protestant theologian of the age.
What can Gillot do, except give way? It is Madame von Salomé who refuses with all
her energy. The brothers plead for peace between mother and daughter, but as
Page 6
always, Lou holds firm and mother ends up aquiescing. After all, perhaps it is
desirable to move Lou away from Gillot, this man of whom she has heard that he
may be dangerous?
An episode concerning passports intervenes. To obtain one, Lou must be
confirmed: a curious salade russe of police and religion. She returns to Gillot. The
pastor proposes to take mother and daughter to Holland, where he will confirm Lou
at the church of a friend.
It is thus that on a beautiful morning the young woman finds herself on her knees
before an altar, swearing to be a faithful member of the Christian Church. The very
thing she had always refused. But she no longer has any choice. In fact, it is to
Gillot, more than to the Church, that she swears her fidelity. It all seems after all like
a bizarre marriage, fortunately enacted entirely in Dutch, so that Madame von
Salomé doesn’t understand a word.
What did pastor Gillot actually say? “Do not fear. For I have redeemed you. I call
you by your name. You are mine…” And he blesses her.
He could never pronounce her name, Liolia, and he would for the first time call her
Lou. She would make it her name forever. Something in her would remain eternally
attached to him, that which as yet seemed very little like her…
Page 7
II
When will we again find her in love, that word which sits so badly with her that she
will seem year after year to scarcely exist in the flesh?
A photo shows her in Zurich, where she is living with her mother. At the University,
where she is enrolled, her unusual charm captivates professor Biedermann. She
wears a black dress buttoned up to the neck, with not even the plainest decoration;
the high brow, the severe hairstyle, the profoundly piercing blue eyes , the delicate
mouth. A striking, if not traditionally beautiful, countenance.
Biedermann had written to Mme von Salomé : “your daughter is a truly singular
woman; she has a childlike purity and an integrity, at the same time as a quality of
spirit and an independence of will which is not that of a child, hardly even that of a
woman. She is a diamond.”
The diamond would fall ill. Nothing allows us to know for sure quite what affected
her, but, manifestly, the disease was of a pulmonary origin; she spat blood. Seaside
resorts, health régimes, rest, she only became thinner. Last ditch recommendation:
a complete change of climate. In consequence, in January 1882, Mme von Salomé
took her daughter to Italy. Lou was twenty-one.
In Rome, the two women descend on their hotel. There, an convoluted situation is to
unfold piece by piece, requiring many ingredients before Nietzsche makes his
appearance.
One of Lou’s professors, compassionate for this young girl who he believed to be at
death’s door, had given her a warm letter of introduction to a woman much
celebrated in the German, and even international, intellectual community of the day,
a feminist heroine and an idealist involved in the revolutionary movement of 1848, to
the chagrin of her own family: Malwida von Meysenburg, now in her sixties. She
would, decided this woman, take Lou under her wing, and in fact the young girl
became a regular fixture in her house.
Now Malwida is great friends with Nietzsche, who is not unknown, but is far from
famous. In his lifetime, he never had more than three thousand readers. Suffering
greatly, he had had to renounce his teaching post. He was plagued by terrible
headaches. Malwida had offered him her hospitality throughout a whole winter in a
lovely villa in Sorrento. He had arrived in the company of a young philosopher, Paul
Rée, and another student. The stay had been idyllic.
To present fully the cast of characters, we must say that Paul Rée, quite large, very
clever, is the son of landowners, rich and jewish, something he could never forget.
He is a pathetic being who suffers from a quasi-pathological self-hatred, but at the
same time is full of humour. He’s also an inveterate gambler.
The evening when Rée arrives chez Malvida, entirely unannounced during dinner,
from Monte Carlo, he has to borrow from her to pay his taxi, having completely
Page 8
ruined himself. He is received nevertheless with open arms. Despite the mockery of
Nietzsche and Rée at the expense of Malvida’s theories on intellectual equality
between men and women, she treats the latter, who is twenty-two years old, like a
son.
Rée is agreeably surprised by the presence amongst the companions of a young girl
with big blue eyes; he asks her permission to accompany her back to the hotel
where her mother is awaiting her. She accepts, despite the reservations of Malwida,
who finds it quite improper for her to be walking the streets at night in the company
of a young man. Fortunately, the road is short between the Via delle Polveriere and
the hotel.
But they have so much to talk about that they prolong their walk more and more.
What do they talk about? Love? Not at all! Both are philosophers, thus they talk of
philosophy, metaphysical speculations, the mystery of life, and God, who always
intrudes.
Indifferent to the reprobation of Malwida and Mme von Salomé, Lou and Paul repeat
these walks nightly, and Paul falls in love with her to such a degree that she cannot
totally ignore it. She has him understand fully that, for her, the book of love is
closed, and she speaks of Gillot, her only and greatest love – along with God. There
is no room for another in her life.
At this torture, Rée becomes angst-ridden and can only see one way out : flight. The
only victory in love, as everyone since Napoleon knows. But he is an extrovert. He
has to tell someone – and above all he has to tell Malvida, who loves him like a son
and whom he cannot leave just like that, with no explanation!
Thus he runs to her, confesses, reporting the events concerning Lou, who laughs
when he talks of marriage.
Immediately he feels better. It is Malwida who feels bad, mad with rage against Lou
who had destroyed all the hopes that she had created in this young boy. She
restrains Paul, calms him, reprimands Lou. “But, really, what are they, these men,
incapable of friendship, yes, of simple friendship?” replies Lou. In one instant and
two smiles she makes up with Rée, who wants only to stay, and she then recounts a
dream that she has had recently: she lives in an apartment of three rooms with two
men, and everyone is happy. That’s what she wants.
Rée realises perfectly well the unrealistic character of this proposal, but, to keep her,
he is ready for anything.
What is necessary, he says, is that we have a chaperone to assure our
respectability.
A chaperone? They try to convince Malwida to play this role. She cries out in
horror. As for Mme von Salomé, she all but faints.
Page 9
Then Rée has an idea: an old friend of his, Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher,
would be an irreproachable chaperone. He writes to him, speaking of a “beautiful
young Russian girl who is burning to meet you.” Remaining ever faithful to
Nietzsche, even if he sometimes fears for his reason, he knows that the solitude of
the philosopher, the total absence of a woman in his life, is unbearable to him…
Page 10
III
Nietzsche was thirty-seven.
He was in the process of throwing off the infuence of Schopenhauer, who he had
worshipped. The bleakest philosopher in history had taught that happiness was
impossible, life was a tissue of suffering, and that in consequence the wise man
must ensure he does not seek pleasure, which could only lead to great sorrow.
When Nietzsche perceives that, on reflection, he did not agree, he writes the
following: “It is the attitude of a coward who would live like a timid deer in the forest.”
He rejoins the quest for happiness and pleasure, but his poor life is singularly bereft
of them. The glamour of his appointment to the chair of classical philology at Basel
University, where he was named at twenty-five, was from immediately tarnished by
the fact that he was in no fit state to occupy the post. He survives thanks to a
modest sum allowed him by the Swiss government; moving from one shabby pension
to another, he is always in search of companionship to ameliorate his solitude, and
of a climate that would make his life bearable.
Stefan Zweig described it thus: “[...] In the little furnished room, innumerable notes,
notebooks, writings and proofs were piled high on the table, but just one book, and
occasionally a letter. On the floor, in a corner, a great heavy wooden trunk, his only
possession, containing his two shirts and his other suit, worn-out. On a tray, a
quantity of bottles, vials, potions for the migraine which often leaves him prostrate for
hours at a time [...] Wrapped in his overcoat and a woollen scarf, fingers freezing,
glasses up close to his clouded eyes, scarcely able to decipher the text, he stayed
seated in this fashion for hours and wrote until his eyes caused him agony.”
One might take him for an inoffensive eccentric. He announces terrible wars in the
near future: now there was an idea!..No evidence for the dynamite that was in his
mind and that, one day, would break it.
The Birth of Tragedy had had a certain reverberation; Wagner, who is still a friend,
deigns to favour it; they are however at the point of rupture after a long idyll, but
that’s another story…
Rée presses his friend Nietzsche to join him in Rome, where the “young russian girl”
awaits him with impatience. She has got the idea that Rée and she should live in a
trio with him. But the project angers Mme von Salomé, who is this time determined
to bring Lou back home. Lou turns to Gillot, writes to him for help in realising her
plan. He replies severely: has she lost her mind? Who is she to believe herself
capable of judging Nietzsche and Rée? A woman has a duty towards society: what
of that?
This response leaves Lou heartbroken. Why do they all criticise, instead of being
happy? ” ‘We must do this, we must do that…’ I have no idea who this we is. It is
only of myself that I know anything. I cannot live according to an ideal, but I can
certainly live my own life, and I will do so whatever happens. In saying so, I don’t
represent any abstract principle, but something far more marvellous, something that
Page 11
is within me, something that is warm with life, full of lightness and wants to escape.”
There she is, contained within those few superb lines…
And how ridiculous, the pastor who preaches good conduct to her!
One must recognize nevertheless that this idea of three people living together is odd.
Or rather, it’s a man’s idea! The masculine side of Lou, which is strong, is expressed
in it.
Mad with love, Rée thinks only of one thing: not to lose her, to stop her returning to
Russia. He would be ready to cohabit with an elephant if that was the wish of Lou.
With all his hopes, he counts on the arrival of Nietzsche and on the effect that he will
exert on Mme von Salomé.
If the philosopher was late, it was because he had embarked on a disastrous voyage
in Sicily, but, one day when Rée and Lou are working at Saint-Pierre de Rome, in a
small side-chapel – Rée slaving away at a demonstration of the non-existence of God
- a man suddenly appears, comes straight towards Lou and says to her with a great
bow: “By what stars are we reunited here?” It is Friedrich Nietzsche.
She would write later that the first impression left by this stranger of medium height,
discreet dress, with his shortsighted squint, was that of a mysterious character, “of a
secret solitude”. She noticed his hands, “incomparably beautiful and slender,” but
felt nonetheless a certain repulsion towards him. His bombast annoyed her.
A singular ballet began. After scarcely a few days passed in Rome, during which he
never sees Lou alone, Nietzsche wants to marry her. He charges Paul Rée with
making the proposal. The same Rée is himself an obstinate candidate for Lou’s
hand. So as not to show himself ill-humoured, he all the same passes on
Nietzsche’s request to the interested party. Lou screams with laughter: a bourgeois
marriage! In the best traditions! Nietzsche wants a bourgeois marriage! She would
tell him what she thought of that!
Rée advises diplomacy: if she still wants to bring her plan of living three under the
same roof, she must be careful with Nietzsche’s pride.
Lou calms down. She will say to Nietzsche – which is the truth – that, if she was to
marry, the russian government would discontinue her allowance. Now, she has no
other source of revenue. Hence, a good reason to rebuff an impecunious man.
But he doesn’t want to let go. He is so taken with this dream creature who
understands the nature of his preoccupations and can intelligently discuss them. He
is IN LOVE.
Everyone, at this time in history, travels for a yes, for a no, whatever the risks and
discomforts of long journeys. Here then are our heroes at Orta Lake, one of the
smallest but most beautiful of the upper Italian lakes, to the north of Milan, a
Page 12
favourite beauty spot. Mme von Salomé and Lou are en route to Russia, where the
mother had decided to return her daughter, Nietzsche and Rée following in the
direction of Switzerland.
Orta is a place imbued with a certain magic where millions of pilgrims had come to
pray before the shrine of saint François and to kneel on the wooded hill that goes by
the name of Monte Sacro. Rée is tired, Mme von Salomé sulky; Lou and Nietzsche
leave alone to climb the hill.
What happens? We can say very little with certainty: they disappear for twice as
long as is necessary to go to Monte Sacro and return. As for the explanations given
by Lou to her furious mother, they are hardly credible.
Lou and Nietzsche had talked a lot. It was in the course of this walk that the
philosopher, in extreme agitation, was to reveal to the young woman the final stage
of his thought: the theory of the eternal return of everything, a new
metaphysics…And then?
At the end of her life, Lou would confide to an old friend what she had never written
or spoken to anyone: “I don’t remember whether I kissed Nietzsche or not…”
It is as if she had said: “I don’t remember whether I set the house on fire or not.” For,
it was after this walk to Monte Sacro, of which he said to her: “I owe you the most
beautiful reverie of my life,” that Nietzsche, enlightened, was to lose contact with
reality.
Lou had no particular inclination towards him. Paul Rée seriously sermonises to the
young woman, who is, ultimately, behaving like a coquette. He calls her “my little
snail”…He begs her not to play with Nietzsche. The two are to meet at Lucerne, in
front of the Lion. There, she will have to say firmly, with no equivocation, that she
could never be his wife.
Yes, yes, promises Lou, who dreads this meeting with Nietzsche, and who, in the
end, would rather take refuge in ambiguity. She does not want to marry him, but she
does not want to lose him either. She is basically profoundly flattered by the interest
this great mind shows in her, even if she has never doubted that she merits it. This
apart from the fact that he helped her to come to terms with the religious
phenomenon, which occupies a central place in her life.
The interview at Lucerne – where Rée joins them – is ended with a photograph. The
idea is Nietzsche’s. A cliché, which would ultimately become famous. We see
Nietzsche and Rée pulling a cart whilst Lou, sat behind them, wields a whip. The
record does not state who decided upon this particular scene.
Despite the remonstrances of Rée, Lou promises Nietzsche to spend a few weeks
holiday with him. He invites her to Tautenberg, a small village where he rents a
house with his sister Elisabeth. This sister, we have to say, is an absolute bitch!
She has gone down in history as the one who shamelessly falsified the texts of her
Page 13
brother, who died insane in 1900, in order to conform them to hitlerian doctrine.
Thus she had the “will to power,” the most intimate essence of being according to
Nietzsche, glorified under the name of national socialism. It would take many years
after the war, and much conscientious work, for the imposture to be dispelled, and
Nietzsche rehabilitated.
In 1882, Elisabeth is nothing but a country woman full of passion for her brother and
very close to a militant antisemite she is to marry. From the first minute, she takes a
dislike to Lou. Although she doesn’t know anything about music, the two women
proceed to Bayreuth where Wagner is giving Parsifal. Nietzsche made sure he did
not accompany them. Cautious amateur, musical gourmand – “without music, life
would be a horror, a fatigue, an ‘exile’” -, self-confident composer himself, he had
published Richard Wagner at Bayreuth, a intolerable panegyric to he who was to
become a most dear friend, and to his wife Cosima, of whom he would be a
chivalrous servant. The Wagners were horrified by the idea. Nietzsche dreaded
with good reason the reception that he would find if he presented himself at
Bayreuth, and he claimed that Parsifal “put him to sleep.” Moreover, he had
decorated Carmen with plaudits.
Elisabeth keeps a prudent distance. Lou, in revenge, presented to the clan Wagner
by Malwida, becomes immediately popular, at least among the men.
The two women have some disagreements which are taken up again at Tautenberg,
where it is a question, for Elisabeth, of driving the “terrible Russian” from the mind of
Nietzsche. But he doesn’t comply and stays in Lou’s room most of the night, despite
Elisabeth’s vociferous protest. What do they do? They talk. Of God, of religion, of
death, of sex. Heaven and hell are the principal subjects of their conversation.
“The trait that we have in common,” notes Lou in her Journal, “is fundmentally
religious.[...] For the free-thinker, the religious impulse, as if fallen back on itself,
becomes a heroic force of their being, a desire for sacrifice in a noble cause. In
Nietzsche’s character there exists such a heroic trait [...] We will see him becoming
the prophet of a new religion, and he will be of those who search heros for disciples.”
Not a bad premonition!
In fact, the philosophy of Nietzsche was to explode, some years later, after a
conference of the Danish critic Georg Brandes, and relayed to France by Taine.
The holiday in Tautenberg would have been idyllic, if it weren’t for Elisabeth.
Nietzsche is enchanted before Lou, “the most intelligent and the most gentle of
women [...] quick like an eagle, brave as a lion.” He never manages to approach her
physically, but does not give up hope. At twenty-one, she is in the prime of her
androgynous beauty.
He writes to Malwida : “This year [...] has been made marvellous for me by the
charm and the grace of that truly heroic young soul.”
Page 14
If we can trust her correspondence, it seems that he awaited with confidence the
moment when Lou, Paul and he would move in together at Vienna, thus realising the
cohabitation of the famous “trio”.
This prospect provokes from Malwida some frightening sermons, and from Mme von
Salomé, just resigned smiles. As for Paul’s mother, she considers cutting him off
from the family.
Lou’s excitement for the life “in trio” hasn’t disappeared, but she is not so desperate.
During the weeks that preceded her arrival at Tautenberg, she had spent some
delicious day with Paul in the beautiful Rée family dwelling, at Stibbe, where he
spent freely so that each minute could be comfortable for the girl. Rée is a charming
being, a little complaining but charming nonetheless, often funny too…In Lou’s mind,
the prospect of the trio is put back until the long-awaited moment of reconciliation
with Nietzsche.
When she arrives at Tautenberg, he throws her a party. But what a stupid idea to
have stuck his sister in-between them! This woman, very pleasant physically, had
conceived an almost pathological hatred of Lou who she called, as we have seen,
“the terrible Russian”. She execrated her, she wanted to kill her, in fact she was to
try, at least symbolically. All her life she will pursue her with an aggression as active
as it is inventive.
Nietzsche sees none of this. The presence of Lou enchants him. He will pass
nineteen days which he will always remember, “compelled by destiny towards
happiness,” a very rare situation in his life.
Rustic holiday: Lou resides with Elisabeth in the pastor’s house, while he sleeps at a
peasant’s house. In fact, he stays in the young woman’s room until one in the
morning – to talk of heaven and hell… It drives Elisabeth mad, and she continually
harasses them.
She reproaches Lou for being dirty. The fact is that the young girl isn’t in the
slightest bit smart, not at all. But Nietzsche doesn’t complain. Instead, he
reproaches her for writing poorly. It’s true: she doesn’t have much style and never
will. Now, for the philosopher writing must be perfect or must not be at all; the
results of creation, excellent or nothing. His own style – rapid, percussive, acute – is
dazzling.
Thus, he reads Lou’s work, a treatise on women, and says to her: “You must rethink
the whole thing and rewrite it in one go, in twenty-four hours!” That, she doesnt’t
know how to do, but it remains the only point that she concedes to him.
Besides, he wishes to write a work in collaboration with her. A great homage, but
she sidesteps it. She will never be a disciple, a second-in-command; he will never
absorb her into the role of heiress. She has received everything she can from him.
Rée will say, ironically, “She gained two years.”
Page 15
It is in any case obvious that she is weary of their relationship. She doesn’t realise
that Nietzsche has written to Mme von Salomé that they are secrety engaged. They
pass a few days together at Leipzig, where Paul Rée awaits them. But the old image
of the trio is faded. Nietzsche understands this and leaves them; he heads for Italy,
leaving an affectionate letter for Paul. Before him opens a abyss of despair. This
time, he realises that he has lost Lou.
Elisabeth intoxicates him with abominable lies about the woman he continues to
love. It’s only the beginning of a campaign of calumnies which she will continue to
the end of her life.
Nietzsche is fragile, lovesick. First he revolts against his sister, then he swallows it
all. After this, he writes some horrible things about Lou: “This little thin and dirty and
nauseating monkey, with her false breasts and her sexual atrophy…”
Sexual atrophy: it is the first and only time, to my knowledge, that this has been said.
And we can only be surprised that it seems that no-one else has, so to speak, put
their finger on it.
I don’t know what this “sexual atrophy” is, and even whether it exists, but it is
probably another name for that misfortune that we attribute to Mme Récamier, the
beautiful Juliette de Chateubriand, those whom one calls “unavailable”[barré] but
who are nevertheless the great seductrices of their times. It’s this, or something
similar, which had made of Lou “an asexual Messaline,” as H.F.Peters wrote, and
explains her implacable refusal of all intimate relations, the ardour she aroused, the
force that she exerted…
But no-one ever saw or described the famous “barrier” which kept at a distance the
lovers of Juliette Récamier. Of those which paralyse the pastor Gillot, which made
Nietzsche despair, which afflicted Rée, which made of Lou this marble goddess, we
could however furnish, with all due caveats, an attempt at explanation.
Lou may not have been simply a physiological “case”, but a little girl who had some
sort of incestuous experience.
What exactly? I don’t know. Father, brothers, she had a large entourage of men
who doted on her – this much is certain – excessively. She later protected herself
from masculine sexuality with an implacable violence. This speaks for itself. I
cannot prove that there is a relation of cause and effect, but I believe so.
It makes sense that nothing of this appears in the stories that Lou wrote during her
childhood, except perhaps for an intoxicating intimacy with her father…
At Tautenburg, Nietzsche suffers alone, then, without ever resigning himself. Then
he understands that Lou has definitively escaped him, that they will not live together
ever, that Rée has taken her. And he begins to abhor the traitress.
It’s now that a new blow falls: Wagner dies. The two events come one after the
Page 16
other. Nietzsche is nothing but a mass of sorrow when he takes up his pen and
produces, in ten days, the first part of Thus Spake Zarathustra. The mystery of
creation.
We are now in the beginning of 1883. In June, he produces with the same speed the
second part.
An extraordinary book which is situated slightly on the margin of his own oeuvre, and
where the notion of the “superman” first appears: “Man is something that must be
overcome”, preaches the prophet. The future, he says, belongs to the strong, to
those who are unpitying, overflowing with health; these are the creators of new
values. They love the earth, and every idea of the afterlife makes them laugh,
because they know that all the gods are dead. They obey without fear the
commandments of their will-to-power. Their goal is grandeur, not happiness. They
live dangerously and accept without qualms the terrible truth that there is neither
liberation nor exit from the wheel of eternal return. They are the lords of the earth
who hate the herd, the mob, the humble, the sick and poor of spirit.
Erotic images abound, at the same time as allusions to the sexuality of the author.
In summary, the “superman” is the inverse image of Nietzsche: everything that he is
not and whose absence Lou made him feel to the extent of it draining all his
energies.
Zarathustra says : “Woman is not capable of friendship. Women are still cats and
birds, or, at best, cows.”
What would have happened if Lou had shared her life and love with Nietzsche? We
have the right to think that he wouldn’t have written this book whose doctrine, that of
the “superman”, was to become in Nazi Germany, trafficked by Elisabeth, the bible
of german thought. But without doubt it would be oversimplifying a little to put all of
this weight on the rejection of a piteous lover by a young girl…
During the last years of her life, consumed by the syphilis which she was to die of,
just like Baudelaire, like Maupassant – it was the AIDS of its time -, during these
years where he was published once more, the notoriety of Nietzsche became
considerable. She had never ceased to believe that it would be so. The great
German philosophers are never forgotten. But none of them ever attained such
global celebrity, outside of cultivated circles. We are struck with this in saying: “God
is dead…” Between 1895 and 1900, Nietzsche and all his writings, essays,
memories concerning him, are rediscovered.
In Berlin, Lou understands quickly the part she can play. Straight away she writes
some articles for the major journals, the Vossische Zeitung and the Neue Rundschau,
then a book, which received an uneven reception because it reproduced private
letters giving the impression that there existed a great intimacy between herself and
Nietzsche. He was still living; we could well reproach Lou for her bad taste.
Nevertheless, she was to become well-known thanks to her writings, and her book
Page 17
still remains a primary reference text. One might say that it launched her.
But, all her life, she carried the mark of having “rejected” Nietzsche. No
commentator spared her this recurrent grief.
In fact, what which we cannot pardon her for is for having been a woman capable of
understanding the thought of Nietzsche and of making it clear. And the sound of that
bell still resonates…
She was never bothered with it, but she had to suffer, amongst other attacks, four
works by Elisabeth accusing her of being a jew, fat, of displaying a feeble attachment
to pleasure and comfort, which Nietzsche himself could never stand; and of having
conceived a repugnant liason with a priest from Saint Petersburg. Sometimes, the
friends of Elisabeth found relief in insults.
Many long years later, Freud wrote to Lou:
“I am often irritated when I hear mentioned your relations with Nietzsche in terms
that suggest you were quite hostile and which cannot at all correspond to reality.
You have let it all pass, because you have become a grand dame. Won’t you finally
defend yourself in a dignified fashion?’
She never bothered.
Nietzsche is walking in the road, in Turin, when he suddenly throws his arms around
the neck of an old coach-horse. A great commotion. His housekeeper sees him
and rushes out. They transport Nietzsche, sobbing, to the hospital, where his old
friend Overbeck comes to find him to take him to a psychiatric clinic, in Jena, where
he will stay many years. He passes his last months at his mothers house,
completely mute, and dies at Weimar, on 25 August 1900. He is fifty-five.
As far as we know, Lou was not excessively affected by his death. She admired
him, but she did not love him.
Page 18
IV
How wonderful life was, in the Berlin of the 1880s! The brilliance of intellectuals of
every hue illuminates the city. Lou makes conquests everywhere amongst the
writers, sociologists, scientists. She has fun. She is happy.
She lives with Paul in a three-room apartment, and he discovers unsuspected
domestic virtues in her. It is she who manages their budget – the rent that the
Russian state provides for her, the monthly allowance that Mme Rée allows her son -
and, for the first time in his life, Paul will not be crippled by debt. His brother Georg
is amazed.
But they do not live in their kitchen, far from it: they can be seen everywhere:, in all
the literary circles and groups. He is ever that bizarre, brilliant, funny, insomniac
character, castrated, in a way, by Lou; he must of course have found some sort of
enjoyment in it. As for her, protected by the armour of her declared chastity, she
wrought, thanks to her slavic charm, no little devastation within these milieus usually
the exclusive preserve of men.
She leaves for the country with one, promises another she will marry him, turning
one against the other like fools – always carefully preserving her virginity. She had
the effect amongst men, one might say, of a drug that however rarely tasted, they
could not do without.
A brutal attack is directed at Lou by Elizabeth, notably with the support of Malwida
and Mme Rée, in an attempt to destabilise her. It takes the form of pressurising
Mme von Salomé into believing that it is imperative she recalls her daughter to St
Petersburg, on the pretext that in Berlin she will find only dissipation.
At the Rée’s, things are getting serious! Paul’s brother comes down on Lou’s side,
against their mother; the brothers Rée discuss, and decide that Lou must respond by
publishing a book to prove to her mother that her occupation could not be more
serious. Lou and Paul leave together for the Tyrol, in order to find some peace and
to write, he a philosophical treatise, The Origin of Moral Conscience, she a
psychological novel, A Struggle for God.
This novel, written on demand, was to receive the best critical notices of any that
would follow it. Even if it is not a literary masterpiece, it is a success. The objective
is therefore attained.
Mme von Salomé is swayed. A piquant detail: to ensure greater chance of success,
Lou had published under a man’s name: Henri Lou. The subterfuge had succeeded.
And Paul? To become a university professor, as he wishes, he must submit a
dissertation to a university jury of his choice. But, wherever he presents his text, it
ends up being refused…This, at the very same moment Lou is becoming a
successful young author…A humiliating situation, even for a masochist!
Page 19
Paul Rée turns to medicine. He has at his disposal an inherited fortune. He could
donate it to the poor and destitute. His disinterest and altruism would become
legendary.
As for the present, with Lou, it is over. Their friendship is intact, but they hardly see
each other from one week to the next.
One evening, she tells him that she has met a certain Andreas, and that she plans to
continue seeing him if Paul agrees. He acquiesces. He is not the type of man to
make a scene. He leaves.
Outside, the rain is torrential; he returns to take shelter. Then he leaves again, but
reappears to take a book. Dawn has broken before he definitively leaves. Lou
recounts:
“I saw by the lamplight a small photograph of myself as a child, which I had given to
Rée. Near to it, on a folded paper, he had written: ‘Be well! Do not look for me!.”
The next morning, a workman brought his body back to the Inn. From the height of a
cliff, he had plunged into the river, near the place where, more than fifteen years
before, with Lou, they had passed their happiest years.
An end which seems strangely like a suicide.
Who was this Andreas who had obtained that which so many others had solicited in
vain? The son of a German and an Armenian prince who had changed his name.
Small, bearded, very dark, he was known in Berlin as the best specialist in Persian
culture. He taught, but found himself always in trouble with the authorities, whom he
couldn’t stand. He had no fortune.
Where did his charm lie? The fact that Lou was to take his name into her own is a
strong sign. She did not hide it, on the contrary.
Of an unhealthy sensibility, seeming always on the point of explosion, and in fact
sometimes actually exploding, he has an intense relationship with nature, with
animals, with plants, walking barefoot in the grass, eating vegetarian foods, never
separated from his knife.
He had lived many years in Persia, where he had taken part in the mission sent by
the Prussian government to observe the passage of the planet Venus. When the
mission was recalled, he had refused to return and had survived by practising a very
peculiar, and apparently useful form of medicine; he had become an expert on
reptiles…not particularly useful for obtaining a job in Berlin! He gave personal
lessons whilst awaiting a post at the university…
One day as they were sitting at table with Lou, he took out his knife and plunged it
straight into his chest. She called for help, a doctor came and suspected Lou herself
of having wielded the knife. This certainly isn’t the young lady’s style, but Andreas’
Page 20
style is writ large in it. Why such a gesture? According to Lou, to make her marry
him. He won. But she poses conditions: an unconsummated marriage, forever…
He accepts, persuaded that it is a mere matter of a young woman’s caprice. But Lou
proves uncompromising. He now tries persuasion, now the strong manner. One
night, as she sleeps, he tries to take her. She half-awakes, gripping the man’s
throat, making him gasp. She opens her eyes and perceives with horror that she is
in the process of strangling Andreas. A delicious conjugal embrace! She was to
allow him no other in the space of forty years. How can we understand this attitude?
One could suggest that in rebuffing Andreas after his having invaded her bed, she
enjoyed exercising a power over him that she never had over her incestuous brother.
In addition, they had nothing to say to each other. At the end of his life, Andreas
was to be found every day at the clinic where Lou would go to be operated on. He
would be eighty-four. He stayed an hour with her, and the two spouses discovered
that, for the first time in their life together, they started to have a proper conversation!
So, what sort of pact had they made together during more than a half-century? They
hadn’t spoken, they hadn’t copulated and so had no children together, they had
nothing in common through their work… She did not se him more than eight days a
year, when she grew weary of her wandering.
Andreas yells? She lets him yell.
Have I mentioned that she had pushed this perversity even so far as having had the
union blessed by the pastor Gillot? Mme Gillot’s mother and Mme von Salomé had
helped, a little dumbfounded by this most original marriage. And we are given to
understand that it was indeed a mockery of the idea of marriage. It is traditional that
the pastor wishes the couple divine grace and fecundity. Lou had censored this
suggestion. Gillot had blessed nothing more than the intellectual association
between two persons.
The unhappy Andreas can have had no doubt, at this instant, that he would be
progressively reduced to the role of an old umbrella useful on rainy days. But then,
there are men for whom this is their vocation…
For now, though, throughout her thirties, Lou deserts metaphysics to explore what
women are to make of their sex. She is obviously preoccupied by the question. We
do not ever find her embarking on the least adventure herself, but all that she writes
bespeaks an ardent reflection on feminine sexuality, even though she never speaks
of her own, always hidden. One could almost say ‘cursed’, but the term would be too
strong here. What is sure is that this sexuality is alive and kicking.
It is a period where she writes terrible things. This, for example, in a letter to Frieda
von Bülow, her dear friend and a celebrated explorer :
“To be a woman and accept the predominantly erotic destiny of woman, is at the
same time to be deprived of all that a human being is capable of besides this.”
Page 21
Who has stated more cruelly and more profoundly that to which a woman can be
reduced?
And here, where she rails against the idea of a professional life for women:
“The grandeur of woman resides in her absence of ambition. She is an organism
closed in on herself who enjoys in herself the joy of existing.”
Words equally scandalous as they are opportune, they dazzle with their acuity.
A man was to temporarily trouble her in her work: the writer and politician Georg
Ledebour. Brilliant, full of energy and self-assurance, he tells her coldly that her
marriage is a sham, that she is still a virgin. She is blown over by having been found
out so. Ledebour makes her a forceful courtship; his personality, his intuition get the
better of Lou’s resistance. Not of her physical resistance, of course:that is not for the
taking. But she wants to accept this love which is offered and which she believes
could remain platonic.
The trouble is Andreas, who is little disposed to tolerate Ledebour. One evening
when they are together with friends, he acts so badly, playing with his knife, that the
company imagine he has already stabbed Ledebour. He is close to it. Ledebour,who
loves Lou, pleads that she leave this madman, divorce him, that she go with him; he
offers her everything a woman could desire, he thinks: social situation, fortune, but,
despite the council of Frieda von Bülow, she does not manage to break with
Andreas…
Ledebour, who would go on to a brilliant career, would never forgive Lou for this
offence.
It was in the wake of this sinister affair, and after they had considered committing
suicide together, that Lou and Andreas arrived at a new contract: divorce excepted,
Lou could do as she wished, he would accept it. Andreas submitted; Lou, previously
filling out as never before, went on to lose several kilos.
Fortunately, during this sad period she nourished some passionate female
friendships: Frieda von Bülow, already mentioned, Helen Klodt Heydenfeldt – two
young aristocratic women; Sophie Goudstikker, renowned photographer. All
achieved great stature in their lifetimes, even if they were refractory with respect to
what we call ‘feminism’, in vogue at the time in Berlin. They challenged the doctrine
fundamentally: the liberation and all that followed it. To their eyes, women would be
free when they obeyed only God. What a start, then! [Qu'elles recommencent donc!]
The correspondence, most abundant, between Lou and Frieda, was savagely
mutilated by Lou herself. She evidently did not want a certan image of herself to
become known. One cannot say of the fragments of paper any more than they
themselves yield: the expression of some exalted sentiments…The liason of Lou and
Frieda von Bülow will remain essentially secret, just like the brief experiences which
proved decidedly “awakening” for her. Rare amongst her fugitive partners were
those who have spoken. One of the two, though, described her as “insatiable”:
“She opened wide her blue eyes,” he reported, ” and cried: “Sperm! Sperm, I want
Page 22
more!” She held what she called her ‘little banquets’.”
But something was to befall her mind, at thirty-five years old, which goes by only one
name in all languages: it is Love. This was to leave behind it an enchanted trace:
the dozens of poems written by Rainer Maria Rilke for the woman of his life.
January 22, 2008 at 12:29 am
*Ask 4 Ten
Are we sure we’re talking about the same person? Where do these refernces come from?
January 23, 2008 at 9:25 am
Ou
99 % of the stuff published on Lou are full of admiration, respect, etc.
please, google her ‘Lou Andreas-Salomé’ (that’s how I’ve found your pages, since I do that at times)
I really, truly and sincerely don’t get why your point of view is so strangely apart…
especially since you haven’t read much from her
please, read and see
thanks
January 23, 2008 at 5:40 pm
*Ask 4 Ten
Let us be a little bit serious.
First: my point of view, were it apart or not, is my point of view, which I usually am quite proud of. Which is to say, that I don’t have the slightest intention of changing it, as it is just giving back the impression left by one book, which, were it to change, would only be made out of lies, as this is exactly the impression left by the book in question.
Second: if there are so little negative comments on a certain number of authors, I suppose it is because of the, what I would call, somewhat hysterical reaction of people like you. Yourself you say another commenter on Andreas Salome was pushed back by your arguments in his somewhat critical position. People like peaceful lifes and not to have to deal with agressions, violence, insults as those coming from people of your kind, and this explains many things.
Third: in what is of my why of seeing, precisely Lou Andreas Salome’s writing does shape the mind in a way that promotes a way of writing, like yours, that is quite (to my understanding) uncivilized, lacking of education, of scientifical precision and neutrality. You do nothing but reinforce my personal position, without me having to get further informed on the subject, which is to tell you the truth, the least of my multiple interests.
January 23, 2008 at 5:46 pm
*Ask 4 Ten
Ah. I guess you don’t like my way of writing? My opinion? My point of view? Do I forbid you of expressing yourself freely on this point? Should I be wanting to change your view on things? You’re absolutely free to like or not something, and to put your point of view publicly as long as you don’t infringe law through lies, difamation, insults, and many etc (law is quite sharp on these points, were it to be taken seriously). If your point of view convinces or pleases other people, the better for you. If it is mine, the better for me. What you can’t do is to pretend there could be one sole absolute view on things that should rule on other people’s opinion.
See one thing, if law did analyze the series of your comments you’d get a nice fine, if it were not subjected to prison. But precisely, and thanks to people like you, people who are expressing a point of view become criminals, and those who do publicly insult and agress, are just expressing a point of view. See why I don’t like your dear Lou?
January 23, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Ou
You are very ill, and I feel a huge pity for you. That’s obvious since the beginning, you need a therapy.
Good luck!
February 3, 2008 at 6:48 am
Lassus
I am thoroughly uneducated on Lou Salome’s bio, but I just read Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus in German–first time since junior high. As a lifelong lover of poetry, writer, I must say that undoubtedly these lyrical vagaries are Love-inspired by no less than the Intellectual Beauty of Salome (Shelley’s interpretation.)
‘Angelic’ is the most commonly used adjective I’ve encountered in reference to Salome–even if a dark one. Also, ‘dreamlike’, ’smiling’, ‘radiant’.
Then there are the ‘amoral’, ‘terrifying’, ‘insatiable semen appetite’ quotes. Some of these are firsthand by those who KNEW her, most by those who knew only OF her. Bad history–like Caesar on the Celts, Herodotus on, well…a slew of things. Inductive reasoning breaks down. Hearsay is poor substitute for accurate documentation and triangulation of sources.
Lady Caroline Lamb apeshitted over Byron–this is pretty well documented by her years in an insane asylum. Sabina Speilrein’s transferent/transgressive doctor-patient relationship with Carl Jung has historical clout in my opinion. But all the ‘evil’ of Salome exists in the aether somewhere or in Salome’s grave–you pick one.
It’s popular, quasi-history like the Greene books (“The Art of Seduction”; “The 48 Laws of Power”) that muddy the water of an already ambiguous personage like Salome. There is “even-handed slander” (my term) like the slanted bio (try David Crane’s “Lord Byron’s Jackal: A Life of Edward John Trelawny”) that respectably fortifies its relevance by dint of historical research, not propagandizing, card-stacking, celebrity-quoting.
Look at the (surgingly recent!) success of the Necronomicon in occult circles. A brave hoax of a book! The brainchild of H.P. Lovecraft to give his fiction another dimension, and kids today still believe it a staple hold book of all right hand path occult learning! (Even big budget catalog Azure Green passes it off for legit reading.) excuse my French, but hyppereality is a bitch.
Salome was/is a lustful, vivacious anima figure who lived a rich, blessed life, however you conceive of her moral conscience. Rilke’s poetry might do more to harm her reputation by idealizing her as the world has come to idealize her and made her an object of iconoclastic disfigurement. Surely her own eccentric personality, exoticism of thought and family romance (the psychological kind) suppose a greater burden of evidence for her preying upon weak men, abhorrence to marriagable society, etc. But this makes her ONLY of liberal ideas and not necessarily insane(Foucalt’s version) prescriptions of behavior.
Now Countess Bathory…I might have to agree that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. She had issues and to hell with historical burden of proof. Salome’s reputation is strikingly similar to the singer Tori Amos–an incredible person who maybe wants the world to remember her as a biographical duplicity. A Luciferian? A confessional Americana poet? A feminist/liberalist? A closet Satanist with a penchant for encoded lyrics and vague allusion? I’ve met her twice, but I wouldn’t begin to venture my musings on a bleak vision of a person so murky and dynamic.
Same with Salome–she was tragically, uncommonly human. Caught somewhere in the soft focus between angel and devil, in cosmic vacillations of the most human of souls.
Rilke, who maybe knew her best, leaves us resolution in Love:
Jeder Engel ist schrecklich. Und dennoch, weh mir,
ansing ich euch, fast todliche Vogel der Seele,
wissend um euch.
Every angel’s terrifying. Almost deadly birds
of my soul, I know what you are, but, oh,
I still sing to you!
February 3, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Sonja Kasten
Interesting. And though … it makes questions arise. First: I don’t think first hand sources are necessarily the most accurate, because they usually form a circle around a person, thus, either they have the same dispositions, either it is in their interest the show someone in his best light. Or the contrary. This allows many lies. On the other hand, gossip can be an interesting source of information, not as such (objective), but as rendering the impression left by someone on other people, forming some kind of cloud which may be an excellent object of study, from a subjective point of view.
Second: I personally think Rilke’s poetry looses most of its power and beauty after his encounter with Salome, gone the “und wer wenn ich schriee hörte mich aus der Engel Ordnungen” and other striking vers that do almost hurt through simplicity. Which is to say, that Salome’s influence on Rilke was not exactly positive, to my understanding.
Third: Independently of what people may say on someone, which is an almost aleatory variable, the very fact of writing a certain way does say a lot about many things. I think that Salome shows obvious features of what may be associated to some kind of intelligent schizophrenia, and those people are very often very … seducing but also quite dangerous.
Fourth: I think it is almost a common mistake to try associating a name to a certain number of attributes or characteristics. Lou is …, Lou was …, is to my understanding some kind of error on mistaken metaphysical premisses. I read a book and this book I understand in a certain way, which may be positive or negative, without it allowing to put epithetes on people that may pretend to be universal. See that even characterizing her as schizoid, the correct statement is something like “grammatical structures may be hinting at” and little more.
Attributes as general characteristics on a person are a philosophical mistake except if of objective nature. “X is a teacher” or “Y is tall”.
February 3, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Ou
Sure.
The worst, dirtiest, most disgusting and repellent FELON in history is, as anyone knows, Christ Himself: “please, Jesus, carry all our dirt, be the pure lamb soiled by our shit, please, do, please, be”. “Please, never come back ; if you did (maybe you already have), it would be unbearable, something would have to be done, as for Lou, You would have to be soiled, otherwise, we couldn’t survive your unsoiled perfection ; please, have mercy, be dirty in our place so that we can live our cleaned dirty life.”
Sure.
Gossips, people’s (wrong) perception is the best way to SEE things in the right way.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
February 3, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Ou
90 % (or more) of the people don’t see the world as it is, but see in it what they have in their minds…
a huge issue I’m currently completing a book about
most people can only see what is material
angels, etc., being immaterial can’t be seen… except as soiled, meaning as the wall/paper/surface on which people’s dirt gets printed/projected
in 90 % (and more) cases, perception = projection, so a mistake, you’re right
Lou was an angel, as Nietzsche himself wrote it, and she gave a lot to Rilke, helped him a lot
people being jealous, they try to lessen this aspect
you are certainly jealous of her, you certainly would like to be her!
that’s a compliment to both of you
February 3, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Ou
scapegoat = too pure not to be soiled
victim of a collective sacrifice
Lou in some way was that, and your blog strangely adds to that sacrificial gesture (I still don’t get why you like doing that)
February 4, 2008 at 12:03 am
Sonja Kasten
Should be happy I contribute to make of you idol a martyr of some new religion.
On gossip: gossip is the non verified sayings of people on other people and situations, and is not necessarily wrong. Sometimes it is even real facts, but are considered as gossip because the reason that move the person to say it is not very clear. Thus, if you don’t like someone, you may say: “She has had 200 lovers”, which you wouldn’t say for reasons of reputation if you liked her. It may though perfectly well be that ’she has actually had 200 lovers’. The problem is always how to evaluate this kind of information, but I think there are means that could be exploited even scientifically.
On the other hand it is true that most of the time gossip says more about the one who talks than about the one you’re talking about. Even then it is interesting, because polemics arise around one subject only in regard of a certain number of people that have something in common. Consider thus that the very fact of jumping in defense of someone without foundation is some kind of gossip, too, that may throw more light on yourself than on the person you’re talking about.
February 4, 2008 at 10:17 am
Ou
I truly think we should stop this chat, which doesn’t go anywhere
someone (me) who has written 6 books on Lou can’t possibly talk with persons who haven’t even read more than one book written by her
and considering that I AM her, I know better than anyone who I am
Internet is really a dangerous thing: anyone can write anything on anyone and attract attention on his/her arrogant ignorance, and make his/her inadequate thoughts available to the whole world
I really wouldn’t like anyone in the future to write bad things on me, since I don’t deserve any
February 4, 2008 at 10:25 am
Ou
I’ve just read again (and for the last time) your summary of her book.
There are so MANY MISTAKES, I put them in big letters.
Many may not agree with this, but I don’t care. Others will.
Lou Andreas Salome writes about her own life in her book ‘Ma vie’ (Mein Leben or my life). To say the truth I don’t know WHETHER she wrote it in French or German, I did read it myself in French but it COULD HAVE been written in German (she spoke both languages and actually died in PARIS ABOUT 1933.) If you read between lines you may be surprised by her wicked twisted mind, starting very young she manages almost to turn half the world up side down.
Born from a Jewish doctor family, the STEIN, living in White Russia near to the Zar (her father was attached doctor to the zar), she organizes at the age of 17 a mariage for herself with a Dutch married priest, the CEREMONY of she creates herself.
(Russian Icon)
Thrown out of her family (she seems to loose her name) and probably even of Russia, she travels to Germany, Italy and Switzerland. In Italy she gets to know Nietzsche, who wants to marry her, and she refuses, saying that she’d rather prefer to live in community with several people. I don’t think Nietzsche was ever in love with her: latest statements of a German biographer whose name is Krüger or Kröger or similar, affirm and quite clearly demonstrate Nietzsche was homosexual: he would just have needed the social cover and cuts all relationship with her after her refusal.
(Friedrich Nietzsche, Paul Ree and Lou Andreas Salome)
As someone called Andreas (last name), a German, does try suicide after her refusal to marry him, she finally gives in and becomesAndreas, attaching the BIBLICAL SALOME (intellectual author of John the Baptist’s murder) to her name probably pushed by sympathy. This will not stop her love affairs, from Rilke to Rilke and others, she spends her life at her husband’s back. She will even introduce herself in Russia again, in order, she says, to visit Tolstoij. Coming back from one of her excursions, she asks her husband whether he doesn’t want to know anything about her life: he refuses, keeping at least at that moment the last reminders of German dignity.
That I don’t like her ‘interpretation’ of life is just a very subjective thing, in evidence.
February 4, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Sonja Kasten
I didn’t start the conversation, which I would have lived without without any kind of a problem. The fact of writing 6 books on Lou Andreas Salome does certainly not make of you an authority, and if for you internet is frightening, the publisher’s world seems much more frightening to me, as people like you are given voice and social recognition, who seem not to have the slightest scientific education nor do rather know how to behave themselves, nor tolerate other people’s opinion.
The more you repeat what I say, on the other hand, the more it seems to me accurate in more general terms.
February 4, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Ou
Truly, that’s insane. I have much more than ’scientific education’. I have already published 25 books, and I am a great scholar. My books are in all the libraries of the world.
Your starting point is so much full of OBJECTIVE mistakes that it invalidates all your further statements.
And I am much more already than an “authority”, believe me. There is no reason why I should ever “tolerate” your opinion since there is no “opinion” to have, only knowledge and truth, which you lack completely (on this matter, at least).
I have seen a picture of you, you don’t look especially healthy or well-balanced… Why this need for putting personal thoughts on a blog? Write, and publish, if you have important things to say.
It’s unacceptable that someone like me could ever found herself involved in such an unbalanced conversation with an amateur like you.
I should stop that.
February 4, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Ou
give me your email offline, and I’ll tell you who I am: then you’ll shut up for ever…!!!!!!!! don’t collapse when you learn it
I write on the most difficult and serious issues, of highest scholarship, and I’m admired for that in the whole world (I give talks, lectures everywhere, I’m invited in all the countries abroad ; I know about 10 languages, and I am one of the most innovative minds of our time). If you call that ‘not to have the slighest scientific education’, then something must be wrong… on your side, not on mine.
February 4, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Ou
I AGREE that YOU didn’t start this conversation.
I just keep saying the same thing since the beginning: I would like you to erase the word HORRIBLE in the title of this page; then I’ll stop writing, since you refuse dialogue and discussion, you stick to your delusional ideas and interpretation AGAINST THE OBJECTIVE TRUTH.
It is unacceptable that someone looking for Lou on google finds this page created by an amateur who is even unable to sum up correctly a book she claims to have read (there are LOTS OF OBJECTIVE MISTAKES, DATES, FACTS, in your summary).
This has nothing to do with me or anyone. It is just WRONG, from the SCIENTIFIC point of view you claim to respect (and which you don’t).
February 4, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Ou
just tell me how I can write to you offline, to give you my identity
then you’ll collapse, blush, feel ashamed for eternity, and shut up for ever
I don’t want my name to be available on your blog
February 4, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Ou
don’t you see that you behave like a BLIND PERSON?
you’ve misread ONE BOOK, when Lou has written more than 20
and that dozens of persons have published very important (and mostly flattering) stuff on her
it’s like a vicious circle in which you stay refusing to look outside, to look at the truth, which is undeniable
why did you create this page? why all these WRONG statements, scientifically UNACCEPTABLE?, why do you stick to these mistakes? I don’t get it (the date of her birth is wrong, the place where she died is wrong, and other things)
in one of your messages, you wrote ‘are we talking of the same person?’
that’s precisely what I think since the beginning
it’s like talking to a blind person, who creates images instead of seeing things as they really are
February 4, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Ou
PLEASE GIVE ME AN EMAIL WHERE I CAN WRITE TO YOU AND TELL YOU WHO I AM
after that, you’ll shut up for ever, so ashamed you will be
you don’t SEEM to have the slighest respect for cleverness, scholarship, knowledge, seriousness, scientific liability, international fame, genius (!!), charity, kindness, etc.
February 4, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Ou
thanks to Lassus for Caroline Lamb and Tori Amos, whom I didn’t know
I’ve just googled them, interesting stuff
I would never dare publish any single line about these two, since I have no scientific right to
about Lou I know everything, and much more than that
I’m getting now for several years the international most important reference about her
February 4, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Ou
let’s say (very immodestly) that I’m someone like Spinoza or Kant!!!!!!!!, somebody of this size, promised to a great future and fame
how does it feel to know that you DARE discuss with somebody like me!!!!????
it just DOESN’T “feel”!!!
since you HAVE NO RIGHT TO DISCUSS
February 5, 2008 at 3:28 am
Sonja Kasten
My dear Lou, I’m sorry, but I don’t accept private notifications, even less on identities that may have obscure side effects. Luckily I have spent 10 years of my life outside of the civilized world, so that I have been lucky enough not to assist to the progressive social ascension of megalomaniacs of your kind. Thus, I hardly think your name would ever impress me as I certainly don’t know it. And even if I did, I usually don’t get very impressed by names, but just by contents, and yours, I’m sure, would never insist excessively in participating to my somewhat poor looking library.
And, if it were, do you know who I’m? If you did, you wouldn’t make me loose so much time answering in augustinian way to all sorts of thoughts of the faithless. I’m not very famous, that’s an evidence, but … I esteem myself highly enough, and this puts me at the same level than you, which is to, quite above.
I’m very healthy, I eat mangos and banana every day and make a lot of exercise. Thanks anyhow for taking care of my health. What about you? Wanna mango …?
You’re right, you should stop getting involved in conversations with insignificant, unknown people that are so proud of themselves. You’ll not convince me to take the ‘horrible’ away. Let it be, life’s like that: there are stubborn, blind and silly people who simply insist in their beliefs.
I don’t care about your sales, my dear, I get little enough myself for my inspirations.
February 5, 2008 at 4:26 am
Ou
you are a very disturbed, self-centered, and sick person
what a pity!
I am who I am, and I am a very impressive mind (and soul)
you are nothing compared to me
February 5, 2008 at 4:32 am
Ou
thanks anyway for admitting your bad sides
1) there are certainly tons of famous and impressive persons whose names you ignore and want to ignore: so, you finally admit your ignorance, which is seemingly a mental state of mind
2) your arrogance has no limits, and you admit openly (thanks for this too) that you have lost ‘civilized’ manners
3) managing a blog, and putting on it the pointless stuff you do is surely a megolomaniac behavior, yours, not mine
4) I don’t think I’ve ever met on-line such a disturbed mind as yours
5) you are exactly the kind of person who makes the world we live in hardly bearable, whose autism is a danger to humanity
February 5, 2008 at 7:25 am
Do
thanks for admitting that your illness has ’side-effects’
thanks for saying that you don’t have the slighest respect for knowledge, cleverness, scholarship, science, truth, honesty, etc.
as for me, there are many people I ADMIRE, whose books I read, I like, on whom I write papers and books myself
and I would never open a blog about things I dislike
there is so much to love, to like, to admire, to worship
it’s your choice to prefer the way of dirt, hatred and isolation
February 5, 2008 at 7:52 am
Do
maybe a day will come when a new Sonja will be born
a Sonja able to love, to like, to admire, to worship, to write beautiful things, able to respect, to share, to open a door in her life to others, to truth, to knowledge
we all eagerly look forward to this day
February 5, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Sonja Kasten
Shall I answer to this series of insults and demonstration of bad manners and lack of education?
February 5, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Ou
you have the shrewdness of your illness, and the illness of your shrewdness
the perversity of your insanity, and the insanity of your perversity
funny how to take time to think over how you will answer
but you will never achieve to outwit me!!!
February 6, 2008 at 3:11 am
Sonja Kasten
Perhaps you’re talking about yourself, I guess. And the way you are distorting my sayings is nothing but the way you’re distorting even Salome’s sayings, which underlines my being right.
I’m not trying to outwit you, it would mean there’s still some wit in what you say, which is rather not the case.
Stay calm, to loose your nerves may have consequences.
February 6, 2008 at 7:58 am
Ou
You are funny and moving, I almost start liking you.
But there are more important things to do: I’m currently completing several collective volumes with nice and clever scholars from all around the world. A real pleasure!
Scholarship is a beautiful thing, you know, especially when shared with lovely scholars. You should try: it doesn’t hurt, just the contrary, it may have some healing effects on you.
February 6, 2008 at 9:27 am
Ou
Jan. 23 – 3 Febr.: you were embarrassed, then you’ve found a friend (or yourself with a pseudo?) to re-start the dialogue: shrewd!
you’ve also put comments ‘inside’ my messages to avoid any trouble byt not-signing them, shrewd!
now we have reached a point where this conversation is nothing-about-nothing
why not?!
a sort of absurd game, a sample of surrealistic rhetorical art!!
February 6, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Ou
this first post was right
July 20, 2007 at 10:01 am
Valery
Just have a glance at the article in wikipedia!
which suggested you to check your (wrong) statements
February 7, 2008 at 3:04 am
Sonja Kasten
I just changed my mother’s picture for a beautiful duck. The name’s the same, I didn’t feel uneasy at all. I manage about 30 different blogs and take pleasure in changing presentation from time to time.
I’m happy for you things go well for you. I feel very well, too, thank you.
I wrote inside of your ‘comments’ because you had written so many at once that I saw no other way to answer to them without loosing the coherence of the answer.
Nice, if you have decided to give up the conversation. I’m very patient and answer consequently to all agressions coming with greatest pleasure but I do admit that I do sometimes get tired by the lack of fundamental argumentation.
February 7, 2008 at 8:52 am
Ou
thanks for this
some day, if you come to Paris, we could meet
although you don’t seem to wish contacts outside your blogs, what I regret, but it is your choice
February 7, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Sonja Kasten
You live in Paris? My sweet old memory … Where do you live? I’m sorry, but I can’t go to Paris, actually, I live quite far away in the forlorn countries of South America. But if you may, just go to the Balzar next to Sorbonne and sip a coffee over there for me. If you send a picture of yours doing so … I promiss I take the ‘horrible’ away (!)
February 7, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Ou
I live in the Mouffetard borrow, very close to all the schools, colleges, École normale supérieure, etc. My lab is on rue d’Ulm, I often go (today) to the library of this École, etc.
very sunny day today, almost spring
February 7, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Ou
I am a great traveller myself and love languages too
I’m sure we have a lot in common, and it is a pity to have started this conversation on the basis of a misinterpretation
in America, I have been in the States (a lot), in Canada, Brasil
and everywhere (Asia, Africa, etc.)
February 8, 2008 at 12:41 am
Sonja Kasten
Is the myspace page on Lou Andreas Salome, yours? And you would then know a turkish painter called Debriz? Among other?
Nice the rue Mouffetard, one of the very oldest of Paris. There is a church around there, of the Capetian times, as far as I remember. Or do you live more down to the quarters of the 14th?
Rue d’Ulm has never been a place of my devotion, to be honest. To many madmen have left this school. I was there once in the little garden, looking with some irony at all these snobbish people pretending to be the rulers of the world. In fact, one of my university mates was visiting ENS, and thus I had the enormous pleasure of getting to know some of the most honorable representants of what I simply called ‘the lack of thought’. Some of my teachers came from there, too. The only exception to the general stupidity arising from the environments was Anne Moeglin Delcroix, who maintained, stubbornly, that you didn’t need to come from ENS in order to be intelligent. I objected that it meant she thought there could still be any intelligence arising from ENS.
February 8, 2008 at 7:57 am
Ou
I agree with your severe judgment on ENS
there is a lot of silliness there, but for ordinary people succeeding at the concours it can be a way to get out of their modest ‘milieu’ (I come from very below)
there are nice and clever people too, but this school is certainly an example of what doesn’t work in the French system
no I have no myspace, I’m on blogspot
February 8, 2008 at 8:24 am
On
I admire excellence, and admire it where it is: in the States, UK, Germany, and many other places, France creates more ‘prestige’ than excellence
nevertheless, to my opinion, there are ‘avant tout’ individuals, so let’s avoid simplification
when have you been here for the last time?
February 8, 2008 at 8:37 am
On
there is something which I deeply dislike in France: the relational mess in relationships between people, not all and not all the time of course
I mean: I’ve never been involved in such a relational ‘mess’ at times in any other country than France, where people often misinterpret neutrality (as coldness), respect (as distance), shyness (as indifference), etc.
this originates in the ‘manières’ which are a terrible thing: too much demonstrativity, too much politeness of a certain kind, too much hypocrisy, etc.
I very much like Anglosaxon manners: neutral distance, even a kind a ‘dryness’
in France things are too often ‘personalized’, due to a lack of ‘transcendental subjectivity’ maybe!
I never had any problem with a British college’s porter or even a waitress in a restaurant etc., who are neutral and distant, just ruly do their job without expecting extra-personalized-awards
in France it happens that this kind of people may think that you ‘despise’ them when you don’t flatter them: I hate that and just can’t understand it
this maybe echoes your own analysis of a certain normalien silliness
February 8, 2008 at 10:52 am
On
nevertheless things have changed for about 15 years at the ENS
more scholarship and science, and the new generations really do a lot of interesting work, I mean in the literary fields, not just in science-science
the problem, if any, is the French ’spirit’: not open enough and not aware that there is a world outside of France
I love cinema, do you?
February 8, 2008 at 11:06 am
On
the main problem in France is, I think, not alterity, but identity
(not everyone, of course)
but I mean: something is wrong AMONG/between people because there is something wrong in the relationships between one and oneself, not one and the other
it’s a huge issue actually, I’d like to write a book on it some day
when you look at the American system, you see individuals who enjoy themselves, who first care about themselves
in France you see a kind of MESS, where everyone seems to be ENTANGLED in/with everyone; I think that people are not at the right distance from each other
do you see what I mean?
February 8, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Sonja Kasten
I do, strangely, fundamentally agree. Perhaps I’m even more critical about the situation in France. Last time I was there was in 2003/4. I think the problem in France is that French are fundamentally hyerarchic and almost even monarchic. The so called democracy has fused with more fundamental structures of understanding, giving place to some kind untasty pele mele, where, as you say, the waiter believes himself the Duc of Berry, and the Duc of Berry finishes by washing plates. Strange people anyhow. But they have a heavy history, too. Have all these German on their neck for so many centuries must be a horrible inheritance, and no Pyrenees in between!
Where do you come from?
It’s true that I prefer the anglosaxon world, too, for the same reasons, although … I have enormous fun with French, as long as I can keep them at reasonable distances, which is not always the case.
I adore cinema, too. Mostly hollywood productions on psychological subjects or investigation (kind police and fbi and the sort.) I hate european cinema, you almost think they’ve nothing to say and wrap the whole into snobbish pretending to say auras that I do rather dislike.
Ah. And to continue the former subject, to be very honest, I have always thought that some intellectuals in Germany and France promote ‘liberal women’ as Lou Andreas Salome just because … the liberal is cheaper than prostitution. See why I’m so critical about a certain number of positionings, even more so if coming from men’s side. (Apparently there is some French writer saying lots of goods of our friend, in exactly this direction.)
February 8, 2008 at 5:10 pm
On
yes, you’re right: hierarchy
Kant or Spinoza or or was not ranked 1st or 2nd at the ENS, but they are/were Kant etc.
some people here their whole life long will say: I was at Ens, or was ranked 1st at, well, it’s not completely useless (to get a job), but outside nobody cares!! it doesn’t mean anything
I don’t care whether a baker was in this or that school, what matters is the cake and the bread made!!!!!!!!!!!, whereever this baker comes from!!!!!!!!!!
what matters is JUST DO IT, and that’s where we are at the moment in France, this just-do-it doesn’t work (it never really did actually)
I’m a mixture of both (great ranks, ENS, etc., BUT also a lot of justdoit, since I come from a lower class, so I have to work and to achieve, and I just do!!)
I think the whole problem here starts in the 17th century: ancien régime
humanism and Renaissance were great, but then something went wrong, and France has lost the spirit of ‘philology’ (my main speciality), meaning of TRADITION AS SOMETHING ALIVE and VITAL, and not as a dead past (Vieille France, passeism, conservatism)
at the moment, it stinks here, a sort of new age fascism!!
February 8, 2008 at 5:15 pm
On
I come from France, close to the… German border…
lots of things in common with Lou (protestantism, German-French, theology, puritanism, etc.)
I truly keep thinking Lou was great, but too much (her life, at least) used as a ’symbol’ maybe as you suggest; nevertheless there are more and more interesting books written on her work (and not just life-legend); I recently found a Spanish site quoting my work and congratulating me for renewing the scholarship about her
there is still a lot to do
why did you actually read Ma vie, where did you find it?
February 8, 2008 at 6:00 pm
On
I’ve just read your page ‘Origins’, very impressive.
I’m nothing compared to that. I come from the lowest of the lowest.
But my personal situation is very flattering, although I had nothing or nobody to help me to go this way, from below to above.
February 8, 2008 at 6:05 pm
On
check this…
(all the links and sublinks…, you’ll also find a picture of…)
http://philologicum.blogspot.com/
February 8, 2008 at 7:02 pm
On
the picture of Lou you’ve put at the top of this page shows a woman who was funny, naive, a little ‘becassine’, as I truly think she was, too naive, so that she let other people decide for her or make her a (false) reputation
a ‘misunderstood angel’ as Nietzsche himself wrote
February 9, 2008 at 12:56 pm
On
http://www.blogger.com/profile/14482512721793298370
February 9, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Sonja Kasten
You come from Alsace or Lorraine? And you speak Greek? Contemporary Greek? I spent ten years of my life in Greece, in the north, next to Amphipolis, the ancient herodotian town, at the river Strymon. How funny. How did it come that you learned Greek?
The book of Salome arrived as some others through the hands of some visitors, this one was brought by an ancient University mate, Gregory Leurent. I left it there for many years, as the first mention of Salome had been done to me by a school mate, when I was about 12, and I didn’t like her very much, nor the way she talked about her. After I saw the movie on her life, when I was about 17, and I didn’t like the environments either. I thus didn’t feel excessive interest in reading her after so many years, even more so as my interests had centered around Herodotus and Tucydides, Old Testaments and other forgotten stuff. Finally though I told myself I should do some effort and honestly, I was rather shocked, which is certainly due principally to the fact that my intellectual sphere was quite apart at those time. Is still, actually.
I had to leave Greece in a somewhat chaotic way due to some political entanglements and actually lost most of my studies I had cumulated for many years. When I arrived here I started writing down on these blogs what I had kept in my memory, in a sometimes confused, unprecise way. In fact, I didn’t give much importance to ‘objective facts’ anymore, as I had explored more the herodotian style than any other and I felt quite at easy inside of it.
Thus also the article on ‘the origins’. It is gathered impressions, more than facts (well, the von Speth genealogy is actually in my father’s appartment in Madrid, but I didn’t go to verify the Gotha). See the kind, you feel that your way of thinking is somewhat different and finish by asking yourself why, and you take little facts from here and from there that are mixed to tones of voice and lots of silence and you finish by figuring out that it may have been more or less like that, and that’s enough for you and your personal mythology, so that you don’t care a lot anymore about what is exactly an objective fact. Who cares, finally?
In fact I had to try ordering facts because of some happenings occured around 1994 in Istanbul, which were responsible for the partial loss of the ability of ordering immediate reality (see http://www.paramana.wordpress.com, above), which though, I think, did not take anything away from my usual synthetic ability. It just became more immediate, almost affective, perhaps also more ironic.
In any case I’m sure that the multiplicity of point of view and opinion help to get a healthy view on any subject.
February 9, 2008 at 4:36 pm
On
I HATE the movie by Liliana Cavani, although I think the portraits of Nietzsche and Lou are good
Lou is shown as a wild and sweet person at the same time
but the movie contains mistakes
anyway, the fact that Nietzsche’s sister threw her out is true, and this a very important fact in their both lives (N and L)
February 9, 2008 at 4:41 pm
On
just google me, since you know my name now (which I won’t put on this blog), you’ll find a Wikipedia page, and lots of other things
I encourage you warmly to read my two interviews on Lou and N
I’ve got already a lot of good reactions: people like them, it’s an important stuff, since ’something’ happened to me which gives me some special ‘access’ and ‘keys’ to Lou and N, that’s the reason why I reacted so ‘personally’ to your misreading
February 9, 2008 at 4:43 pm
On
it’s obvious to me since the beginning that you are a clever and well-learned person, reason why I didn’t get your overreaction to my reaction…!!
Greece, Germany, etc., you see, we have a lot in common
so please never jeopardize a conversation/meeting by getting angry again!
February 9, 2008 at 4:48 pm
On
I travel a lot, since I’m 17, almost always alone (I’m strongly independant)
next summer, I’ll go to Greece again (for the 4th time in my life), then Denmark, then Rome
I’ve already a huge schedule for 2009 too (Calabria-Italy, Poland, etc.)
and my partner is an American scholar (search inside my blogs, and you’ll find…)
we are both nuts!!!!!, so we see several times a year : the rest of the time, each lives his/her life, working, writing etc., it works (and it’s not a ‘horrible’ thing, what I would never like anyone to write about me in the future!!!)
I’m wild… like Lou, as you are too, I think (maybe there are more similarities btw you and her than you can guess or admit??? or whatever)
February 9, 2008 at 4:51 pm
On
we are almost the same age: is the (orange) picture of you on page 1 uptodate?
you’ll find mine here:
http://www.blogger.com/profile/14482512721793298370 : biographie
I actually look young and adolescent (the picture was taken during a congress)
February 9, 2008 at 4:53 pm
On
interviews to read
http://www.fabula.org/revue/document1503.php
http://www.fabula.org/revue/document3755.php
February 9, 2008 at 4:59 pm
On
I’ve just found that, I’m a very efficien google-searcher!
Grégory Leurent
Nació en:
Angers (Francia), en 1968
En 1992:
Estudiaba Filosofía en la Sorbonne
En la actualidad:
Vive en Angers, donde trabaja como profesor de filosofía en un colegio privado. Está casado y tiene 2 hijos.
there is also something about you on it
http://yuruyerek.org/membres.htm
February 9, 2008 at 5:05 pm
On
seemingly Gregory Leurent is a dangerous person whom you shouldn’t trust!!!
rhaps we do always need a certain time to order events and happenings and to come to the general conclusions and understand the implications of them. The following does perhaps have some implications that may eventually oblige us to deeper considerations.
It all started February 2004. Already then, I suspected that the ‘game’ with electronics was getting out of control. Unluckily I had no proofs and little technical knowledge. Following thus intuitively my general pattern of thought, the following event takes place:
(I omit details). I copy a sceal that appears on the webpage ‘brainpower’ and is supposed to belong to the Rothschild family on a Word Document. The original webpage of the Rothschild Bank AG in Zurich is on the other hand on my favourite’s list. To paste the sceal on the document produces alteration in the order of the letters (see picture above). After a while, the computer starts to ‘misbehave’ and scrolls down tons of documents in some kind of computer language (java or other). For about 10 minutes. I think it’s the end of the computer, but after a while the computer recovers its ‘normal’ functioning. I put the picture (called my ‘antivirus’) on the screen, and start working on the same text than before (some kind of legal exercise). The font is altered. ( See upper part of document.)
Others with the same sceal without alterations are still in my hand.)It looks like a Palatino with slight differences. It’s possible to think that a whole ‘teclado’ has landed in my computer and I have no spy program in it. As I have no proof, I continue writing on the same document, in Spanish. After about 10 pages, a window appears saying something like ‘la police Rothschild ne peut plus continuer à corriger votre document’ (the Rothschild font is unable to continue correcting your document). The proof disappears after seconds, but it was there, the evidence. I write a letter to Rothschild’s, asking for some kind of explanation for the happening. Thanks to former University mate Gregory Leurent, I’m closed into a psychiatric hospital for 2 months after, due to his maintaining I had lost my mind saying that … the Rothschild font had landed in the computer.
This small accident will have as a consequence that my researches will be stopped for more than 8 months and that vital information is not transmitted to people who may have quicker worked on a solution for an obvious problem at highest level. French justice will never respond to my claim of obvious violation of human rights, arbitrary use of force, robbery of personal data inside of the computer, and in general, gravest drowning of the possibility of revealing facts whose very existence may put the life of millions in danger, as I will try to explain.
The facts appear as following: some web pages are using spy programs inside of the pages themselves. These programs are configured like little lines that form the pattern, and are even introduced in computers through anodine letters. One of them was accidentally sent to me by Anne Hélène Nicolas: the CV of the well known french business school INSEAD. They do appear in the Microsoft page, they were there in Rothschild’s page. You may think that these programs, that may be there for reasons of security (possible IP number of an agressor), do not further harm. But this is not true. Thanks to WordPress, it is possible to reveal the following: these programs may steal everything from your computer. The proof? As the Rothschild font appeared in my computer 3 years ago, the whole WP program landed in my disc yesterday. I may edit one example of the incredible amount of little pictures arriving in my documents (not now, a little later.)
It’s obvious that as much yesterday as three years ago, the agatha stone produced what I called a ‘reversion’ in function. It looks as if the function of spying was turned against the one who was spying (here, not WordPress, but Microsoft inside of WordPress, turns itself against WordPress): (seems have taken some functions of Walla, too …). Viruses are isolated and may even be the spy function itself (if I manage, I send, but I can’t, thus, just the reference name: image 001.emz). The ‘images’ attached to this archive appear blank (they vanish trying to open them, but it should be possible through pasting them on Frontpage to get the corresponding html codes.)
What does this mean? That we’re systematically robbed from our property through these kinds of little inventions. The thing is to my understanding much worse. These functions do seem to activate some laser mechanism whose real effects on human beings, environment, computers, are certainly not exhaustively studied. To my understanding they produce slightest electronic alterations EVEN in closed systems.
Even if a logical is consistent (closed: without inner contradiction), matter is never consistent. A chip, a hard disc, a system are submitted to changes, infinitesimal, micro changes that may finish up by changing the very structure of the system as such. If some kind of radiation does on top interact with the whole, the effects may be desastruous for atomic plants, national security systems, electric stations, radars, satellites, etc, disregarding the obvious fact that … a computer may explode just in front of you (it has been reported.)
The agatha stone, we may call a miracle of intuition in the immediate response to a possible danger. This stone, as scanned with laser, does seem to avoid possible dangers, even more so if fixed the way it was fixed in 2003. That it was impossible to transmit the information further, may be, to my understanding, put on the back of Gregory Leurent, the French University Technopole d’Angers, and other authorities, who insisistingly maintained the sayings of a mental ill as Leurent is, could be considered as valuable.
To my understanding the danger is very high, still. But the solution possible. NO, Sra Mendoza, no tengo ni idea de programación (I don’t lie), the script sent yesterday is the html page as resulting of copying it on a Frontpage page and has apparently ‘generated’,produced’ new functions all alone by itself. Not only. For minutes a new server was born, the A:/ … that was connected to the air through a new singular event, produced (with many prayers) in order to channel energy that could not be absorbed anymore (weekend) through the University of Mrs Suzanne Skeen (who saved the world) and other powerful organisms (walla). I will have to see what has happened to this singular phenomenon (I swear yeaterday my page on Frontpage appeared published under this protocole.)
In the meantime though, I will go to have a coffee. It has been too many adventures and emotions and bad memories in too little days. Ah, and Mr Sony, if it were not because of your brilliant idea of mixing some agatha powder into your color combination in the Sony Vaio, we wouldn’t be here anymore (beautiful colors, by the way,that have … a very protective function and must have cumulated in my computer about three tons of company programs). Although you deserve your magnificient picture, to my understanding, you’re horribly japanese. If I make a present out of it, you’ll never consider the value as such. If you give the prize … you acquire the most powerful antivirus in the world! Won’t believe it! (Yes, it’s the Vaio VGN, series of 2002, as far as I know. – If you continue being so Japanese, I won’t talk to you anymore-.A 17 inches one, the most beautiful and powerful of all. Now don’t think that makes of me some one who is very rich, just some one who … knows to make good investments!)
February 9, 2008 at 5:26 pm
On
if I had written myself on Lou 20 years ago, I think it would just have been ‘n’importe quoi’!!!!!!!!!
since there is a ‘doxa’ folkorique about her, due to N’s sister who did a lot of harm
and due mostly to laziness: instead of reading her books, people just have a quick glance at her ‘life’ or the legendary story of it
tout le reste est littérature…
in October 2008 I’ll publish a book of 1200 pages: translation of 6 novels of Lou
February 10, 2008 at 1:58 am
Sonja Kasten
I’ll have a look at all this whenever I have some time. I’m up to the neck in the design of the most beautiful page I’ve ever made http://www.joyeriajara.wordpress.com (isn’t it nice?).
By the way, do you know anyone related to jewelry? If you have a look at the designs, they look so horribly 17th century, but I’m not an expert. I’d like to know what it looks like from outside.
Perhaps you want a page for yourself? It’d be an even better one. Imagine, quarrelling to death and after, having to submit to different criteria of understanding for commercial reasons (!!).
Yes, I think the picture you mention is updated. It must be from February 2006, I hadn’t slept all night, that’s why I look somewhat pale.
The page you mention is a page made by Oriol Vilaseca, one of the companions on the path down to Jerusalem, where we walked to from Paris in 1992/3. It’s not yet finished, and I don’t think it ever will. (Oriol has always been very lazy). It was supposed to contain the diaries we kept ‘religiously’ from the very day we left.
May I be very honest with you? Perhaps strangely I really don’t care about the social success of someone, nor where he comes from, nor which riches or titles he may expose. I like people for a character, a way of being, a joke, a pleasure. From what you say, it is as if you’d want to proof yourself through a social success, because, perhaps, as you say, of your humble origins. I don’t think someone is because he shows (which is to say, I take largest distances from Bernard Henry Levi, for example), and I don’t believe we have to proof anything to anyone. Even less being right against others.
Opinions or ways of seeing may be even temporary, just a moment in our lifes, we try defending because it says us at that moment. This is why I do always respect other people’s ways of seeing and do never agress them as I may understand that even wrong or confused or distorted ways of seeing may have a reason to be. This applies as well for me. I’m very tolerant with my own mistakes because I long discovered that they always had a reason to be, much later.
Perhaps the only ‘glorious’ character I have ever cared about was Ines de la Fressange (see http://www.fressange.wordpress.com ) but precisely because I was confronted to an aspect that had nothing to do with glory at all, which is to say, the somewhat obscure judicial affair through which she lost her job, name, image and even … signature (!)
To say that if I can see through the lines which kind of wisdom you may offer to my always thirsty and hungry mind, I may get interested. Certainly not though through titles and exposures.
February 10, 2008 at 9:32 am
On
I think I fit the profile you like!!!
I’m very special and very ‘easy’ at the same time; people who ‘have problems’ with me precisely don’t like this way of being, deeply free and unlinked, open and available, disturbing because ‘unrecognizable’, puzzling because unruly unmannered (although I’m polite and respectful, etc., but I hate demonstrativity)
I don’t mind degrees, cvs etc. I just like people. I often prefer a baker to a scholar, a hair-dresser to a normalien, etc.
yesterday, at the hair-dresser (!), I’ve read an interview with Ines, whom I like; I saw her once in a cafe near the Louvre, she’s really nice, I hope I look like her when I’m 50, the age she has reached now)
I think some day I’ll write a book on the silliness of learned people!!!!!!!!!!!, and the true cleverness of the ordinary people
there have been misinterpretations on me… scholars just can’t understand that a very lovely becassine like me can be at the same time a great mind… (and vice versa)
therefore lots of misreadings of my behavior: for example, she (me) thinks and writes, SO she must be awful and arrogant; she’s clever and learned, SO she must be selfish and selfcentered, etc.
actually the people who SEE ME immediately as I am are the ordinary ones, they don’t need to know that I’m this or that, that I do this or that to GET who I am
happily!!, this is my people, as Jesus would say!, le peuple des purs et des saints, who see without being told (there is such a silliness, in France especially, for all the reasons displayed previously, in learned people, who often mis-see)
I like your picture: you look thin and funny
I’m rather childish myself actually…, people usually think I’m 10 years less than I am
if I had money and could get a position in the States or elsewhere, I would leave France, it’s getting unbearable here (last week, for example, a woman in a bus insulted me because I did a wrong movement, unconsciously; she said: please, mind others, etc., you are too selfish: it was INSANE, completely inadequate), many people I know and I like say (as I do) they don’t see/meet with anyone any longer, but stay at home, work, read, etc., as I do: the possibility of getting involved in a RELATIONAL MESS ‘outside’ is huge!!!!!!!!!!!, I’ve developed une stratégie d’évitement, which works!!, alas
February 10, 2008 at 9:34 am
On
thanks for the new title of the page
since you are the moderator, maybe you could erase the pointless quarrel we had, and rewrite or refresh the presentation
up to you, of course
if we had met in real life, we could have liked each other immediately, unhappily this page gives a false idea of our states of mind
February 10, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Sonja Kasten
Ah, no, that picture from http://www.skprivate.wordpress.com is from mine being 12, that is, not updated at all. I thought you were talking of the one appearing first in the slide presentation of this blog in ‘Instructions’. That one is updated. I’m not that thin anymore.
Well, now you’ll have to pay some thousands in order to erase the quarrel … which, to be honest, I think extremely interesting in its evolution. But I’ll see, I don’t know which other strategies of seduction you may display (!)
I didn’t like Ines de la Fressange very much, frankly. A university mate of mine, Maxime, was some kind of devoted fan of the same, and I have always hated idolization. Then I made up a funny character out of her name alone, because I hadn’t almost seen pictures of her and through that, tons of information arrived on my dashboard, along with pictures and several other … facts and states of mind. I started a study on the subject with greatest interest and even more fun, made up a hilarious Russian Prince and even a hooligan as parts of the novel and concluded that things are really bad in France. There’s even a sosias of the same running around the street with a … shoe shop in Morocco. Figure out.
Finally, to push the fun to the borders of the allowed, I opened myself a Roger Vivier site (www.rogervivier.wordpress.com ) which is quite successfull and which I use as some kind of test site for all sorts of inventions and innovations in my professional life.
Must be a nice guy after all, I guess, even more so now that she is less the object of so much hypocritical devotion.
Ah, I’m not the moderator of these blogs, I’m the sole owner and writer and thus and consequently moderator of all the stuff inside, and thus also, the sole legal responsible (!)
February 10, 2008 at 5:31 pm
On
did you see Das Leben der Anderen?
I’ve just watched it on DVD on my computer screen (big), I see tons of movies but hate going to theaters
BEAUTIFUL, deserves all the awards received, very moving
and… something adding to my emotion… it was shot on Hufeland Strasse / Prezlauenberg in Berlin!!!!!!!!!!!, where my partner and I have spent 3 weeks a few years ago
well!!!
so strange and disturbing (and unexpected) for me
this part of Berlin has been changing in the recent years, I was there alone last year again, and found myself a little ‘exstranged’, time has passed
February 10, 2008 at 5:34 pm
On
about the content of this conversation, the problem is how far can we unveil personal stuff which others may read?!!
I don’t want you to do or undo anything on my pressure, but we will necessarily refrain ourselves since all this is ‘public’
anyway, I’m deeply moved at the moment
this movie is great, and anyway German cinema has improved a lot in the recent decade
February 11, 2008 at 6:30 pm
On
if we had lived at Lou’s time, we would have had to face suspicion and gossips too
in her case, to be a married virgin, as she was (with Andreas), and to be only rarely involved physically with any other (except her great love, Rilke) was just perceived as a ’strangeness’
and for me, since I’ve read ALL her books and papers, there is something else and MORE: a Christian and mystical dimension, as I’ll show in my next works
I think THIS PRECISELY (to be a female Christ) was unconciously perceived by some others as a ‘bizarrerie’ and therefore suspected as a ‘flaw’
February 13, 2008 at 4:50 pm
On
what’s up?
February 18, 2008 at 10:07 am
On
so, are you now too impressed by my cv, books, etc.??
I hope you are
be well anyway
February 21, 2008 at 9:16 am
On
to Lassus
‘where there’s smoke, there’s fire’
precisely NOT
that’s slander: no fire, but smoke
the purpose being to create suspicion
April 2, 2008 at 11:12 am
On
are you dead?!!!!!!
July 25, 2008 at 6:46 pm
ewf
I don’t know where this writer read about Lou, but what she has written indicates that she read about her IN A LANGUAGE WITH WHICH SHE WAS UNFAMILIAR. She has it all backward! Read H. F. Peters’ book, ‘My Sister, My Spouse’ for a correct picture of Lou Andreas-Salome.
July 26, 2008 at 10:40 pm
Sonja Kasten
Thus, M H.F. Peter may know about her life better than herself? That’s peculiar. For biographical data read the notes of “My life” written by herself in the French edition.
December 4, 2008 at 7:47 pm
Manon Sheiman
Very interesting material, thank you.
Yes, she was an unbridled character, it seems.
If her family disowned her, I wonder where she got her money.
From the men?
My friend, who pointed me to this site, thinks that she was extremely beautiful. I say she must have had tremendous charisma as well.
Just a quick little comment on a word you used: ‘loose’
“Thrown out of her family (she seems to _loose_ her name)”
Sorry if I seem petty, but the word you meant was ‘lose’, not ‘loose’,
and I don’t want to offend, b/c this mis usage is rampant on the internet, even cropping up in new academics’ writing. So you are in a multitude of company.
The internet kids started this misspelling b/c the spellcheckers don’t catch it, and so it has multiplied and gone viral.
I have observed that most of my graduate student ‘profs’ are lousy spellers; it is because they grew up writing on the keyboard w/ spellcheckers, so if they have to put a long word up on the board, they are lost. It’s kinda funny to me, but then I don’t get any points for being an excellent speller, in the end, but they get all the points for the knowledge.
So. (Sorry for the long post, but thanks for letting me rant^_^)
‘loose’ is pronounced [looz], and ‘lose’ is pronounced [loos]
From Dictionary.com:
loose
(lōōs) Pronunciation Key
adj. loos·er, loos·est
1. Not fastened, restrained, or contained: loose bricks.
2. Not taut, fixed, or rigid: a loose anchor line; a loose chair leg.
3. Free from confinement or imprisonment; unfettered: criminals loose in the neighborhood; dogs that are loose on the streets.
4. Not tight-fitting or tightly fitted: loose shoes.
5. Not bound, bundled, stapled, or gathered together: loose papers.
6. Not compact or dense in arrangement or structure: loose gravel.
7. Lacking a sense of restraint or responsibility; idle: loose talk.
8. Not formal; relaxed: a loose atmosphere at the club.
9. Lacking conventional moral restraint in sexual behavior.
10. Not literal or exact: a loose translation.
11. Characterized by a free movement of fluids in the body: a loose cough; loose bowels.
lose
/luz/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [looz] Show IPA Pronunciation
verb, lost, los⋅ing.
–verb (used with object)
1. to come to be without (something in one’s possession or care), through accident, theft, etc., so that there is little or no prospect of recovery: I’m sure I’ve merely misplaced my hat, not lost it.
2. to fail inadvertently to retain (something) in such a way that it cannot be immediately recovered: I just lost a dime under this sofa.
3. to suffer the deprivation of: to lose one’s job; to lose one’s life.
4. to be bereaved of by death: to lose a sister.
5. to fail to keep, preserve, or maintain: to lose one’s balance; to lose one’s figure.
6. (of a clock or watch) to run slower by: The watch loses three minutes a day.
7. to give up; forfeit the possession of: to lose a fortune at the gaming table.
8. to get rid of: to lose one’s fear of the dark; to lose weight.
9. to bring to destruction or ruin (usually used passively): Ship and crew were lost.
10. to condemn to hell; damn.
11. to have slip from sight, hearing, attention, etc.: to lose him in the crowd.
12. to stray from or become ignorant of (one’s way, directions, etc.): to lose one’s bearings.
13. to leave far behind in a pursuit, race, etc.; outstrip: She managed to lose the other runners on the final lap of the race.
14. to use to no purpose; waste: to lose time in waiting.
15. to fail to have, get, catch, etc.; miss: to lose a bargain.
16. to fail to win (a prize, stake, etc.): to lose a bet.
17. to be defeated in (a game, lawsuit, battle, etc.): He has lost very few cases in his career as a lawyer.
18. to cause the loss of: The delay lost the battle for them.
19. to let (oneself) go astray, miss the way, etc.: We lost ourselves in the woods.
20. to allow (oneself) to become absorbed or engrossed in something and oblivious to all else: I had lost myself in thought.
21. (of a physician) to fail to preserve the life of (a patient).
22. (of a woman) to fail to be delivered of (a live baby) because of miscarriage, complications in childbirth, etc.
–verb (used without object)
23. to suffer loss: to lose on a contract.
24. to suffer defeat or fail to win, as in a contest, race, or game: We played well, but we lost.
25. to depreciate in effectiveness or in some other essential quality: a classic that loses in translation.
26. (of a clock, watch, etc.) to run slow.
—Verb phrase
27. lose out, to suffer defeat or loss; fail to obtain something desired: He got through the preliminaries, but lost out in the finals.
—Idiom
28. lose face. face (def. 48).
Origin:
bef. 900; ME losen, OE -lēosan; r. ME lesen, itself also reflecting OE -lēosan; c. G verlieren, Goth fraliusan to lose. See loss
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
Cite This Source
December 4, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Manon Sheiman
Yikes! After all that and I posted the pronunciation of ‘loose’ and ‘lose’ in reverse:
‘loose’ is pronounced [looz], and ‘lose’ is pronounced [loos]
No! ‘loose’ is pronounced [loos], and ‘lose’ is pronounced [looz]
Sorry…^_^
December 5, 2008 at 2:14 am
Sonja Kasten
thanks for the correction – you always learn something this way. In fact these texts are drafts, at least most of them, and usually you don’t correct drafts.
If you see anything else, just let me know – I won’t correct it otherwise the comment will look silly …
February 22, 2009 at 6:55 pm
Capítulo 23: Cross examination « Manishma
[...] February 9, 2008 at 5:05 pm [...]
February 22, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Chapters 23 & 24 « Manishma
[...] February 9, 2008 at 4:59 pm [...]
May 2, 2009 at 11:29 pm
Alto en el camino « spiderbook
[...] http://sonjakasten1.wordpress.com/2006/10/27/the-horrible-lou-andreas-salome/ [...]
June 4, 2009 at 1:30 am
John
Dear S,
I found this site yesterday. I am new to computers. There is a photo I have seen of Lou Andreas Salome with among others,August Endell. Today, speaking with an artist whose work is an echo and a response to DaDa, I brought up Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven. My friend did not know of her,so I was glad to share. Then it hit me, August was married to Elsa.( August designed the hof atelier Elvira in Munich.) August was also an intimate friend of Lou Andreas Salome. Lucky August!!!
Today I came back and I could not stop reading the exchange between you and the remarkable woman whose name I have deduced, but will not mention. I am exhilarated and a trifle exhausted. More energized than anything.
What a rich existence you both have. What a supreme delight for me to take part in the discussion even in the surreptitious fashion I was afforded. I accessed some of your other sites as well. When do you find time to breathe?
I have a deep affection for LAS and for ElsavFL–dada baroness. I am not an academic or a scholar and yet I feel at home with these women, their issues, their ideas and their lives. How they changed existence for the rest of us and how we benefit from their struggle. Women are always more interesting for me. I find males rather dull.
You have a poetic nature and that is a rare and hallowed quality to possess.
be well,
John
June 4, 2009 at 2:02 am
John
hi, it’s me again. I just made a major misapprehension. Your correspondent is male. I am flummoxed by this. I thought and felt that I was in the presence of a female sensibility on both sides of the page. My apologies. I am reading his material, but in not so good computer english. Certainly I do not find P at all dull or Rilke or Nietzsche. I am like our good grey poet Whitman. I am always contradicting myself.
mortified, but not defeated
John
June 4, 2009 at 8:05 pm
Sonja Kasten
Well, as far as I know all correspondents here including me, are women. I mean, the constant commentors, others are men, but they usually restrain themselves to one or tow comments, thing certainly talking very positively about men’s sensitivity. I don’t like Lou Andreas Salome personally and am not sure it is that easy to generalize on women and men.
June 6, 2009 at 5:29 pm
John
to clarify,
my comment on the relative attributes of the sexes was not a generalization, but an observation.
it seems to me that LAS is the supreme example of one who has traversed terra firma and terra incognita in the essential manner that you esteem i.e.–aleatory peregrination.
why all the fuss? I think that you loathe her posthumus canonization. That penumbral glow through which we redigest and mythologize personages from the past is not her fault, it is human nature: it is a form of ancestor worship peculiar to the west. LAS has undergone an apotheosis. Whether anyone, you or I ,anyone likes her or not is immaterial, ancillary and after the fact. Lou is an artifact of culture. Nothing more. She will not be allowed to vacate her position from this parnassian promontory. We will only re-evaluate our re-evaluations of her. She is only another cottage industry in the academic gristmill. An endless subject for debate and clarification.
humans, in general and in particular,as a species, are not particularly likable. At our best we are a contemptible lot. you and I and Lassus and Pascale were born in the grimmest of centuries, the bloodiest of centuries…into this convulsion of self interest and self absorption we enter and stay for awhile and leave. it is a narrativity of horror where all fall short of the Glory of God. you know this.
you are at your strongest as artist and poet. you are weakest when you evaluate human behaviour through the lens of reason. for you this is a process of cerebration without intellection. it is your one vice. it is your achiles heel.
you have a capacious and paradoxical mind, this–despite the fact that when you demonize our fragile demiruge you are merely jousting at windmills.
reason is always the slave to passion.
July 3, 2009 at 1:31 am
Sonja Kasten
Sorry I’m late answering but I thought for many days you were who you are not and whose presence in my pages is censored, prohibited and psychologically rejected. I just got aware today of my most horrible mistake.
The funny thing about you is that I don’t know whether you are making fun or not, but as I usually answer seriously to fun and with fun to seriousness, it will finish by making a half and half, I guess. (The answer which depends logically on the aleatory interpretation given to the contents of your text.)
Reason, if it is reason should take into consideration even passion which then becomes through this very reasonable twist of mind a moderate feeling with brakes, bumpers, garages, etc.
Everything is relative to itself. Now. I’m deriving (among other) essential human characteristics out of grammatical structures for other purposes. To my understanding, Salome is nothing but a well dressed prostitute. Personally I have nothing against prostitutes who all in all do carry the unbearable weight of men’s stupidity (sorry if it hurts) but can show very funny and even intelligent aspects that may change your day when boredom and many other invade it. What I think is to be criticized is the use of a social function (intellectual, writer, whatever) in order to mask this real activity. It opens a door to hell. You will never be taken seriously as a writer, even more so if you are a woman, if there are specimena allowing the thought behind such tiring and even exhausting activity is hiding itself this other kind of activity. It’s a question of clear separation of fields.
Logical. There are men who prefer to see whores in women and even in all women for who the idealization of her character implies somehow the desire to have this model become referential in determined social environments. Thing I can’t agree with, you imagine.
Obviously it is different to have a look at the same problem from the point of view of a man (who will try to get his advantage out of it) and a woman who is in the situation to defend a position that becomes weaker every day.
The worse is that women are engaged in the active defense of LAS making things even more difficult.
I don’t demonize anyone and even less our fragile nature: I consider that things have to be said by their proper name. To put it somehow differently: I may have thought LAS the prostitute amusing or victim of an environment and may have even had a coffee with the same. LAS the writer would have been the object of my hardest critics and evil comments, thing she would have only answered to saying I hate whores. I’d have said, no, not whores. Whores giving themselves out for writers.
You see?
Concerning your most enchanting appreciation of my structural mind, I can’t but thank you even if it kindly prepares the following critic. I accept, too, although I don’t think it corresponds to reality.
Your way of writing (you allow and I excuse through the before mentioned) makes excessive use of terms that are out of common use and usually point at someone who is horribly shy or masks feelings through the attachment to an eliterian linguistic environment.
I confess I was about to become bitter about this when I considered that we are all different. My way of talking is straight, simple and plays with pretension as means to make fun on myself. It’s consequently radically different to yours. Thing implying there may be misunderstandings as the one above that can only be cleared up through an intelligent dialogue (!?)
Feeling is in heart and not in words. I tend to think – I’m shy my way – that the misuse of words wanting to reflect affective involvement, kills feeling. Actual reason why I prefer the cold and distant and even cruel exposure of reason to romantic inspiration, which on the other hand I keep for silent moments where they can say themselves without too many words.
So. The long answer is due to my bad consciousness of not having answered before…