Two Women and a Philosopher
“From what stars have we fallen together here?” Nietzsche exclaimed when he met the 21-year-old Lou Andreas-Salome in St Peter’s Basilica, Rome, along with another philosopher Paul Ree. Nietzsche and Ree were friends. Now Salome joined them in what she called a “Holy Trinity.” If there ever was a cataclysmic love-at-first-sight of cosmic proportions, it was this. Nietzsche proposed to Salome twice, first through Ree and then personally. Both proposals were rejected promptly because Salome didn’t want to sacrifice her freedom or intellectual independence. The philosopher who idealised the unemotional, unromantic Superman snapped like a twig. Before that breakdown came, the “Holy Trinity” had travelled together to Switzerland. Salome had rejected the proposal of Ree too in the meanwhile. Nietzsche got a famous studio in Lucerne to shoot a very symbolic photo. Salome kneels inside a small wooden farm cart holding a whip. Nietzsche and Ree stand in front, tide to the cart with rope...
