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     The subject of my undergraduate honor's thesis was Lou
Andreas-Salome.  She was of a Russian family living in
France, a sensitive and gifted young woman, with whom
Friedrich Nietzsche fell in love, and with whom he had, as I
remember, a passionate correspondence that shed much light on
his difficult personality. The relationship could not and did
not last; some years later Lou Salome married an academic
named Andreas.  I think he was a philologist of some arcane
language, - but again my memory might deceive me.
Subsequently she became the friend, godmother, confidante,
muse and perhaps paramour of Rainer Maria Rilke, travelled to
Russia with him in 1900 and introduced him to the Russian
mysticism which moulded Rilkes spiritual experience in that
decade of his life and led to the composition of his
"Stundenbuch", his first substantial volume of poetry.
Facing the title page is the inscription: "Gelegt in die
Haende von Lou". Lou Salome remained Rilke's spiritual
protectress for the rest of his life. Much of his work
is dedicated to her. She survived him by many years.

     Inasmuch as I was seeking honors in history and
literature, my thesis was reviewed by only one member of the
German Department.  (The historians on the panel couldn't
have cared less.)  The German department member was Stuart
Atkins who aspired to be a Goethe scholar but who had been
made academically invisible by the shadow of Karl Vietor.  I
had never condescended to take any of his courses, because I
knew, hard as he tried, Atkins couldn't speak German, didn't
even understand it.  My tutor Klemens von Klemperer (who
later became professor of history at Smith) expected me to
get a summa. (So did I.) Vietor said he thought the choice of
subject felicitous, and advised me to submit the manuscript
to PMLA. At the same time he complained how much trouble PMLA
had given him with _his_ submissions.  I don't think he
himself had read my thesis.  In any event, Stuart Atkins got
even with me, said my thesis deserved only a magna, "because
the material has not been fully assimilated by the English
speaking part of the author's mind," an evaluation which I,
in arrogance and vanity, translated to mean that Stuart
Atkins wished he could speak and read German as fluently and
effortlessly as I. In any case, I survived the magna.
Nonetheless my thesis soon became a source of profound
embarrassment for me, so much so that after I gave up on
PMLA, I never reread it.

     So far as my thesis was concerned, I was embarrassed in
the first place, because within a year or two of my thesis,
was published the correspondence between Lou Salome and
Rilke, and perhaps other source material, which I purchased,
but likewise refused to read, - it stands on one of the
shelves in the dining room, - material timely access to which
would surely have profoundly altered my thesis.  That was not
my fault, but disconcerting nonetheless.

     More serious was the obvious disparity between my own
youth, - I was a mere 18 years old, with no inkling of what
Eros would do to mind and body, and the fateful liaisons I
undertook to describe, with grave philosophical and literary
implications that I purported to interpret.  Only the
experience of forty, fifty or sixty years could do justice to
so problematic a topic. I should been asked to write on some
other subject. I understand now that what I was really doing
was trying to anticipate the story of my own life. Obviously
in the fog of my anonymity, Nietzsche and Rilke emerged,
however awkwardly, as conceivable role models, but _my_ Lou
Salome existed for me in those months of my life, only in my
longing, hardly even in my imagination.  In this instance, I
consider it a blessing that undergraduate honors theses are
so quickly and so thoroughly forgotten.

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Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
