Description
About the Author
Lou Andreas-Salome (1861-1937) was an influential author and critic and a pioneering psychoanalyst; her writing career spanned nearly five decades. Born and raised in the German expatriate community of St. Petersburg, she studied in Zurich and lived, for most of her life, in Berlin and Goettingen. She made her name with groundbreaking studies of Nietzsche and Ibsen, then concentrated on fiction with a focus on female characters. Her six novels and many novellas and short stories became a beacon for women searching for new ways of living in the patriarchal society of Wilhemine Germany. Andreas-Salome was also the mentor of Rainer Maria Rilke; she introduced the poet to Russian culture, with profound effects on his work. In her later years, she practiced psychoanalysis, working with Freud and then operating a private practice. Andreas-Salome is best known for her famous friendships, but the full range of her accomplishments has been charted in more than a dozen biographies in German, French, and English. In 2016, her life was portrayed on the screen by director Cordula Kablitz-Post (Lou Andreas-Salome: The Audacity to Be Free). FRANK BECK is a New York City-based writer and translator. He has written about new poetry for The Manhattan Review for more than 30 years. RALEIGH WHITINGER is emeritus professor of German at the University of Alberta. He has published widely on Theodor Storm, Lou Andreas-Salome, Goethe, Kleist, and German naturalism. From 2002 to 2011, he edited Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies. His translation of Andreas-Salome's novella collection, Menschenkinder, was published as The Human Family in 2005 (University of Nebraska).
Reviews
This translation makes Andreas-Salome's last novel accessible to English speakers and offers an important addition to the growing body of critical work on the author. [...] With Anneliese's House, Beck and Whitinger pave the way for broadening insight into the emancipatory significance of her fiction. * FEMINIST GERMAN STUDIES *
This intricate psychological novel . . . is about the house of happiness we can build for ourselves and how that deeply human vision sits with nature. [It is] surely the best of her fiction and deserves to be read widely. -- Lesley Chamberlain * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *
Frank Beck and Raleigh Whitinger deserve praise both for rendering precise, intricate sentences from German into English, and for deciding that this novel deserves attention. -- Declan O'Driscoll * IRISH TIMES *
Unfolding largely within the titular house, Lou Andreas-Salome's last novel delicately probes a German bourgeois family on the cusp of a new era. As it renders the inner turmoil of parents and young adult children who sometimes remain opaque even to themselves, the text gently insists on the sustaining goodwill of love in the face of inevitable social change, disappointment, passing time, and mortality. As a subtly complex response to modern times, Anneliese's House-in this finely worded translation-proves the capacities, nuance, and significance of literary evocations of marriage and family. * Lynne Tatlock, Hortense and Tobias Lewin Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, Washington University in St. Louis *
Anneliese's House gives invaluable insight into Lou Salome's thoughts on the complicated process of relationship between the sexes. This makes it an important book in considering her own relationships with Nietzsche, Rilke, and Freud. It is translated with subtlety and sensitivity. * Sue Prideaux, author of I am Dynamite! A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche *
A wonderfully lucid and elegant translation and a must-read not only for literary scholars but also for social historians for its evocative treatment of the "woman question" and family relationships in the early twentieth century. * Erika Rummel, Professor Emerita of History, Wilfrid Laurier University *
A Nietzschean ode to love, marriage, and motherhood, Lou Andreas-Salome's last novel is finally available in English. Accompanied by an informative introduction and extensive notes, this well-wrought translation captures the psychological nuance and exuberance of the original's bourgeois critique of turn-of-the-century German patriarchy and its incipient anti-Semitism. * Susan Ingram, York University *
Salome's final novel is shot through with a critical eye for the fractured realities of the time and can be read alongside her famously insightful work on Ibsen or Freud. The sharp dialogue, brilliant characterisation and architectural acuity are lovingly translated by Beck and Whitinger to make this essential reading for those interested in twentieth-century German literature and the vital recovery of major women writers. * Karen Leeder, Professor of Modern German Literature, New College, Oxford *
This first translation into English should reach a wide, international readership. [It] is readable, thoroughly considered and researched, and could serve as a model for those interested in translation studies. Beck and Whitinger's erudite introduction presents their translation philosophy, which includes bringing their readers to the foreign text by preserving elements of German language and culture (lviii-lix). Their extensive endnotes contribute an impressive amount of context and clarification to Salome's narrative. -- Susan C. Anderson * GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW *
Book Information
ISBN 9781640141018
Author Lou Andreas-Salome
Format Hardback
Page Count 304
Imprint Camden House Inc
Publisher Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Weight(grams) 1g