Von Der Lippe, Angela

PERSONAL:

Education: Sarah Lawrence College, bachelor's degree; Brown University, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Editor, novelist, and translator. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, senior editor; W.W. Norton, New York, NY, senior editor.

WRITINGS:

(Editor and translator) Lou Andreas Salomé, You Alone Are Real to Me: Remembering Rainer Maria Rilke, Boa Editions (Rochester, New York), 2003.

The Truth about Lou: A (Necessary) Fiction, Counterpoint Press (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Angela Von Der Lippe is the editor and translator of You Alone Are Real to Me: Remembering Rainer Maria Rilke, a memoir by Lou Andreas Salomé. Originally published in 1927, the year after Rilke's death, the work concerns the relationship between Salomé, a critic, essayist, and novelist, and Rilke, the celebrated German lyric poet who was fourteen years her junior. Salomé became Rilke's primary muse and a trusted confidante, and their travels to her homeland of Russia helped inspire and shape Rilke's work. According to a Publishers Weekly critic, You Alone Are Real to Me "follows a stream-of-consciousness style, … delicately mapping out the maturation of his poetry over the course of several decades." Salomé "conjures the man and his profound importance to her as poet and dear friend in this unusually thoughtful memoir, superbly translated" by Von Der Lippe, wrote Paula Friedman in the New York Times Book Review.

In The Truth about Lou: A (Necessary) Fiction, Von Der Lippe presents a historical fiction based on the life of Lou Andreas Salomé, recounting Salomés associations with Rainer Maria Rilke, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. Born in St. Petersburg in 1861, Salomé wrote in a variety of genres, including poetry, novels, dramas, and psycho-analytic studies. Library Journal contributor Caroline Hallsworth stated that Von Der Lippe "animates a woman who is beguiling … and whose intellect and social attitudes were well in advance of her time."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, December 15, 2006, Margaret Flanagan, review of The Truth about Lou: A (Necessary) Fiction, p. 24.

Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 2006, review of The Truth about Lou, p. 987.

Library Journal, November 1, 2006, Caroline Hallsworth, review of The Truth about Lou, p. 71.

New York Times Book Review, July 27, 2003, Paula Friedman, review of You Alone Are Real to Me: Remembering Rainer Maria Rilke, p. 13.

Publishers Weekly, March 10, 2003, review of You Alone Are Real to Me, p. 66; October 2, 2006, review of The Truth about Lou, p. 39.