Rilke’s heart and soul were deeply touched through his relationship with Lou Andreas- Salomé. Struggling to find the voice for the creativity living within his soul, he writes to Salomé, “You see, gracious lady, through the unsparing severity, through the uncompromising strength of your words, I felt that my own work was receiving a blessing, a sanction.” Was it Salome, his own soul, or both who he embraced in this sacred and unholy union?
Inherent in every relationship is a strong projection. Like Rilke’s longing for Salome, and Jung’s and Toni Wolfe’s longing for each other, we too hunger for our love, our innamorata to awaken the hidden life of our soul. At times we do find another with whom we can build a good life, while all too often we unfortunately feed our demons through the “dark marriage.”
While we may deeply adore or come to loathe our partner, ultimately the other is a reflection of our inner life, replete with angels and demons. Rilke came to understand these challenges of withdrawing such projections onto the other when writing, “and in between, this uninterrupted outward addiction and that interior existence I can barely reach any longer, are the true dwelling-places of healthful feeling . . . “
Drawing on the experiences of Rilke, Nietzsche, Jung, and Toni Wolff, we will look at the power of such attractions to a muse, and the challenges inherent in such relationships for men and women to re-collect and re-integrate these projections.
