Triangles of Frau Lou

Oh, Louise Andreas-Salome did you put the trios in ménage trios?
Of you, of your mind, I am so in awe.
You the intellectual whore so misunderstood.
Oh Frau Lou to be like you, I wish I could!

What becomes of the female mind
when intelligence is to become so entwined?
A dangerous woman does it make?
Even Freud feared to be caught in your wake.

Oh, Frau Lou a lover of many men of great mind,
holder of a youthful beauty so pure it could blind.
The triangles of Frau Lou could once dangerously bind,
many a men of great mind.

Hendrik Gillot, Paul Ree, Friedrich Nietzsche, Frederick Carl Andreas,
George Ledebour, Frank Wedekind, Arthur Schnitzler,
Rainer Maria Rilke, Paul Bjerre, Vietor Tausk,
Adler, Carl Jung, Arnold Zweig,
Friedrich Pineless, Sigmund Freud and so many more,
fell under the charm of you, the intellectual whore.
Some loved you, some lusted after you.

Some did neither of both, but all respected you.

You, a keen observer of human nature with an indifference to moral convention,
with a burning desire for intellectual ascension.
You, whose sexuality and intellectual pursuits struggled in suspension.
Oh, Frau Lou your prose, your writings continue to hold my attention.

Louise Andreas-Salome, you found a brother hidden in every man,
only because you wished to live like a man.
A modern day tomboy of your time the women sought to ban.
You, a mastermind of female intelligence with a brilliant plan.

Frau Lou with your Pythagorean friendships and your insatiable intellectual curiosity
challenged the gender roles of your day with such ferocity.
You were Friedrich Nietzsche’s twin-flame and most painful atrocity.
You played a role in turning his mind into a mental monstrosity.

Oh, Frau Lou a lover of many men of great mind,
holder of a youthful beauty so pure it could blind.
The triangles of Frau Lou could once dangerously bind,
many a men of great mind.

A Hedda Gabler in living skin,

the two of you so much a kin.
The similarities seen even by Ibsen,
when he made his famous female protagonist your near twin.

Louise Andreas-Salome did you every psychoanalyze yourself?
Where you happy with yourself?
Did you ever find pride and contentment with yourself?
I have found the one great thing missing in your many works was yourself.

You once said, “Two are at one only when they remain two.”
Did you truly believe this to be true?
Your marriage unconsummated was not so unlike your brilliant works so devoid of you.
The distance between you and all you loved was a truth that was long over due.

I couldn’t help but take notice of your unspoken hurt.
You had empathy for others you would not subvert.
Yet you had an inability to recognize your own hurt,
your own loneliness, your own pain, to yourself you were inert.

Pain is a pleasurable part of life,
a necessary liberating strife.
You knew this well because you studied it with your very own life,

you lived your life with this strife.

Did you ever truly love at all?
Your detailed writings on sex and sexuality could enthrall,
but sex is just sex without love after all.
Were you never so lucky to ever have known true love at all?
(the green is the part I am still working)

Yes, but of course, you were your Romeo Rainer’s moonlight,
and the two of you made up for everything there wasn’t time for in one night.
Fourteen years your junior, oh, Frau Lou how reality does bite.
Your passionate love for him, though not meant to last, did burn bright.

Miss Louise Andreas- Salome, Miss Frau Lou
Truth tells me the triangles bound only you,
within time, within your mind, and your soul, you were bound by you,
within the triangles belonging to Frau Lou.
©2009 L.Warren