Lou Salomé and the Quest for intimacy 251which stars did we fall to meet each other here?" (Janz 2,123). Just as
suddenly as he had proposed marriage to Mathilde Trampedach six years
earlier, Nietzsche asked Salomé to marry him in a matter of days. The
story is quite complicated because he brought in his friend Rèe to help
court her, although Rèe was himself taken with her. Salomé turned
Nietzsche down on the pretext of economic constraints, but she pas-
sionately embraced the plan to form a kind of work-study group à trois
and to share an apartment, perhaps in Vienna or Paris. For reasons of
propriety, they could include Salomé's or Rée's mother, or Nietzsche's
sister. Nietzsche warmed up to this plan after the rejection of his mar-
riage proposal, and he clung to it for the whole year to follow. This intel-
lectual ménage à trois suited Salomé's fantasies perfecdy. As she wrote in
her memoirs, she dreamed of a "pleasant study full of books and flow-
ers, flanked by two bedrooms, and work companions going in and out,
bound together in a jovial and solemn circle" (Janz 2,125). Nietzsche
could well imagine the advantages of a tighdy knit work commune; since
the time of his Suriej inspiration, he had been determined to substanti-
ate his doctrine of eternal recurrence with a thorough study of the nat-
ural sciences.
On their way back to Germany, they met at Lake Orta, in northern
Italy. At long last, Nietzsche found the opportunity to take a walk alone
with Salomé. The path led up to Monte Sacro. Nietzsche later recalled
this walk as a virtually holy event, full of promises that never material-
ized, but we do not know what happened on Monte Sacro. Nietzsche did
not express himself on the subject, and Salomé said very litrie. She later
confided to a friend: "I don't really know whether I kissed Nietzsche on
Monte Sacro" (Peters, Lou Andreas-Salomé 106). Whatever the case,
Nietzsche gathered his courage and proposed marriage once again the
next time they met in Lucerne, this time without the aid of an interme-
diary. Again Salomé said no. She was both attracted to and repelled by
Nietzsche. She was allured by the cerebral adventures he offered her, but
put off by his pathos, rigid manner, and formality, which alternated with
an unbecoming free-spirited attitude and jaunty flirtatiousness.