Lou Salomé and I he Quest for Intimacy 253was smoldering under the surface: "I had to be silent," he wrote to her
on June 27, 1882, "because I would have keeled over at the mere men-
don of you" (B 6,213).
Then came the summer in Tautenburg, in Thuringia. Salomé accepted
Nietzsche's invitation to join him there. Prior to her departure, she
attended the Bayreuth Festival, frequented the home of the Wagners,
and got acquainted with Nietzsche's sister, Elisabeth. The latter found
herself in the uncomfortable role of envious witness to Lou Salomé's
social status in the salons and at the receptions. The conversations
Elisabeth overheard about her renegade brother were unkind to him,
and she felt that this young Russian woman ought to have unfailingly
defended her brother. Instead, Salomé turned against him and cast
aspersions along with the others. This is how Elisabeth saw the situation,
or at least this is how she later reported it to her brother.
During their trip to Tautenburg, Elisabeth Nietzsche and Lou Salomé
engaged in a series of nasty altercations. From then on, Nietzsche's sis-
ter became Salomé's vindictive antagonist. She later alleged that Salomé
responded to her moral censure by declaring that Nietzsche himself was
a hypocrite who had feigned hospitality to try to manipulate her into liv-
ing "in sin" with him. Nietzsche, she claimed, was an egotist, and his
writings were testimony to his madness. We have no record of what
Salomé really said, but this is how Nietzsche's sister recounted the
exchange to him. Nietzsche later wrote that the very thought of this
incident brought him to the brink of "insanity" (B 6,435; Aug. 26,1883).
These feelings of animosity notwithstanding, Elisabeth Nietzsche
spent the following weeks together with her brother and Lou Salomé in
Tautenburg, although the latter barely noticed her and failed to include
her in their intense discussions. Since Rèe was now jealously observing
the relationship between the two, Salomé kept a journal of these weeks
in the form of her letters to Rèe and provided very specific information
about the idyll in Tautenburg. Just a few hours after they arrived, she
reported, they were able to get past their "small talk" and return to their
former familiarity. They were housed in separate apartments, and