Image in Outline Reading Lou Andreas-Salomé

Proceeding from its lucid analysis of relatively known territory in Andreas-Salomé criticism-the 'Human Being as Woman' essay - to the less discussed Rilke texts, Brinker-Gabler's Image in Outline: Reading Lou Andreas-Salomé opens new vistas and insights on Andreas-Salome's surprisingly multidisciplinary writings and thought. Fascinating throughout is the kaleidoscope of links that integrate Andreas-Salomé's developments to a broad historical range of influences and echoes, likewise preceding from the known - Nietzsche, Freud - to the new, fostering new insights on this author's range and contexts: back to Spinoza, Baroque emblems, Leibniz,and Darwin; forward to Irigaray, Kristeva, and Benjamin. Theoretically dense yet lucid, Image in Outline is a welcome new pillar in recent decades' discourse on Andreas-Salomé's contribution to modern cultural and literary thought at the turn of the twentieth century. Raleigh Whitinger, Professor of German, University of Alberta, Canada