RAINER MARIA RILKE (1875–1926) is one of the greatest poets who ever wrote in the German language. His most famous works are Sonnets to Orpheus, The Duino Elegies, Letters to a Young Poet, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, and The Book of Hours.

Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861–1937) is an important figure in the lives of many Western thinkers and artists. A Russian-born psychoanalyst and author, her diverse interests led to influential relationships with an array of intellectuals, including Nietzsche, Freud, and Rilke.

He would become one of the most important poets of the twentieth century; she a muse of Europe's fin-de-siecle thinkers and artists. In this collection of letters, a finalist for the PEN USA translation award, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke and Lou Andreas-Salome, a writer and intellectual fourteen years his senior, pen a relationship that spans thirty years and shifting boundaries: as lovers, as mentor and protege, and as deep personal and literary allies.