Rilke and Lou Salomé in Tolstoy’s Garden (1899)
This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:
May 19, 1899
Lou Andreas Salomé (books about this person) and Rainer Maria Rilke (books about this person) went to see Leo Tolstoy (books about this person), hoping for mentorship; what they found was a writer wholly present to his garden, scenting the day one blossom at a time.
We no longer looked about us, but at him absorbing this landscape.
Bending down from time to time to pluck, forget-me-nots with a quick motion of his cup tanned as if to snatch up the odor from the stem.
He would then hold them close to his face and breathe them.
Intensely consume them as it were.
And then let them fall to the ground.
Russia claimed Rilke’s heart for a season, and from that love came one of his masterpieces, a trilogy of timeless poems, The Book of Hours.
