When German poet Rainer Maria Rilke died in December 1926, he was regarded as one of the major poets of the 20th century in any language, as well as one of the most enigmatic of his own time -- the one-time associate of Rodin, military school drop-out, painfully detached father and husband, and author of the Duino Elegies, which stands among the most sublime works of all time.

Written the year after his death by the poet's life-long friend, traveling companion, and muse, Lou Andreas-Salomé takes us through accounts of their meetings and travels, the dam-bursts of creativity in which Rilke wrote the Sonnets to Orpheus, and the Duino Elegies, and their correspondence in which Salomé was the essential confluent soul who kept Rilke from utter despair.

Available for the first time in English and superbly translated with an introduction by Angela von der Lippe, You Alone Are Real to Me, is the work of a multi-faceted woman, a popular European novelist, friend to Nietsche and Freud, a noted writer on psychoanalysis, and a woman capable of understanding the spirit and aspirations of her "Old Rainer".