Editing Rainer Maria Rilke (section)

===Munich and Saint Petersburg===
Rilke met and fell in love with the widely travelled and intellectual woman of letters [[Lou Andreas-Salomé]] in 1897 in Munich. He changed his first name from "René" to "Rainer" at Salomé's urging because she thought that name to be more masculine, forceful and Germanic.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Facts on File Companion to World Poetry: 1900 to the Present|first=R. Victoria|last=Arana|page=377|publisher=Infobase|year=2008|isbn=978-0-8160-6457-1}}</ref> His relationship with this married woman, with whom he undertook two extensive trips to Russia, lasted until 1900. Even after their separation, Salomé continued to be Rilke's most important confidante until the end of his life. Having trained from 1912 to 1913 as a [[psychoanalysis|psychoanalyst]] with [[Sigmund Freud]], she shared her knowledge of psychoanalysis with Rilke.

In 1898, Rilke undertook a journey of several weeks to Italy. The following year he travelled with Lou and her husband, [[Friedrich Carl Andreas]], to Moscow where he met the novelist [[Leo Tolstoy]]. Between May and August 1900, a second journey to Russia, accompanied only by Lou, again took him to Moscow and [[Saint Petersburg]], where he met the family of [[Boris Pasternak]] and [[Spiridon Drozhzhin]], a peasant poet. Author Anna A. Tavis cites the cultures of Bohemia and Russia as the key influences on Rilke's poetry and consciousness.<ref>Anna A. Tavis. ''Rilke's Russia: A Cultural Encounter''. [[Northwestern University Press]], 1997. {{ISBN|0-8101-1466-6}}. p.&nbsp;1.</ref>

In 1900, Rilke stayed at the artists' colony at [[Worpswede]]. (Later, his portrait would be painted by the proto-expressionist [[Paula Modersohn-Becker]], whom he got to know at Worpswede.) It was here that he got to know the sculptor [[Clara Westhoff]], whom he married the following year. Their daughter Ruth (1901–1972) was born in December 1901.