Olga Rudge & Ezra Pound: "What Thou Lovest Well..."

85 The Hidden Nest
No, you God Dam fool, it is your vampirism. Your wanting
more. What damn pleasure is there in anything . . . if someone is
always telling you what you ought, what you owe, what they
deserve. . . . The only reason people can live near each other is
because they let each other alone . . . when the spontaneity goes
out of a relationship, l’amour est bien fini.
You have a set of values I don’t care a damn for. I do not care a
damn about private a√airs, private life, personal interests. You do.
It is perfectly right that you should, but you can’t drag me into it.
Yeats wrote a long time ago that an artist could not really have
friends save among artists. . . . You want to be the centre of a circle.
I can not be in perpetual orbit.
For a long time you have wanted me in a ‘role,’ or to live up to a
set of your ideas. . . . It is quite possible that he also made some e√ort
to make her over according to his pattern—one does instinctively—
but the moment he saw that was contra natura, he gave it up.
Between the lines, the letter also outlined his conditions for the relationship
to continue. In her reply, Olga expressed her pain—and fury:
She feels that He ought—yes ought—to notice the di√erence
between one woman and another before He damns them wholesale.
Of what good [is] all his Henry James admiration for [women]—
can He only see in print? Is He too big a dog to notice the minute
di√erences?
She would like to play the violin well. Her playing means [to]
him agitating—big drum. He has no idea of just what months of
work in peace would mean to her. She cannot practice when she is
cold or uncomfortable or in other people’s houses—in hotels,
mostly—or when she is unhappy. She has tried to adapt herself to
other people’s situations and failed. . . . She is now trying to make
circumstances suit her needs, but He is not interested . . . the fact of
His having once been is no reason why He should continue to
be. . . . She shouldn’t expect the same repetitions of movements—
repeats, da capos, etc—in amore, any more than in music.