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

7
The Breaking Point
86
1929–1931
‘‘She wants her god incarnate’’
Early in the new year of 1929, the hard work, the uncertainty, the
coldest winter in many years—in Venice, the canals froze over—had
broken Olga’s spirit. In deep depression, she wrote to Ezra, crossing out
some of the more painful passages: ‘‘I have tried very hard to go on
working, but I can’t . . . nearly two months since I tried to finish things.
You didn’t want to keep me—or to give me any reason, except unjust
ones. . . . Caro, I beg you, if you can explain or help, to be quick—I am just
about finished. I have lost everything.’’
Ezra failed to o√er consolation:
I do not think life is possible if you stop to consider peoples’
personal feelings . . . you obviously don’t go out to be nasty or
squash people unnecessarily: But if you start gearing up everything
in accordance to whether or not it gives someone else a bellyache I
don’t see where you come out. . . . One does one’s job, well or
badly, and when it’s done, one enjoys oneself. . . . My monde . . . is
made up of people who are doing or trying to do something, when
they can’t, they give a ’and to them as does. . . . I can’t see . . .