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

92 The Breaking Point
since heaven knows when . . . not since they were on a walking
tour, since Ussel or Ventadour, [but] she not fall to pieces just when
one might be gettin’ something or other shaped up. Nobody ever
had any sense about suicide. . . . They allus take the wrong
moment . . . just before ‘‘cheque arrived in the morning post’’ . . .
Bothered by the severe winter and a persistent cold, Ezra, too, was
depressed and cantankerous. He suggested the possibility that ‘‘one of
them flatchested females been gettin’ on her nerves. . . . Wot the hell!!!! . . .
bloody bitches. . . . Damn the wimmen!’’
He has been seriously ill a good deal of the time when she has been
mal contenta. . . . Da tanti anni he has been balancing things on his
nose or his head . . . if she thinks he don’t care for her a great deal
more now than he did in the primi anni and in a very di√erent way,
she is very wrong. . . . Au commencement, he believes she had the
idea of dropping out, I don’t mean dying, but of going o√ to
something else. . . . She get it into her head that he don’t want to go
on without her, either. . . . She was more with him . . . the night after
he got her letter than she had been—perhaps ever.
Olga:
[It is] absolutely essential that she continue to balance him on
the end of the stick on the end of her nose with all the drums
rolling, because it is a very di≈cult feat, and if He rolls o√ and hits
her in the eye, it will hurt her, besides leaving her nothing to look
up to . . .
Considering that she isn’t a pushing person . . . his going ’round
covered with signs: ‘‘Keep O√ the Grass,’’ ‘‘Don’t Touch,’’ ‘‘Open
10–12, Closed 12–2,’’ ‘‘By Appointment Only,’’ etc. is rude and
unnecessary. . . . He has always barged into her life just when He
wanted, and if she wasn’t ready and waiting, He damn well made
her feel she ‘‘ought’’ to have been.