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

93 The Breaking Point
And all this blather about . . . a younger man—I could have had
quite a pleasant time [with] Adrian. . . . I wasn’t encouraged.
Adrian Stokes, one of ‘‘Ezra’s young men’’ whom he met on the tennis
courts of Rapallo, became Olga’s confidant. He wrote to her: ‘‘I have
perfect faith in your happiness. You fight tooth and nail if necessary. But I
think you already have won what victory you needed. You are necessary
to Ezra, of that I am certain. You’ve only got to hold on.’’
When Ezra recovered from his lethargy and bronchitis in late January,
he climbed the hill to the village of Sant’Ambrogio where he discovered a
bright peasant’s cottage overlooking the Gulf of Tigullio near the old
church of San Pantaleo, a perfect pied-à-terre for Olga to let for a modest
seventy-five lire per month.
When Olga went there to stay, the façade of Casa 60 was covered with
orange-colored wash and decorated with mock-Ionic columns, Ligurian
style. Smooth stone steps, half-hidden with creepers and honeysuckle
vines, led up to a green front door. Inside were white walls and red-brick
tile floors, pale blue and pink vaulted ceilings painted with morning
glory vines ‘‘convoluting into bouquets and wreaths,’’ her daughter
remembered.
The Pellegrini family, who lived on the ground floor, operated an olive
press, and Olga was serenaded by the clunking of the press and the echo of
a bucket hitting water as it plunged into the well. ‘‘It was good olive oil,’’
she said, ignoring the noisy machinery.
Pound would recall the ‘‘house of smooth stone’’ as the ‘‘ingle of
Circe’’ in Canto 39; the noise of the olive press became the sound of Circe
at work on her loom:
‘‘thkk, thgk’’
of the loom
‘‘Thgk, thkk’’ and the sharp sound of a song
under olives . . .
When I lay in the ingle of Circe
I heard a song of that kind.