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

225 A Piece of Ginger
waiting all her life for (now agli sgoccioli [reaching the last drop])? She
would like to see Him . . .’’
Olga returned to Martinsbrunn for Valentine’s Day. She was in Bologna,
waiting in the station café on her way back to Siena, when she wrote
Duncan: ‘‘E . . . had a bad spell ten days ago (it’s that beastly changing
catheter business), now back to where he was before, i.e., eating, showing
interest in newspapers . . . surprised Mary by being dressed and ready to go
out a few days ago . . . walked as far as the gate and back with no fatigue.
He worried me by [sending] a telegram, ‘Keep hoping.’ I was expecting
bad news . . . instead, he was admitting that there was hope . . . a great
step.’’ Soon after, Olga received a letter from Ezra asking if there was a
possibility of Anita Pellegrini putting him up at Sant’Ambrogio. He recalled
with nostalgia how he had tried to walk up the hill alone when last
in Rapallo, but when he got to the landmark eucalyptus, he discovered the
old donkey path was being surfaced with cement and temporarily impassable.
‘‘You deserve ten years for us to go over the pleasant things, from rue
Chamfort onward,’’ he wrote, remembering ‘‘the walk along the Seine for
N[atalie Barney]’s party (I kept the rue Chamfort key for years after) . . .
the Piazza and the cloistre, the Capoquadri, and Roma, that uncomfortable
room near the Corso, and the case for the brick balustrade to the stair,
Calle Querini, she always finding things for him, and he snarly, she
forgiving the snarl—her way with Anita and the people at Sant’Ambrogio,
her kindness to people, him blind, with inferiority complex.’’ (He
echoed these sentiments in Canto 113: ‘‘in every woman, somewhere in the
snarl is a tenderness.’’)
In March, Olga heard the Vivaldi Gloria—with chorus, orchestra, and
soli from Florence—performed at the Teatro dei Rinnovati for the first
time ‘‘since [Alfredo] Casella conducted same in Chiesa di San Francesco
in 1939 . . . the ‘Agnus Dei’ as beautiful as [the] one in Bach B minor Mass.’’
No news from the Alto Adige: ‘‘Hope all is serene and that He will tell
them females what He wants. Please reassure everyone (including Himself
), I am not starving and don’t need financial aid. If He comes to Sant’
Ambrogio, He only need think about His own expenses, which should be
less than Martinsbrunn.’’