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

262 Olga Triumphant
after Ezra so carefully.’’ She signed with her full married name, Mrs.
Dorothy Pound, a subtle reminder no doubt understood by Olga.
She vented her anger about the way she was treated by the press to her
former neighbor Mary Jane Phillips-Matz (Olga had been mentioned as
Pound’s ‘‘housekeeper’’ in the obituaries). Phillips-Matz, later the biographer
of Verdi, was one of the first to acknowledge Olga’s importance to the
life and work of Pound: ‘‘How deeply felt is your contribution to what we
all know—or ‘see’ as [Jorge] Casteneda means ‘to see’ against ‘to look’—
how much energy was yours, how many ideas, how much strength. Only
the perspective of history will give the world a sign . . . but when I think
of your gifts, your culture, your intuitions . . . few people have any
comprehension.’’
The mourning that began on All Saint’s Day continued throughout the
years. Olga’s life resumed its customary rhythm, but the entries in the
notebook reflect the emptiness, ‘‘the gradual dropping o√ the bandwagon,
which after a brief period, disappeared and was replaced by the garbage
van . . . the enfin seule motif in its original meaning came back to mind.’’
A daughter-in-law of the artist Italico Brass came to the calle Querini to
bring photographs of her husband as a child with his father, Italico, long
dead; a self-portrait by Brass with a background of a procession on the
bridge, another of the boy Ezra with Aunt Frank and a friend (his nurse?)
on their first visit to Venice. Olga preserved the photos for their granddaughter,
Patrizia.
She returned to Rapallo on November 21 and was surprised to see
Father Chute’s chapel at the Duomo still lighted with candles from the
Mass that had been held in Ezra’s memory the week before. Anita had kept
a little light burning for him at Sant’Ambrogio. Olga started to work
immediately sorting books and containers of memorabilia: ‘‘Did not see
anyone all day after lunch, work[ed] late, dead tired—His silence!’’
Back in Venice on December 4, she again used work to dull the pain.
She was considering how to divide the first floor, to shut o√ Ezra’s bed and
armchair corner. While her practical nature took charge, quotations from
The Cantos expressed her deepest feelings: ‘‘not love, but that love flows
from it ex animo, and cannot ergo delight in itself, but only in the love
flowing from it.’’ (Canto 91).