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

263 Olga Triumphant
On December 5 she went to the municipio to have the death certificate
stamped: time of death, ore 20:00 (8 p.m.), from data given by the Ospedale
Civile. The clerk wrote celibe on the form, apologetic, but there was
nothing about wife or children on the passport. (The clerk had mistaken
Dorothy Shakespear Pound, the next of kin, for a sister.) ‘‘He would have,
must have, laughed in heaven!’’
Mrs. Hugh Bullock acknowledged Olga as the poet’s true heir when she
sent condolences from the Academy of American Poets, expressing ‘‘deep
sympathy . . . and appreciation for her devoted friend, Mr. Ezra Pound,
elected as a Fellow of the Academy in 1963 by a majority vote. . . . The
quality of his work and the counseling that he generously gave to his peers
make him a giant in the history of literature.’’ That was Olga’s reward for
the years she loyally stood by Ezra.
Biographers were still her bêtes noires. The latest, David Heymann,
claimed (falsely) to have been to the house in Venice and to have met the
couple. He was close to the mark when he described Olga in her seventies
as ‘‘petite and whitehaired, with finely-honed features; she struck me as
resilient and matter-of-fact. Olga carried the brunt of the conversation
[while] Pound watched us with piercing eyes.’’ Though his comments had
the ring of truth, Heymann had never visited the Hidden Nest and, according
to Olga, borrowed the material from Spots and Dots and an
interview on Italian television with Pier Paolo Pasolini.
She continued to throw the I Ching coins for hexagrams for herself and
for Ezra every morning: ‘‘There is no reason why I should bother with
these things . . . just to remember and have the illusion . . . that He is still
here, and if He should be here at the same time every morning, to know
that I am here, too, and waiting.’’
The first Christmas since his death was a time of remembrance. She
could find no wreaths except those made with artificial flowers, so she
concocted one out of newspaper rolled and covered with green plastic
branches held in place with gold string, and tufts of gold flowers. When
she telephoned Liselotte to tell of her despair over the wreath, her friend
o√ered pine branches, a little gilded box of sprigs, and nine red candles.
Accompanied by friends who had been at the gravesite in November, she
took the launch to San Michele, tidied the grass, changed the brown