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

276 Olga Triumphant
seems happy, Patrizia idem.’’ Olga wanted Patrizia to name one of the
children Ezra, but ‘‘she went out of her way in naming two sons to slight
her grandfather.’’
In later years, her reputation for acid wit and abrasive comments was
well earned—for those who did not know her well, she was a tiger, but to
close friends a paper one. She was often gracious to total strangers with a
genuine interest in Pound. The U.S. cultural attaché in Trieste, Sterling
Steele, sought her out and asked her to dinner with a young Fulbright
scholar. She invited both back to the calle Querini for a cup of her favorite
Earl Grey tea. When Steele returned in March as U.S. consul, bringing his
wife, June, Olga wondered if the ‘‘VIP treatment at last from the U.S.
authorities was personal kindness, or a change in tactics toward EP?’’
The patriarch of the Ciprianis, whose great-grandson had been named
Ezra to honor their enduring friendship, died in April. As Olga followed
the co≈n to San Michele, she was painfully reminded again of her journey
there with her Caro.
Celebrations of Pound’s ninety-fifth birthday began in April 1980 on
the seventy-fifth anniversary of his graduation from Hamilton College.
Others followed in unlikely places: Saint Andrew’s Presbyterian College
in North Carolina, with guest speakers Mary Barnard, Sister Bernetta
Quinn and her daughter Mary. Paideuma, a new journal of Pound scholarship
edited by Professor Carroll F. Terrell, began publication at the University
of Maine.
The highlight of 1980 was a trip to New York on the new supersonic
Concorde. At this advanced age, nothing seemed to surprise her. In New
York, she was given celebrity treatment, avoiding the long queue at the
Museum of Modern Art’s blockbuster show of Picasso’s paintings. The
next day, a ‘‘beautiful drive to New Haven’’ to Mary’s digs at Saybrook
College; Mary was then curator of the Ezra Pound Collection in the
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Olga described to Isamu
Noguchi the ‘‘ten glorious days’’ at Yale, looking out on his Rock Garden,
‘‘watching the shadows on your ‘rocks’—what a place to work!’’
Back in Venice, Philip Rylands had been named administrator of Peggy
Guggenheim’s art collection, and Olga was invited to the opening. Like
her mother, she always sought interesting company: ‘‘C’est toujours le beau