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

282 Olga Triumphant
imprisoned in Belluno. Olga asked lawyer Giorgio Manera to represent
Boris when his case went to trial, and o√ered funds put aside for her own
funeral expenses for his defense.
The convegno to commemorate the centenary of Pound’s birth, initiated
by Vittore Branca and the Cini Foundation, was held at San Giorgio
Maggiore May 30 through June 1. It was Branca, Olga recalled, who first
introduced the Noh plays to Italy in 1950. Mary, Brigit, and Michael Ezra
came down from Brunnenburg for the conference, and Walter, then visiting
his father in Belluno, would arrive later. On the feast day of the
Natività of Maria in July, Olga called Mary from Sant’Ambrogio and was
told that Boris was ‘‘still in the same box.’’ Later, Antonio Pantano, en
route from Brunnenburg, stopped by with the news that according to a
recent law passed by the Italian legislature, Boris would soon be released.
Back in Venice, Olga was an honored guest on many occasions: the
inauguration of the Cini Museum and dinner with Sir Ashley and Lady
Clark; a benefit concert at the Associazione Amici della Fenice (of which
Giorgio Manera was president) for the awarding of a premio for young
pianists. Manera’s sudden premature death and memorial service at San
Trevaso on October 25 was a great sorrow.
She was buying candles for the Madonna della Salute on November 19
when Archbishop Arndt approached and kissed her hand in the midst of
the crowd. She asked his help with her current crusade, ‘‘détente with
Protestants, Catholics, and Jews—a Daniel is needed to explain that EP
did not dislike Jews.’’
For the rest of her life Olga defended Pound against charges of anti-
Semitism. During the war, she maintained, they had no contact with the
Nazi soldiers who occupied Rapallo, and since they received no news from
the war front in Germany Pound could not have known—and condoned—
the horrors of the Holocaust. Many of their friends were Jews, and she
recalled that she and Ezra had attended the synagogue in Venice with
Giorgio Levi when it was dangerous to do so.
Mary telephoned with plans for Christmas at Brunnenburg, but Walter
had passed on her remark about the tower not being a suitable place for
‘‘old, rickety people on account of the rickety steps,’’ and she suggested
that Olga might prefer to spend the holiday in Venice. And she did.