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

368 Pages·2001·1.25 MB·English

by  Anne Conover

Olga Rudge and Ezra Pound

Anne Conover
Olga Rudge and Ezra Pound
‘‘What Thou Lovest Well . . .’’
Yale University Press New Haven & London
Excerpt from Shakespeare and Company, ∫ 1959 by Sylvia Beach and renewed 1987 by
Frederic Beach Dennis, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc.
Excerpts from A Serious Character: The Life of Ezra Pound by Humphrey Carpenter, ∫ 1988
by Humphrey Carpenter, reprinted by permission of Houghton Mi∆in Company.
Excerpts from Discretions by Mary de Rachewiltz, ∫ 1971, reprinted by permission of Little,
Brown and Company.
Copyright ∫ 2001 by Anne Conover Carson. All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form
(beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and
except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.
Designed by Rebecca Gibb. Set in Fournier type by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.,
Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania. Printed in the United States of America by R. R. Donnelley &
Sons, Harrisonburg, Virginia.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Carson, Anne Conover, 1937–
Olga Rudge and Ezra Pound : ‘‘What thou lovest well— ’’ / Anne Conover.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
isbn 0-300-08703-9 (alk. paper)
1. Rudge, Olga, 1895–1996. 2. Violinists—Biography. 3. Pound, Ezra, 1885–1972. I. Title.
ml418.r83 c37 2001
811%.52–dc21
2001001527
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the
Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library
Resources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
What thou lovest well remains,
the rest is dross
What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee
What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage
—Canto LXXXI

Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
1 Olga and Ezra in Paris 1
‘‘Where everything in my life happened’’
2 Julia and Her Daughter 10
‘‘One had the best, or one went without’’
3 Halcyon Days No More: Between the
Turn of the Century and the Great War 24
4 Lost Loves 41
‘‘We make our own tragedies’’
5 A Marriage That Didn’t Happen 50
‘‘The past is forgotten, the future is ominous’’
6 The Hidden Nest 70
‘‘The house that changed my life’’
viii Contents
7 The Breaking Point 86
‘‘She wants her god incarnate’’
8 Rare and Unforgettable Little Concerts 103
‘‘The real artist in the family’’
9 The Red Priest of Venice 126
‘‘Scraper of catgut and reviver of Vivaldi’’
10 Overture to War 135
‘‘Waitin’ for one or other cat to jump’’
11 The Subject Is—Wartime 143
‘‘Two di√erent consorts of one god’’
12 The Road to Hell 157
‘‘Four days . . . the happiest of my life’’
13 What Thou Lovest Well Remains 170
‘‘J’aime, donc je suis’’
14 A Visitor to St. Elizabeth’s 192
‘‘Sitting on His lawn is paradise’’
15 A Piece of Ginger 213
‘‘Between presumption and despair’’
16 The Last Ten Years 227
‘‘The sea in which he floated’’
17 Olga Triumphant 258
A Prize in the Campidoglio
Coda: It All Coheres 288
‘‘The dross falls away’’
Notes 291
Secondary Sources 329
Index 335
That her acts
Olga’s acts
of beauty
be remembered.
Preface
Her name was Courage
& is written Olga.
These lines are for the
canto
ultimate
Whatever I may write
in the interim.
—Ezra Pound
The Cantos (fragment 1966)
I
n his seventy-first year, Ezra Pound wrote this tribute to his companion
of half a century: ‘‘There is more courage in Olga’s little finger than in the
whole of my carcass . . . she kept me alive for ten years, for which no-one
will thank her. The true story will not be told until her version is known.’’
Olga Rudge’s commitment to the poet may be viewed as the sacrifice of
her considerable talents on the altar of his genius, since Pound incorpo-
rated the persona of the ‘‘trim-coi√ed goddess’’ into his early Cantos, and
Olga was the muse who inspired him to finish his epic work.
Olga was a distinguished concert violinist before she met Pound, and
her legacy to the world of music was considerable, for she researched and
brought to light many works of the long-neglected early-eighteenth-
century composer Antonio Vivaldi. Her life is worth recording, not only
in the supporting role of companion to a literary titan, but as a brilliant
woman on her own, a woman ahead of her time who measured values by
her own yardstick and defied conventions to concentrate on the two ele-
ments most important to her—music, and the man she loved.
She accepted the challenge of maintaining a lasting relationship with
di≈cult, highly creative Ezra Pound—an American original. William
ix