Olga Rudge: Encyclopedia II - Olga Rudge - Venice and Pound

Olga Rudge - Venice and Pound

In 1958, Pound was declared incurably insane and permanently incapable of standing trial. He was stripped of his rights of citizenship and released from St. Elizabeth's on condition that he return to Europe. With his wife, who was also his legal custodian, he quickly returned to Italy. The couple stayed with Rudge's and Pound's daughter Mary, now married to Boris de Rachewiltz and living at Brunnenberg castle in Tirolo. Pound's health was now broken and he spent a year in a sanitorium in Martinsbrunn. It is thought that during his time in St. Elizabeth's Pound was treated with mind altering drugs ^[10] that altered his personality for ever. In early 1962, "depressed and ill, Pound chose to put himself in Olga's hands".^[11] For the remainder of his life he lived with her, part of each year in Venice, part in Rapallo.

The last eleven years of Pound's life accentuated his eccentricities, including a self-imposed vow of near-silence, with which Rudge coped while completely arranging his life and acting as his secretary. Many scholars and students sought Pound out and would arrive at the small house. Rudge devised a test to seek out the genuine from the merely curious. She would ask the prospective visitor to recite a line from one of Pound's works: those that could gained admittance; those that could not were shown out. For Rudge, life with Pound was not easy: he remained a male chauvinist,^[12] but her belief in him was absolute. Arrogant, egotistical, and eccentric, always financially dependent on his carers, Pound called for all artists to be supported by Government, seemingly unaware that other of his contemporaries such as William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost, and T. S. Eliot all made an adequate living from their works.^[13] If Rudge ever pointed out to him his shortcomings, it is not recorded.

For the first time, Rudge now had Pound completely to herself, as his wife Mary withdrew from the triangle. Pound saw Mary only twice during his last four years. The couple seldom left their Venice or Rapello homes, only journeying to London in 1965 for the funeral of T. S. Eliot and to the United States in 1969. Pound died in November 1972 holding Rudge's hand. Rudge organized his funeral in the cemetery on the Isola di San Michele, Venice. After his death she acquired a large archive of his papers and artefacts. Pound's wife Mary died the following year after Pound, leaving Rudge the final living member of the ménage à trois to carry Pound's torch.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Venice and Pound", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki