Olga Rudge

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Olga Rudge (April 13, 1895 – March 15, 1996) was an American-born concert violinist, who had a long-term relationship with the poet Ezra Pound, by whom she had a daughter, Mary. A gifted[1] concert violinist of international repute, her considerable talents[2] and reputation were eventually eclipsed by those of her lover, in whose shade she appeared content to remain. In return, Pound was more loyal, not to say faithful, to her than to any of his many other lovers. He dedicated the final stanza of his epic The Cantos to her, in homage and gratitude for her courageous and loyal support during his 13-year incarceration in a mental hospital after having been indicted for treason against the United States for supporting Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime. She also defended Pound against the accusation that he was antisemitic. During the last 11 years of Pound's life, Rudge was his devoted companion, secretary, and nurse, as he sank into eccentricity and prolonged periods of silence. Rudge survived Pound by twenty-four years, remaining in the small house in Venice she had shared with him. In her declining years, an ongoing difficult relationship with Mary, her only child, left her vulnerable to the attention of parties with ulterior motives, resulting in the sad situation described in John Berendt's The City of Falling Angels, in which Rudge could not account for how Pound's papers and letters in her possession had found their way to Yale University. Failing health eventually forced her to leave her beloved Venice and spend her final days with her daughter. Rudge died at age 100 and is buried next to Pound in Venice's Isola di San Michele cemetery.