Brunnenburg Castle. Photo by Walter Baumann
Mary de Rachewiltz (1925-
YOUR FATHER’S DAUGHTER
For Mary
everything carried a poet’s fingerprints
books chairs Gaudier Brzeska on the dining table
all practically whole as a poem
all caught in the echoing dream
making your castle a universitas
oh it was good to be there
breathe-in the more than mountain air
and wander along those stone laneways
carrying the enormity of the gorge
the orchard the olive grove
all flickering through the leaves of language
with your mother’s violin bowed silently still
in notes of rain and cloud
below in the cobbled courtyard
I was not surprised to see
your father doffing his straw hat to you
and heading smiling down the pathway
towards his vineyard planted
high against the falling Alps
Desmond Egan, 2015. (Reproduced by permission of the author.)
Biographical note
Born July 9, 1925, in Bressanone, Italy, to Ezra Pound and the violinist Olga Rudge, Mary de Rachewiltz was raised in the South Tyrol by a peasant couple. Her first language was the Tyrolese dialect of German spoken by her adoptive parents, but she honed her linguistic skills with the Italian and French taught to her in school and by the English spoken by her natural parents. Under her father’s guidance, she translated one chapter from Frobenius’s Erlebte Erdteile and excerpts from ‘Noh’ or Accomplishment by Ernest Fenellosa and Ezra Pound; these were published in 1942.
She married Boris de Rachewiltz, an Egyptologist of noble lineage age, in 1946. Two children, Sigifredo Walter and Patrizia, followed in 1947 and 1950. Her time since then has been occupied with raising their family, restoring their residence, Brunnenburg, a medieval castle near Merano, and studying and translating the works of her father.
Mrs. de Rachewiltz is Curator, Beinecke Rare Book Room and Manuscript Library, Yale University. She was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute from 1973 to 1975 and has since given lectures at many colleges and universities in the United States. Although she was born and has lived in Italy all her life, she holds American citizenship. From January to March 1987, Mary de Rachewiltz served as the first Canaday Fellow at the University of Toledo.
Mary de Rachewiltz lives with her family at Brunnenburg.
Readings:
Grace Davis. 'Our Heart's Gordian Knot'
Henry Regnery. A Daughter of the Poet
Selected Bibliography of Works by Mary de Rachewiltz
Translations of Works by Ezra Pound
La Prima Decade dei Cantos. Soc. Ed. Siciliana, Mazara 1952
Catai. Milan: AII’lnsegna Del Pesce d’Oro, 1959.
Alcuni Nobili Drammi dal Giappone: da Manoscritti di Ernest Fenellosa, scelti e finiti da Ezra Pound. Milan: AII’lnsegna del Pesce d’Oro, 1961.
II Teatro Giapponese No di Ernest Fenellosa e Ezra Pound. Florence: Vallecchi, 1966.
Opere Scelte. Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1970.
Cantos Scelti. Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1973.
I Cantos. Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1985.
Confucio. Analecta, Ezra Pound. Ed. M. de Rachewiltz. Milano: Libri Scheiwiller, 1995.
Poetry and Prose
Il Diapason. Milano: Lerici—Scheiwiller, 1965.
Di Reflesso. Milano: All’lnsegna del Pesce d’Oro, 1966.
Ezra Pound, Father and Teacher: Discretions. Boston: Little, Brown, 1971. (In Italian as: Discrezione: Storia di un Educazione. Milan: Rusconi, 1973).
Processo in Verso. Milan: AII’lnsegna del Pesce d’Oro, 1973.
Gocce che contano. A cura di Luca Cesari. Rimini: Raffaelli Editore, 1994.
Polittico. Poesie 1985-1995. Milano: All' Insegna del Pesce d'Oro, 1996.
Whose World? Selected Poems. Laurinburg, N.C.: St. Andrews Press, 1998.
For the Wrong Reason. New York: Edgewise Press, 2002.
Canzoniere. Rimini: Raffaelli Editore, 2002.
Centoventi e ottanta anni. Milano: Giorgio Lucini, 2005.
Fifteen Poems: St. Andrews Review and Whose World. Selected and Edited by Ted Wojtasik. CreateSpace, 2015.
Editor
Nishiwaki, J. Gennaio a Kyoto. Milano: All Insegna del Pesce d'Oro, 1959.
Il Natale Antologia di Poeti del '900. Milano: All Insegna del Pesce d'Oro, 1962.
H.D. Milano: Scheiwiller, 1986.
de Rachewiltz, Mary, and Maria Luisa Ardizzone, eds. “Ezra Pound.” Galleria 35.3-6 (1986): 109-349.
Per conoscere Pound. Introd. Maria Luisa Ardizzone. Milano: Mondadori, 1989.
Ezra Pound to his Parents 1895-1929. Eds. Mary de Rachewiltz, A. David Moody and Joanna Moody. Oxford: OUP, 2011.
Papers
Mary de Rachewiltz collection, U. of Toledo.
FAMILY PHOTOS
Mary and Boris de Rachewiltz with grandsons Michael and Nick. Anne Conover and her daughter on the left. (Courtesy of Anne Conover, 1992, 2016).
Olga Rudge and Anne Conover, 1992 (Courtesy of Anne Conover, 1992, 2016)
The University of New Orleans is pleased to offer the rare opportunity to take Poetry-Writing Workshops and seminars on The Poetry of Ezra Pound, one of the 20th Century's most influential, innovative and controversial poets. The program is held at Brunnenburg, the northern Italian castle that served as Pound's residence during his later years and is currently the home of his daughter, Mary de Rachewiltz, and her son, Dr. Siegfried de Rachewiltz.
A C A D E M Y O F G E R M A N - I T A L I A N S T U D I E S
M E R A N O
E Z R A P O U N D R E S E A R C H C E N T E R
The Ezra Pound Research Center focuses on the edition of and research into Ezra Pound's literary work, fosters the critical analysis of the poet's œuvre and promotes its understanding.
The Research Center carries out editorial projects which make available the poet's literary legacy and complement the corpus of already existing text-critical editions and translations; initiates and takes part in research projects directly linked to the poet's literary work; organizes readings, colloquia, work-shops and conferences and thus serves as an international collaboration forum for Pound scholars and as a training center for young researchers; makes the results of its activity available to the public through digital media as well as through its own publication series, which publishes the poet's texts, including translations thereof, as well as selected studies on his literary work; assigns and acts as an intermediary for scholarships or study grants for research stays dedicated to studying Pound's writings; takes part in the acquisition, cataloguing and archiving of the poet's literary legacy.
Research Center Director:
Ralf Lüfter (Academy of Merano)
Advisory Board:
Massimo Bacigalupo (University of Genoa)
Siegfried de Rachewiltz (University of Innsbruck; International Study Center Brunnenburg)
David A Moody (University of York)
Richard Sieburth (New York University)