Olga Rudge - War Years

War Years

The war years were difficult for the couple. After the United States entered the war, Pound and his wife Dorothy became enemy aliens in Italy, an ironic situation in light of Pound's support of Mussolini. Their home in Rapallo was sequestered in 1943 and the couple had little choice but to move in with Rudge. Thus the ménage à trois for so long a matter of public speculation became a reality. Rudge sent her daughter back to Gais to live with her original peasant guardians, and was forced by necessity to support the Pounds and her daughter by giving language lessons. It was a very difficult time for the trio: while both women adored Pound, they hated each other. Pound's wife later wrote that "hatred and tension permeated the house".

Following the United States' invasion of Italy in 1945, Pound was arrested as a traitor and was held in an open cage in Pisa for 25 days. His support for the Fascists and broadcasts for Rome radio led to an indictment for treason. Rudge too had been arrested. She was released after interrogation, but she was not permitted to correspond with her lover until several months later. She and Pound's wife are known to have once visited him during his detention.

Although she was deprived of her lover, the end of the war saw an improvement in Rudge's fortunes as her sequestered Venetian home was returned to her. In order to avoid a trial for treason, Pound was declared criminally insane and incarcerated in an asylum, St. Elizabeths Hospital, where he remained for twelve years. Rudge began the onerous task of trying to secure his freedom. She used friends and their many contacts in the literary world to mount a petition attesting to his character and that amongst other things he had never in fact been a member of the Italian Fascist Party (Partito Nazionale Fascista). One of her ideas was that Pound be released to live in an American monastery, but all her entreaties fell on deaf ears. In St. Elizabeth's Hospital, Pound was treated well and was given an individual cell where he was able to continue his work. His letters discourage Rudge from visiting him but she did travel to America to visit him twice, once in 1952 and again in 1955. Pound at this time was receiving visits not only from his wife but other mistresses too. Following the 1955 visit, their letters to each other become cooler and more impersonal, and they rarely communicated at all from 1955 to 1959.

This coolness between 1955 and 1959 is the only hint that perhaps she did mind his other lady friends, but little is known of Rudge's views of Pound's "other women". She had no choice but to tolerate the existence of his wife. Marcella Spann, an English teacher, began to write to him in St. Elizabeth's, which led to visits. Following his release, Spann accompanied Ezra and Dorothy back to Italy, acting as his secretary. Pound is alleged to have proposed to her (although he was already married), but Dorothy sent Spann packing. Nevertheless, Spann and Pound jointly edited the 1964 volume Confucius to Cummings: An Anthology of Poetry.