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.