MARY DE RACHEWILTZ (9 JULY 1925 – 24 JULY 2026)

With much sadness we report that Mary de Rachewiltz died at home at Brunnenburg on 24 July 2026 at the age of 101. Her remarkable life spanned not only more than a century, but four continents, six generations of her own family, many close friends and countless admirers from every corner of the globe, multiple languages from which she translated and into which her work was translated, and a literary legacy unlike any other.

Born Maria Rudge in Brixen/Bressanone, Italy, on 9 July 1925, the daughter of American parents, poet Ezra Pound and violinist Olga Rudge, she was nonetheless raised as a farmer and shepherdess in the Italian Tyrol. Through her marriage to Prince Boris de Rachewiltz in 1946, she gained the title of Princess, but in truth, she conducted her entire life with intelligence and grace. With her husband, she acquired Brunnenburg, a castle in Dorf Tirol, Merano, which together they transformed from a ruin into a productive farm, vineyard, and cultural center of learning. There she also gave birth to her two children, Walter Siegfried and Patrizia Barbara Cinzia Flavia. She is survived by her four grandsons and her great-grandchildren.

As a poet, memoirist, translator, literary critic, family historian, archivist, and editor, Mary considered herself equally a devout Catholic and philosophic Confucian. She has left us a formidable body of work in three languages, much of it still to be discovered and explored. She has touched and transformed all who have known her, as her work and character will continue to inspire those who will follow.

She shall be missed.

Walter Baumann and John Gery

I WAS THERE

                                                   I was there?

                                                   In old age

                                                   it matters not

                                                   if you were in company

                                                   of love or alone,

                                                   it’s moss and sea

                                                   you smell in

                                                   endless landscape

                                                   the swish of a tree

                                                   moving in moonshine

                                                   you’ll carry within

                                                   for that last “busy day.”

                                                 When words that were pebbles

                                                 turn to bronze leaves fallen

                                                 from the cherry tree, she'll remember

                                                 the sound of the shingle

                                                 in ancient Greek and his footsteps

                                                 over the new gravel in front

                                                 of the portal's ancient sandstone

                                                columns–crunch crunch crunch

                                                the heavy rhythm she feared

                                                would crush the cherry stone

                                                before daylight could reveal

                                                the split and its green eye

                                                that had seen the way to heaven.

                                                          – Mary de Rachewiltz, from For the Wrong 

Reason 

                  (Edgewise Press, 2002), 31, 59.