Mary de Rachewiltz (1925-2026)
Principessa, poetessa, professoressa, tradutticce
Archivist, Critic
Cantodina / Bäuerin
Infermiera / Krankenschwester
Savior of the castle
mother, grandmother, wife
Daughter
Mary de Rachewiltz
A force.
Mary opened up her Castel Fontana/ Brunnenberg to visitors, scholars, students. Her life’s devotion was encouraging all discourse, in all languages and forms.
I lived alongside Mary and her family at their castle home in Spring 2001, studying in the castle and working on its vineyard farmland. It sounds fancy to say we lived in the castle, but we were castle adjacent in The Croft. We did have classes in the castle turret, and tea every Sunday in the upper chambers. My friend Sara and I were roommates on the first floor of The Croft, looking out over Bolzano and the Adige valley. Ten years ago, in Spring 2016, I visited again with another friend Cristina while on a bike ride through Italy. Both visits occurring at extremely pivotal periods of (American) politics – pre 9/11 and pre-2016 elections/Trump/COVID etc… – and pivotal periods of my own life.
I have many cherished memories of Mary including her absolute patience as we slogged through Greek (and other alphabets and characters) that made up texts of The Cantos. Her patience practiced even more during Sunday teas when some were too timid to share, or when we had the bright idea of baking an offering of a disastrous (soupy) lemon tart not accommodating for altitude (or maybe it was metric, or issues in our translation of the cookbook instructions). In my more recent visit she lamented over the students not having an authentic Brunnenburg experience because of cell phones, and how she wanted an American expatriate community in Dorf Tirol.
Always in our reading, learning, and endeavors she’d encourage the Poundian Modernist imperative “Make it new.”
Some poem/painting/photograph/images of Mary forever burned into my hippocampus/neocortex/amygdala include after a day long tour of Pound’s Venice in early Spring 2001. It’s dark, the streetlights (canal lights) glow amber in the cool mist, Mary and Sara are walking ahead of the group, la nostra lanterna, arm in arm, as we crossed over the Ponte dei Mendicanti, across from Isola San Michele where her father is buried. And another image, the last time I saw Mary. After graciously welcoming two cycling women in for afternoon tea (see @ 14-20 mins into Tour di Lini video), Mary escorted us out so she could take her evening stroll through her castle vineyard farm grounds. We looked up and waved goodbye to Mary with all her grace and stature, a strong, peaceful force of a woman and us with our bicycles and the goats.
Mary, thank you for helping us live in poetry.
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
Mary de Rachewiltz Obituary in NYTimes
Mary de Rachewiltz Obituary in Destra
Mary de Rachewiltz In Memorium, Ezra Pound Society
Let The Wind Speak – An excellent book by Carol Loeb Shloss
