Mary De Rachewiltz (1925 – 2026)

Their Story

Mary de Rachewiltz was an Italian-American poet and translator who devoted her life to preserving and sharing her father's literary legacy. Born Maria Rudge in Brixen, Italy in 1925, she spent her early years raised by foster parents on a farm in the Tyrolean countryside, where she spoke the local German dialect. As she grew older, she developed a deep connection to literature and culture, particularly through her father Ezra Pound's tutelage, which shaped her into an accomplished writer and linguist in her own right. In 1946, Mary married Egyptologist Boris de Rachewiltz and together they restored Brunnenburg castle in the Italian Tyrol, which became both their home and a center for cultural exchange. Her 1971 memoir Discretions offered intimate insights into her childhood and relationship with her celebrated father, revealing him not as a distant historical figure but as a devoted parent. Throughout the 1980s and beyond, she undertook the monumental task of translating her father's epic poem The Cantos into Italian, a project for which she received the prestigious Città di Monselice award in 1986. De Rachewiltz served as curator of the Ezra Pound Archives at Yale University's Beinecke Library and taught courses on her father's work, becoming a bridge between Pound's complex literary legacy and new generations of scholars and students. Her contributions as a translator, poet, and scholar in her own right demonstrated that she was far more than simply the daughter of a great poet—she was a formidable intellectual whose work illuminated modernist literature and kept important historical and literary connections alive.

Sources

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_de_Rachewiltz