Proto-Protestantism: Mary de Rachewiltz, Ezra Pound, and the Battle for Western Civilization

31 July 2026

Mary de Rachewiltz, Ezra Pound, and the Battle for Western Civilization

Mary de Rachewiltz (1925-2026) has died at the age of 101. She wasn't exactly a household name but as the daughter of Ezra Pound and Olga Rudge, she was somewhat famous in European and American artistic circles. But her reputation was tarnished at least in part by her father Ezra and his associations with Fascism and Mussolini and the fact that she devoted most of her adult life to curating his work and memory.

Mary's life has long been somewhat fascinating to me. Born of an affair, Maria Rudge was secreted away as an infant to a village in the South Tyrol and raised by peasants. Her parents would periodically visit and as she grew they would take her on excursions to Venice and elsewhere, where she learned (mostly from her father) the wonders of art and literature. During World War II as a young adult she spent time with her parents and back in the mountains, both in the village of her childhood and in Cortina working at a hospital. Raised a peasant/shepherd girl, she was nevertheless educated by and familiar with the artistic elite and later through marriage would become a princess. It was quite a transition and it also placed her in a unique position. She could traverse divers settings and worlds and yet didn't fully belong to any of them.

Pound was arrested by Italian Partisans in May 1945 and after being turned over to the Americans, he was taken to Pisa where he was put in an outdoor cage for several weeks - and then in a regular prison where he would begin writing his famous Pisan Cantos, a section of his larger and massive work. Charged with treason for his radio broadcasts (which were perceived as anti-American) he was extradited to the United States. After being found unfit to stand trial he was sent to a mental hospital where he would remain committed until 1958.

Mary as much as anyone else laboured for his release, appealing to everyone she could, traveling to the United States in order to argue for clemency. Through her efforts as well as a campaign led by other artists and cultural figures, Pound was finally shown mercy and after twelve years the charges were dropped.

After marrying the Egyptologist and (supposed) Prince, Boris de Rachewiltz in 1946, Mary would move to Castle Brunnenburg, also located in today's South Tyrol region of Italy - not too far from the village of her childhood. She and her husband would spend decades renovating the structure and eventually she would transform it into a study centre devoted to Pound and his work.

Upon release from St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington DC, Pound relocated to Italy and came to Brunnenburg with Dorothy (his wife) to live with Mary, son-in-law Boris, and their children. Despite writing his final Cantos at Brunnenburg, it didn't work out. He didn't like the arrangements and after a few years (and some periods of travel) he departed to take up again with Mary's mother, his long-time mistress Olga Rudge. In actuality Dorothy more or less dropped him off there. She returned to England where she lived until her death in 1973. Ezra and Olga would live at first in Rapallo (their former residence in Liguria) and then ultimately in Venice. Pound was an unrepentant fascist and yet the overall experience of the war and his incarceration had broken him and he struggled to make sense of his life or his work.

And yet Pound has his defenders, and they are by no means all Right-wing types. Some will praise the man's artistic insight while decrying his ideology. Others believe he had made a mistake (which needs to be forgiven in light of all his other work) and yet others seem to suggest he was completely misunderstood. The fact that in 1958 when he stepped off the boat in Italy (after his release) and gave the fascist salute is rather telling to say the least. His friendships both in America and in Italy with figures connected to the Far Right demonstrate that despite his 'brokenness', he had not in fact reversed his beliefs.

His Cantos continue to fascinate. Some consider the epic work a masterpiece, while others regard the poems as pretentious trash. Pound was inspired by the troubadours and Dante and the kind of historical and contemporary commentary offered in medieval canzos and the Divine Comedy. Pound juxtaposed historical figures and events with the history of art and even American politics. It's a massive, cryptic series of poems that provides the story of poetry and civilization itself. It's complexity almost requires the reader to purchase a companion guide in order to decipher its many layers and historical references.

For Pound who was certainly not a religious man in any formal sense, it was as if Western Civilization was the Kingdom of God - an idea shared by many (I would argue) misguided Christian thinkers. But for Pound it was not Scripture or the Holy Tradition that were the guiding ideologies or inspiration. Rather it was art. Art was akin to revelation, like religious medium for the communication of transcendence. He's far removed from Christianity and yet close enough that he still garners some awe and respect from the proponents of Christendom - particularly (I have found) within some Traditionalist Roman Catholic circles, even though Pound was no Catholic. Mary however was and (the best I can tell) fairly serious in that regard, despite her also avowed adherence to Confucian ideals. It would take a poet to allow those two systems to operate in concert in one's mind and heart. And it should be noted that Mary was also a respected poet in her own right.

There is no doubt that Pound was Anti-Semitic. He actually exhibited some insight with regard to the corrosive nature of usury and its relationship to Capitalism - he was obsessed with economics. For Pound this was inseparable from the long history of Jewish-related finance. While I reject his Anti-Semitism and fascism, I nevertheless find some of his insights regarding usury to be insightful and instructive.

And to add to the confusion (one might say) the art scene of Pound's day was in flux and in many respects characterized by decadent morality and the ideological chaos that was the harvest of the revolutionary and industrial ages. In some respects this is why (in my case) I find Pound to be so fascinating. I keep coming back to his story which is actually (for me) as interesting or more interesting than his actual poetry. The time in which he lived and came of age (1885-1972) remains compelling, a time of new mega-cities, electrification, and global conflagration. It was a wholly new world and yet the death of the old order as well as the failures and shortcomings of Romanticism drove many artists and thinkers to look in new directions, and in some cases both backwards and forwards at the same time. Interestingly his years almost overlap with those of JRR Tolkien (1892-1973). Both men were troubled by their times and yet poured their energies in very different directions and endeavours. And yet both would also viewed themselves as artists concerned with the tale and lessons of civilisation.

In addition to his own work, Pound laboured to aid other up and coming authors and artists - a point that leads many to overlook his faults. His shadow looms large over the rise of modernist art and many still express appreciation for that and his magnanimity. It was his life work so to speak, and famously he worked closely with TS Elliot whose poem 'The Wasteland' perhaps more than any other characterized the very bedlam and cultural tumult to which I refer. Pound was its editor and Elliot would have been the first to admit that the poem would not have been written or published if not for Ezra Pound.

It seems safe to say that Mary was haunted by this era and the legacy of her parents - and her father in particular. Her disappointment at his 1962 departure from Brunnenburg must have been significant but she remained devoted to him and visited him during his final decade. Her life seems to be filled with disappointments.

But Mary would know other sorrows as well. She often clashed with her mother Olga - who it would seem was often less than kind to her, even treacherous at times. Her half-brother Omar Pound was ostensibly the son of Ezra and his wife Dorothy Shakespear, but in fact Omar was not actually Pound's son and thus no blood relation at all. Nevertheless he had the legal claim that Mary always struggled with as her 1925 birth certificate had been falsified by her mother Olga. Omar had a legal claim to the Pound legacy and he and Mary were at cross purposes.

In addition to a lifetime of family frustrations and struggles over the legacy of her father, there are some dark and still unanswered questions and connections to Mary's life.

Her husband Boris de Rachewiltz (1926-1977) remains a rather cryptic, even dark figure. He had Vatican connections and there are controversies surrounding his 'princely' title, a familial mafia past, as well as some scandals surrounding his archaeological work. He was deeply involved in esotericism and it seems that many figures within German and Italian fascism were connected to him - including Julius Evola, a figure of some notoriety, the model and object of mockery in the famous Ur-Fascism essay penned by Umberto Eco (1932-2016).

Additionally, Boris de Rachewiltz was party to several organisations that harboured not only ex-Nazis and Italian fascists but figures connected to Western intelligence agencies - the CIA and Italy's SISDE. It would seem de Rachewiltz worked with these elements and he stood trial and served some time in prison in connection to a paramilitary and weapons smuggling plot aimed at Gaddafi's Libya (which had been under Italian rule from 1911-1943). And there were other links with Italy's Years of Lead (1960's-80's) when the country was torn apart by political violence, bombings, and assassinations. This period remains enigmatic as most of the investigations failed to bring convictions or elucidate the true nature of these events. And there were clearly provocateurs at work as well as many infiltrations and cases of double-agents. Left-wing groups were being steered by the Right and every investigation seems to lead back to Italian intelligence agencies and figures connected to the CIA. This is all connected to the Gladio story, for those who are familiar with it - a story so dark and complex that it's almost unbelievable. And while it's been subject to some exaggeration and over-speculation it is nevertheless (in the broad strokes) true.

The author Carol Shloss wonders how much did Mary actually know? It's hard to say. She and her husband were not always very close and often were apart for extended periods of time. There are also suggestions that Ezra Pound was aware of his son-in-laws activities and encouraged him to that end, but many have not actually understood the nature of the Italian Right's campaign of political violence. In other words to make conclusive statements remains difficult.

And this is another strange element to the story. The lives of Ezra, Mary, and Boris are repeatedly connected to figures such as Norman Holmes Pearson and James J. Angleton, both towering figures within the OSS and CIA. And at one point there were even interactions with a mysterious member of the Russian nobility, a Trubetskoy princess who also seemed to be engaged in espionage. Her exact identity remains a controversy, confused by the fact that another woman from Virginia married into the family and moved in elite social circles.

From Pound's time in Italy, to his confinement at St. Elizabeth's, to his eventual release, it always seems these players, these intelligence operatives (figures tied to the Deep State) are operating (in some capacity) behind the scenes.

Boris was exonerated of all charges in 1994 but if you have spent any time looking into this period in Italian politics - such exonerations are effectively meaningless. It was clear he was up to his neck in the business but the ability to prove it in a legal capacity wasn't there. As always these investigations are blocked, evidence disappears, witnesses disappear and mysteriously die, and in other cases government officials just outright lie.

Brunnenburg Castle is in South Tyrol (or Alto Adige as the Italians would have it), a region that to this day contains a large German population which has always looked toward Austria and for periods of time were linked to it. The region was peeled off from the Habsburg Empire when it was dismantled at the end of World War I and attached to Italy. It would have been prime territory for Volkish annexation by Hitler in the 1930's but he left the region alone not wanting to antagonize his ally Mussolini.

When the Germans re-installed Mussolini at Salo in 1943, the region was more or less under direct German control and some of the last fighting of the war took place there as Italians fought Germans who wanted their independence - another side conflict in the grand and often misunderstood mosaic of World War II.

After the war, the region became a haven for Nazi war criminals and indeed some of these figures were friends and associates of Boris de Rachewiltz. Mary's own views of this period are somewhat ambiguous though there is at least one smiling photo of her in a Cortina tavern with uniformed German soldiers during the war.

And yet she always denied the charges against her father and her husband - sometimes in the face of overwhelming evidence.

For my part, I just find the whole story compelling and the fact that until July 2026, there was this old woman living in a castle in Northern Italy, on the Merano side route between Trent and the Brenner Pass, a woman who had all these connections to the world of art and history. It's like something out of a novel. I never visited Brunnenburg but I certainly traversed the area, driving through Trent and Bolzano and I spent a lot of time in the mountains of Northern Italy. It is not at all difficult for me to picture the setting.
I realize of course she wasn't all alone up on the mountain side, but the fact that this woman was still living in 2026 who had intimately known this other world and these people that were giants (in some circles) is compelling to say the least. Her life took many strange turns and despite all the writing that has been done about her parents (which invariably includes her), there's still a lot of unanswered and intriguing questions. She lived a long, eventful, and culturally rich life. And yet even now, between her mixed devotion to Roman Catholicism and Confucianism, as well as her cryptic take on historical events, politics, and her familial connections to these things - there are still more questions than answers.

Why am I interested in this and why write about it here? I won't pretend that the death of Mary Rudge/Pound/de Rachewiltz marks some kind of watershed. For me it's a milestone. As I've read about these people and events for years, the fact that she was still alive was fascinating - and yet now they're all dead.

Her death is of note because of her connections to Pound and the larger questions surrounding Cold War Italian Politics and intelligence agencies. Pound's name is still popular in neo-fascist circles as I already mentioned and have written about on other occasions. These groups are connected to figures like Lega's Matteo Salvini and there are others with connections to the now defunct MSI and its successor - Meloni's FdI.

In addition to artistic history and some dark chapters connected to World War II and its aftermath, there is the question of Western Civilization. For Pound, this civilization is comprised of facets or interconnected layers - Homer, Virgil, Dante, the troubadours, and even tangentially Confucius. He sees the world of ideas interacting and shaping culture, and art as the means of communicating the overarching transcendent concepts that give it meaning. It is didactic as well as aesthetic and pedagogical. In other words, for Pound it was his religion.

Evangelicals such as Os Guinness and Francis Schaeffer would say that Pound did not properly appreciate the Christian and even Biblical foundations of Western Civilization - the framework they would refer to as Christendom. They beg the question vis-à-vis the Scriptures concerning the validity of these concepts but even if one is to grant them something, their arguments stand on shaky syncretistic ground.

When I hear Francis Schaeffer offer cultural commentary, I'm left wondering how much of culture and the arts he actually understood. Likewise when Guinness speaks of the 'Hebrew Republic' and compares it to the American Revolution and Constitution even while contrasting it with the French Revolution, I am left in awe of his Biblical, exegetical, and historical ignorance - and the fact that his popularity testifies to the general ignorance of his audience and fan-base.

The same can be said of Francis Schaeffer's suggestion that Locke's political philosophy (which is vital and essential to the American Founding) was simply a secularized version of the Calvinist Samuel Rutherford's Lex Rex. It's ridiculous and not a few conservative Christians have pointed this out.

I find myself wondering if the unregenerate Ezra Pound didn't have a better grasp on the nature of Western Civilization than these men who have (seemingly) devoted their lives to twisting history and Scripture in the name of the Kingdom.

The Internet has proved rather fertile for the dissemination of revisionist historical theories. Such things are not bad in every case but they are most of the time. And so while the debates continue over 1776 vs. 1789, we also find that Nativist and Tribalist ideologies have once again entered the public square - in contest with the Enlightenment Liberalism. Pound's name comes up in connection to these concepts - certainly in Italy to say the least.

We have self-described Traditionalist Catholics such as Taylor Marshall trying to suggest there was a strong Thomistic influence at work among the American Founders - even while Traditionalists of a previous generation marked 'Americanism' as a cancer, a heresy that had the potential to lead Catholics astray and at a fundamental level represented a challenge to and rejection of the authority claims of Rome. Let's just say the older generation of Catholic Traditionalists had a better handle on these questions than the Marshall the MAGA-showman and sell-out.

Some see the 'Globalists' as the villains and not a few associate this very globalism with Jewish bankers and the like. All too often rigid anti-Communism proves a back door to Anti-Semitism. It doesn't help when we have hack Right-wing professors (like Grove City's Paul Kengor) fixating on Marx's connections to the occult and drawing sensationalist conclusions (on that basis) with regard to the death tolls in places like the USSR, China, and Cambodia - even while ignoring and failing to interact with the actual ideas as well as the functional ideology of Marx's successors. There are many respected academics and professors found in Right-wing circles and at Christian colleges that are little more than myth-makers, ear-ticklers, and hacks.

We are also told a great deal about modernity along with references to post-modernity. I usually find these conversations to be fruitless and self-serving exercises of echo chamber petitio principii.

I'm also reminded of a recent interview with a Canadian Lutheran pastor who lamented the drop in fertility in his country. He cited the sexual revolution and its denigration of children. There's certainly something to what he's saying but to just leave it there is myopic and perhaps just plain dishonest. There's a great deal more to be said about individualism and the psychologizing of society, but most of all the role of capitalism, inflation, and the ever-rising standard of living - a benchmark that can only be rejected to a point for those who would stay in the mainstream of society. Those who willingly reject it are marginalised. Perhaps if the Church taught something of New Testament antithesis, more Christians might think differently about these questions. Or then again, perhaps their churches would empty out. It's far more convenient to play the political blame game and provide a scapegoat for failed leadership in the Church and of course to exploit frustration, fear, and anger.

The breakdown of the family was not something that suddenly took place in the post-war period. Its roots are found in the Industrial Revolution which marked not just a change in technology or macro-economics but in the whole of life and the way individuals and families interacted with culture. Christians are to live as pilgrims - a core New Testament teaching that has for the most part been ignored and rejected throughout Church history and as such many of the issues surrounding the Industrial Revolution have never been properly addressed by Christian thinkers. The perceived crisis that emerged in the post-war period was simply the harvest of ideas and events that were planted and had already started to bear fruit in the 18th and 19th century. The crisis of 1914-1945 brought everything to a head. And the failure to properly grasp this resulted in the inadequate analysis and skewed commentaries of not just Evangelical thinkers like Schaeffer and Guinness but intellectuals on the Right and within the completely confused milieu of American Conservatism. Needless to say most of the Left being anti-Christian has also got it wrong - despite the tendency to ask better and more forthright questions. The Left's analysis is more penetrating and often exhibits more integrity (or at least did so until the rise of Identity Politics), but being lost, they have no answers. And indeed apart from Christ there are no answers. And even in Christ, we're never given a blueprint to fix the world or any expectation that such efforts will bear fruit. In fact we're given much Scriptural and historical evidence to the contrary.

Pound may not be as relevant as he once was but his story and the world he inhabited which lived on (poetically one might say) until July 2026 remains relevant and compelling.

Finally, a few comments on some of the works I have found helpful and relevant.

Hugh Kenner's 1973 work The Pound Era is not the easiest read but is quite helpful in understanding the larger context of his world in terms of art and ideas.

In 1971 Mary de Rachewiltz published her Discretions, which is a must read for those who want to really explore this story, but overall I found the book frustrating and often less than helpful.

I think (hands down) the best work on Mary and her life is Carol Shloss' 2023 volume Let the Wind Speak. I am not aware of any other work that can rival it.

In 2022, Matthew Hollis published The Wasteland: Biography of a Poem, which elucidates Pound's critical role in the editing and publication of TS Elliot's famous 1922 modernist poem. Pound is a major character in the book and it certainly captures something of the period.

The City of Falling Angels (2005) by John Berendt is primarily a work about Venice in the 1990's but Olga Rudge, Pound, and even Mary receive frequent treatment. Pound spent his final years in Venice, dying in 1972. He is buried in the Protestant section on Isola di San Michele - the cemetery island in the lagoon. Olga Rudge would live on until 1996 dying at the age of 100. Mary lived even longer, dying just a couple of weeks after turning 101.

Even Robert Kaplan, the Right-wing travel writer, essayist, and commentator spent a fair bit of time on Pound in his 2023 work Adriatic. As I've written before, I'm not a fan of Kaplan's views but have nevertheless enjoyed and benefitted from many of his works. Adriatic functions as a kind of supplement to his 1993 work Balkan Ghosts, which is the work that brought him fame, and it's a volume I've read multiple times - but admittedly with somewhat diminishing returns. Apparently in his youth he was quite taken with Pound and writes about that period in his life and the role of Pound's poetry. Kaplan is no longer a fan but I enjoyed reading his comments and of his travels around the Adriatic region.

Just a month ago (June 2026), Casa Pound Italia marched on Rome and while they are in some respects a thorn in Meloni's side, on the other hand they are helping her overall movement and provide a justification for pushing her policies and allowing them to seem moderate. In 2012, articles emerged of Mary's frustration with Casa Pound and her belief that they had hijacked her father's legacy. I'm not sure Mary was correct. Regardless, she's now gone and Casa Pound lives on. Whether Pound's views would actually overlap with these people is subject for debate. But this is a classic case of how these things work - people die, legends are born and legacies are appropriated.