To Guy Murchie
King’s College
Cambridge, England. July 17. 1897
I am now at work on an exposition and defence of Plato’s bad treatment of poets, whom, as you may know, he banished from his republic as trivial and demoralizing persons. There were solid reasons for that judgment even then—what would he have said of an age that believes in the moral dignity of a Wagner and a Browning? At the same time—and the vulgar logician might see an inconsistency here—I am giving the finishing touches to my own Lucifer—now a prodigious tragedy in five fat acts, with melodramatic situations and lyrical episodes all designed to effect the purgation of souls by pity of the author and dread of having to peruse his complete works. That, as Aristotle says, is the true function of tragedy.
I wish you all joy in your summer solitudes. When you return to Cambridge you may find me wandering homelessly about the streets and the Colonial Club, where I dare say you also now dine. In that case we shall have many a chance of exchanging our impressions of the past two years. I am not to have a room in Cambridge, but to live in Longwood with my mother. There are several reasons for this: that three days in the week will thus be quite clear of interruptions and temptations; that it will be an economy; that it will mark more clearly the merely temporary status which I have, while they don’t make up their minds about promoting me; and that it will make it easier for me than it was last year to give up Harvard altogether, if such is the final issue of things. I have had two Harvard lives already; this, if it lasts or not, must be a wholly different one. If they make me an assistant professor and I decide to stay indefinitely it will be time to look for a domicile, for I believe on the whole it would be better to live in Cambridge and do one’s share in maintaining or establishing the academic traditions of the place.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book One, [1868]-1909. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Collection of Guy Murchie, Jr.