To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Venice, Italy. September 26, 1935
Of course it is gratifying to have this sudden boost, but someone must have it, apparently, every month, and really it’s not extravagant to think that The Last Puritan, which is a major work and original in some respects, should have been chosen to be one of the twelve in one year. What this does show is that the committee were not too much disturbed by my picture of America or of erotic friendships: but the critics, some of them, will probably rage. Never mind: we will pocket the $5000 and the rest of the profits with thanks, and go our own way. A tactless friend has sent me a review of Iris’s book, in which my “foreword” is called “boring and obese”. What would the critic say if he saw me in the flesh? And what wrath won’t he pour on The Last Puritan? I asked Edman what he thought people would think, and he said they would scrutinize the Prologue and Epilogue so as to make out how much of myself there was in the book; and he asked whether I had any special intention in saying, at the end of the Prologue, that I would report the facts only in so far as discretion allowed. In other words, they smell a rat, and want to know (very indiscreetly) whether the rat is in me, or only in my book. You will be bothered all your life with questions of this kind, if you become my official interpreter. I think it might be prudent on your part to say that you knew nothing about my private history in my earlier years. It is the truth, as is natural with more than forty years’ difference in our ages; and I think even my contemporaries, if not inventive, would have to say the same thing. The fact is that there is very little to know, except what can be got by psychoanalysis out of my prose and poetry. But this whole interest in an author’s medical history is vile and morbid, and ought to be squelched as severely as possible. It is another question, and legitimate, to like or not to like the sentiments that an author has actually expressed.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Five, 1933-1936. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY