To Rosamond Thomas Bennett Sturgis
Hotel Bristol
Rome. December 11, 1938
One of the great disadvantages of wisdom, at least of my sort, is that it is useless except for keeping wise, especially when wisdom is combined with advanced age. If I were forty years younger there is nothing I should like better than to take Bob about myself all next winter, not to Sweden and Norway, he could go there in summer with other friends, but to France, Switzerland, Southern Germany, Italy, and Greece. I could, at that age, have gone about with him so that he shouldn’t have got into trouble, and given him hints or even lessons in French or Spanish or Italian, enough for a beginner, to help out what he would pick up for himself among the natives. As it is, however, I can’t move, never go out at night, and must keep my time and mind free for finishing my last book of philosophy. You understand that, of course.
A curious thing . . . has happened to my Last Puritan. It has been translated into three languages; but which do you suppose? German, Swedish, and Danish. Why, I asked the Swedish editor who came here with his wife to see me, why do you, who all know English so well, need to translate such a book of mine into your language? Because, he said, English books are too dear for us to buy. A translation in paper covers is much cheaper, and can be sold. But that is only one point. There is also the problem why these Nordic people alone are interested in the Last Puritan. And my inquiries lead me to think that it is for two reasons. First, they are interested in America politically and sociologically, and they think my book is a document. Second, they are interested in the Nordic soul, their own, which they can’t understand; and they wonder if a semi-outsider, like me, mightn’t throw some light on the subject. And one or two German reviewers have actually taken my poor Oliver Alden as a scientific or psychoanalytic problem, growing hot about it, and even angry with me for not really understanding him, or understanding him too well!
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Six, 1937-1940. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA