To Henry Ward Abbot
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. August 29, 1931
Yes, I remember receiving and reading with interest a book on Poe: but I never knew it came from you. Accept my tardy thanks. The picture wasn’t very pleasing, I thought, and the book didn’t answer my eternal question about Poe: why the French think so much of him. Only yesterday I was reading in Paul Valéry (how he understands our times!) that Poe had been one of the first to dislike “progress”, while introducing mechanical calculation into fiction and poetry. Is this his greatness? As to the Book of Sonnet Sequences, I have forgotten ever hearing of it; occasionally people write asking for permission to include a sonnet in some pious anthology, and I always say yes and refer them to my publishers, who collect a fee. That is the last I ever see or hear of the matter. I take no great interest in being “classed”, or in the arrangement of people in the order of “goodness” like boys in a class at school. It is a judgement on the critic, not on the works criticized or the authors.—Tell Mrs. A. that I am quite well.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Four, 1928–1932. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY