To Rosamond Thomas Bennett Sturgis
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. April 5, 1946
Dear Rosamond:
Yesterday came your parcel with heat pads and soap. Thank you very much. Soap is always in season, and not to be bought here except (I suppose) in the black market. The heat pads are late for the winter of this year, but will be useful when the autumn comes and interesting as a mechanical novelty—an application, as it were, of atomic bombs for the home and for the stomach. My critics used to upbraid me, when I said I was a materialist, by urging that matter was something passive and dead, but I hope they are now discovering that it is surprisingly explosive. When I warm my feet or my stomach with your pads, I shall meditate on the kindly way in which iron particles can communicate their secret vitality to torpid old age and to a lazy spirit.
I am reading a book in two volumes by Stalin on Leninism, in an excellent Italian translation. There are a lot of interesting books to be had in Italian cheap if one only hears of them. Stalin is very clear and frank. We are all to be liquidated. The question is whether somebody won’t want to liquidate the liquidaters. Spring has come, trees are green and blooming, and I am working nicely on my next book.
Yours affectionately
G Santayana
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Seven, 1941–1947. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript:The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.