Author: David Spiech Page 1 of 283

To Cyril Coniston Clemens
C/o Brown Shipley & Co.
123, Pall Mall, London.
Rome. January 21, 1930.

Rashly assuming that the books in your Society Library are going to be read, and not merely to be a beautiful monument to the truth that of making many books there is no end, I will send you two of my productions, “Soliloquies in England”, because I think it is the least unworthy to be offered in homage to the Shade of Mark Twain, and “Character & Opinion in the U.S.”. because the title is the most likely to tempt the casual hand to take it from the shelf.

You needn’t have sent a cheque with your request; an inscribed book ought not to be paid for: but I send you the extra one gratis to satisfy my conscience on this point.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Four, 1928-1932.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript:William R. Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham NC.

To Ezra Loomis Pound
Hotel Danieli, Venice
Venice. January 20, 1940

Dear E. P.

This mustn’t go on for ever, but I have a word to say, in the direction of fathoming your potential philosophy. When is a thing not static? When it jumps or when it makes you jump? Evidently the latter, in the case of Chinese ideograms, you being your thoughts. And these jumps are to particulars, not regressive, to general terms. Classifications are not poetry. I grant that, but think that classifications may be important practically; e.g. poisons; how much? What number? There is another kind of regression towards materials, causes, genealogies. Pudding may not suggest pie, but plums, cook, fire. These are generalities that classify not data but conditions for producing the data. When you ask for jumps to other particulars, you don’t mean (I suppose) any other particulars, although your tendency to jump is so irresistible that the bond between the particulars jumped to is not always apparent. It is a mental grab-bag. A latent classification or a latent genetic connection would seem to be required, if utter  miscellaneousness is to be avoided.

As to the Jews, I too like the Greek element in Christendom better than the Jewish; yet the Jews, egotistically and fantastically, were after a kind of good, milk and honey and money. That gives them a hold on reality that can’t be denied. Reality is not miscellaneous sensations, but matter generating everything else under specific conditions. The Jews made a mistake in putting Jehovah instead of matter at the top: but now they have corrected that.

Yours G.S.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Six, 1937-1940.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven CT.

To Lawrence Smith Butler
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6,
Rome. January 19, 1951.

Dear Lawrence

If our friend George Rauh shows you the letter in which this is enclosed, you will understand why I do so, but I ought also to have apologized to him for not thanking him before. The reason is that I have been, and am rather tired with the effort I made all last summer to get my new (and last) book, Dominations & Powers ready for the press; and also with the interruptions that kept me distracted and afraid I should never finished. Too very silent college girls from the West, who presented themselves unannounced stayed for three hours and a half, preventing me from having my afternoon tea (dearest of meals to my heart and stomach) and beating the record of pilgrims regarding me as a relic to be visited during the Holy Year.

Afternoon tea brings me back to the object of this letter, which is to thank you for the unexpected and novel basket or chest of sweets, the freshest and best of all that have been sent to me by my over-generous American friends. This special box, and its contents, have excited the unanimous admiration of Cory, Sister Angela, Maria the housemaid and myself. I shall get most of the material advantage, pleasure, and nutriment involved, for Cory this year only comes twice a weak to see me, our proof-reading of “Dominations and Powers” being completed, at least Sister Angela will inherit the beautiful red and white tin box, when empty, hardly for her cell, as she probably has no ribbons and laces to keep in it, but for her pantry, where tin, tight closing recepticals are at a premium.

. . . Lawrence, you are a treasure. You alone prevent me from feeling that I have lost all my best friends. I wish I could have proved an equal comfort to you.

G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Eight, 1948-1952.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: The University Club, New York NY.

To Max Forrester Eastman
18 January 1952 . Rome, Italy
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6,
Rome. January 18, 1951.

Dear Mr. Eastman

Your letter and two articles have naturally interested me, especially where you catch the spirit on which I write, which is not always. . . . Today, I wish to confine myself to a list of the trifling but strange errors on matters of fact which I have marked with a red pencil. This establishment is legally called “Calvary Hospital, Nursing Sister of the Little Company of Mary.” One wing is the convent for the Sisters; the opposite arm of the “Cross” is the “Ospizio” which you know, and the long middle wing at right angles is the Hospital proper. But we are not more than half a dozen guests in normal times, so that the three  storeys over my head are often used for patients as well. You speak as if I had come to this refuge in order to retire from the world: why not become a monk rather than a nun? But my retreat has always been “moral” only, not disciplinarian, and it took place in 1893, when (until Dec. 16th ) I was 29 years old . . . Page 38 touches higher matters, which I will discuss when your third article appears, and I will skip to the fictions about my quoting Aquinas in Latin to a blundering missionary, to squash him; and that I came to this house because I was ill. The reason was that my money from America was about to be cut short, and I succeeded in making an arrangement with the Head of this Order to pay an equivalent of my dues here, in Chicago . . . Your trouble with me on major matters is that you do not understand that I am a pagan. Perhaps you don’t care for Greek & Roman classics. That seems to blind you to normality. America is not normal, not natural, but forced, Protestant.

Yours sincerely G. S.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Eight, 1948-1952.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington.

To August H. Wagner
Hotel Bristol,
Rome. January 17, 1937

In my Reason in Religion, in the chapters on A Future Life and on Ideal Immortality, you will find all I have to say on the subject of your letter. You are free, as far as I am concerned, to quote from those chapters.—The only new light that I have seen since that now distant date comes from the German philosopher Heidegger, who defines death (which can be nothing for experience) as the wholeness of life. Death is only the fact that, like a piece of music, a life has a particular character and limits. You will find this elaborately set forth, on idealistic grounds, in Heidegger’s works.

Yours truly

G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Six, 1937-1940.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: Collection of Robert Scheuermann, Beverly Hills, CA.