Author: David Spiech Page 239 of 283

To Robert Seymour Bridges
Hotel Bristol
Rome. Jan. 8, 1925

Through the more and more frankly confessed mythical character of exact science—I … have been recognizing of late that the church is a normal habitation for the mind, as impertinent free thought never is. But there remains the old misunderstanding, the forcing of literature into dogma, and the intolerable intolerance of other symbols, where symbols are all. Here in Rome, in the Pincio and the Villa Borghese, I often watch with amazement the troops of theological students of all nations, so vigorous and modern in their persons, and I ask myself whether these young men can truly understand and accept the antique religion which they profess—especially the Americans (very numerous) with their defiant vulgar airs and horrible aggressive twang. Could the monks of Iona and the Venerable Bede have been like this? Was it perhaps after some ages of chastening that the barbarians could really become Christian and could produce a Saint Francis?

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Three, 1921-1927.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: The Bodleian Library, Oxford University, England

To Boylston Adams Beal
Hotel Bristol
Rome. Jan. 7, 1934

Dear Boylston
Thank you for your letter of Dec. 7 and for the cutting from the Harvard Register. Please don’t trouble about looking up those other birthday tributes: they are too much like obituary notices. Unless my “novel” should ever be finished and published, which might make a real flame burst out one way or the other, I can imagined the kindly sunset glow in which.at least in public. I shall be allowed to sink into oblivion. But I still have a string or two to my bow, which not all my American friends are aware of; I don’t mean only the “novel”, but fresh philosophic criticism and exposition. It all depends on my powers of work not failing too fast.

Read More

To the editor of The New Republic
Oxford, England
5 January [1916] .

Protests against your “pro-Germanism” have already had this good effect, that they have made you speak out. May I add another protest, in the hope that it may provoke you to still greater clearness? I think greater clearness on your part is desirable. I have no objection to a German being a German, or a pro-German a pro-German. I read a violently Germanophile Spanish paper regularly and with pleasure. I know that honest men are passionate and that passion is blind. In a clearing-house of opinion. I expect various principles, prejudices, and sympathies to find expression, and I am grateful that my own notions should be courteously admitted there, unshorn and unvarnished. My protest is directed exclusively against your editorial ambiguity. From the beginning the undercurrent of your writing has not been in keeping with your overt opinions. It has been impossible not to feel that if public opinion did not embarrass you you would be far more pro-German than you are. Many an article has begun with an insinuating friendliness towards the Allies that has had a pro-German sting in its tail. If you are really in favor of an inconclusive peace which requires some speedy check to German successes, why do you celebrate the last triumph of German diplomacy and the entry of Bulgaria into the war—somewhat sugaring the pill in another column? And why do you entitle this partisan article “The Debt of Bulgaria to the Allies?” The result can only be that the non-reader should suppose that the article was anti-German, and the confused reader, perhaps, that it was somehow impartial.
….

Read More

To Charles Augustus Strong
3 January 1923 . Nice, France
New York Hotel, Nice
Jan. 3, 1923

Dear Strong,
Good weather seems to be returning after the wintry storms of the last fortnight, and I have now entirely recovered from my cough. The attack was not in itself so bad—not involving so much actual catarrh—as on some previous occasions, but it seemed to shake me more and to be so fatiguing that I called the doctor. . . . He said that I had a slight congestion of the lungs—légère pouscée pulmonaire—and that my heart was larger than it ought to be. For the latter he ordered some minute pills of a drug called “strophantus,”1 which is evidently the sort of “dope” which attracts the opium-eaters. …. Anyhow, I seem to have completely recovered: but it is a warning that I am not so sound as I had supposed, and that the machine may behave any day, if I am not careful, like Dr Holmes’s one horse shay.2
As you may imagine, I haven’t been making progress with the book; but perhaps by virtue of the strophantus my fancy has been working magnificently and I was never more entertained than during this enforced leisure. The result is that—yielding to force majeure—I have written (in pencil) the four last chapters of the novel, solving the problem of the dénoument in a way which I think satisfactory, and incidentally creating two delightful children, a boy of four and a girl of ten. The novel is not complete yet, and many episodes might be worked up to fill the gaps: but the outline is there, and I think it may not prove a bad thing for the Realms to have that more interesting matter practically disposed of. I hope you are progressing favourably; when you come here in February you will find the place very bright and gay.
Yours ever G.S.

Read More

To Charles Augustus Strong
2 January 1937 . Rome, Italy
Hotel Bristol, Rome
Jan. 2, 1937

There is a German translation of my novel “aus dem amerikanischen.” Also, a Swedish translation. I ask myself why. Don’t they all read “American”?

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Six, 1937-1940.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY