Author: David Spiech Page 77 of 283

To Mercedes de la Escalera
[Rome] [1942]

Many thanks for your having given me the message from George. When you write to him, tell him that I continue in good health, that I received (with seven months’ delay) the letter that came in care of the Spanish Embassy and that I am grateful for his efforts. I do not need money at present, and if I should need some, I believe that there would be means of getting it here as I have relations with some Italians who are familiar with my situation and who could supply me with the modest sums that I would need. In spite of everything I am contented, so much so that I believe that old age is the happiest part of my life.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Seven, 1941-1947.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript: Unknown.

To Charles Augustus Strong
Colonial Club
Cambridge, Massachusetts. February 12, 1911

Thank you very much for repeating your generous offers; my plans about retirement continue unchanged; that is, I expect to leave (either resigning formally or getting an indefinite leave of absence) a year from next June, i.e. in June 1912. This summer I am sorry to say I shan’t see you, because I am going to California to give some lectures at Berkeley; the proposal came just in time, for if they had waited another year, it would have been too late. As it is, it seemed too pat to be refused; it gives me a chance of seeing the West for nothing and making a sort of farewell tour of the country.

By the time I retire I hope to have $2500 a year of my own; my unmarried sister (who is far better off) has offered to share her superfluities with me; so you see I shall be opulent according to my standards. Nevertheless I gladly accept your offers of a helping hand in spirit, and in fact also, if circumstances should require or justify it. You have eighteen months in which to make up your mind and experiment in places and houses; if you have settled down when I am free, I will come to make you a long visit, and we might (if your house was large enough) share it in a sense, if you would set aside a room for me where I might leave my books and other small belongings, and where I might come every year for a season. During my first winter—and you would probably be in Switzerland—I want to spend several months in Madrid, where I know I can be comfortable and amused at an old spinter friend’s. Then I am longing to revisit Italy; and my plan of writing a critical history of philosophy may take me to Oxford, London, & Paris, in order to have a large library to work in. But this consultation of books would (as you may well imagine) not be systematic, so that the greater part of my composition could be done in the wilderness, and would probably be all the better, as to tone and perspective, for being done there.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Two, 1910-1920.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY.

To George Sturgis
C/o B. S. & Co.
Rome. February 11, 1928

I suppose they have telegraphed to you directly that your aunt Susie died yesterday morning, apparently after a short illness. I am leaving in two or three days for Paris and Avila: probably I shall have to stay for some time in Madrid. Your aunt’s age, and my own, softens this blow a good deal in my own feelings; and you who never saw her in her palmy days can hardly have an idea of the ascendency which she exercised over people, and particularly over me. Invalid as she was when you knew her, you must still have felt how much life there was in her spirit: I think she was confident of surviving her husband, and doing great things independently; but the flesh is treacherous, and things have turned out the other way.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Four, 1928–1932.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.

To John Galen Howard
Monte Carlo, Monaco. February 10, 1913

Thank you so much for “Grasmere”, which is truly “a fructual stirp of that high dedicant,” W. W —The wetness (which you ‘render so vividly) frightens me, however, who have fled to the Riviera from the fog and mire of Florence to try to out-stirp a catarrh.—Without question, you have the afflatus and the courage of poetry: it is remarkable in these days. And I like your rhyme better than your blank verse!

G. Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Two, 1910-1920.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: The Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley, CA.

To Arthur Allen Cohen
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo 6
Rome. February 9, 1948

Your letter about Kierkegaard raised in my mind more questions than it answered. Does existentialism assume that we are all Christians? Is Angst about “Salvation” that of the Jews at the time of Christ or that of later Christians of avoiding hell fire after death? Is not such ANGST a disease, an emotion produced by Protestant theology after faith in that theology has disappeared? And what is this self that feels the Angst and leaps heroically, for salvation into the Unknown? If it were the transcendental Self, or Brahman, it could feel no anxiety because it can be only transcendental, on THIS side of the footlights; it may have interrupted experiences, but it cannot die in the sense of not being capable of having more; and more of them can hurt it if it is purely transcendental, like the comfortable rich man in the stalls watching a tragedy and then a comedy. If, on the contrary, this self is the concrete human psyche or person we know perfectly what its circumstances are and what it needs to be anxious about. There may be wise or foolish decisions made by it, but no leap into the unknown. The whole thing, from this point of view, seems confused and gratuitous. . . .

Could one say, in the spirit of Kierkegaard, that the total Object confronting a life or personal existence was Circumstances? And would God be a religious name for this? If so, I could see the inevitableness, for our animal psyche, to fear, love, and grope for God. And in so far as the Kingdom of Heaven (i.e. the Reign of God) is just this Object in the measure in which its operation affects us, I can see how the Existentialist revives the Christian problem of salvation. But why revive the problem without reviving the concrete beliefs that would explain and solve it?

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Eight, 1948-1952.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: Unknown.