Category: LETTERS Page 11 of 274

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.

To John Hall Wheelock
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. January 16, 1947.

From Ezra Pound I continue to receive communications: the last was stark mad: a few scattered unintelligible abbreviations on a large sheet of paper, and nothing else. Yet the address, although fantastically scrawled, was quite correct and intelligible. His madness may be spasmodic only.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Seven, 1941-1947.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript: Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries, Princeton NJ.

To Bertrand Arthur William Russell
Cambridge, Massachusetts. January 15, 1911.

It is a great bond to dislike the same things, and dislike is perhaps a deeper indication of our real nature than explicit affections, since the latter may be effects of circumstances, while dislike is a reaction against them.

I had hoped to go to Cambridge in June, but, now it is arranged that I shall go instead to California, where I have never been. I am both glad and sorry for this, but it seemed as well to see the Far West once in one’s life, especially as I hope soon to turn my face resolutely in the opposite direction.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Two, 1910-1920.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Mills Memorial Library, Bertrand Russell Archives, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

To Lino S. Lipinsky de Orlov
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. January 14, 1949

Dear Mr Lipinski

I shall be very glad to sit for you any afternoon for the sketch that you wish to make of me. I have not sat for anyone since 1896, when Andreas Andersen did a charcoal drawing of me by the firelight in my room in Staughton Hall at Harvard, which to me seems the only real portrait that was ever taken of me.

I do not usually see the Atlantic Monthly, and should be glad, not that it is necessary as an introduction, to see a photograph of anything that you have drawn.

Yours sincerely

G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Eight, 1948-1952.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript:Collection of Lino S. Lipinsky de Orlov.