Category: LETTERS Page 26 of 274

To Pierre de Chaignon la Rose
Hotel Bristol
Rome. November 3, 1924

Dear la Rose,

Today at last, sitting enjoying the golden warmth and light of a glorious afternoon in the gardens of the Villa Borghese, I have succeeded in making a version of the lines of Catullus which you had copied. I have been carrying them in my pocket for some time and had some scraps of translation ringing in my head, but the thing had never taken shape until this moment. It is a very Italian piece, childish, full of repetitions and sobs; and I have tried to catch something of its passion, while letting other things go. My friend Strong brought me here a week ago in his motor, and on the way we stopped to lunch with the daughter of Bayard Cutting, who is settled in a farm near Monte Pulciano with her young and charming husband Marchese Antonio Origo. Strong has returned to Fiesole, and I am looking forward to six months of peaceful existence and work. Rome is a particularly pleasant place to me: I like the solidity of its stones, the nearness of the green country, the troupes of theological students of all nations, the soldiers and sailors and Facisti, and the combination of modern comfort with a suggestion of grandeur and a great deal of Bohemian freedom and simplicity. Vale.
Yours sincerely,
G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Three, 1921-1927.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York NY

To Victor Francis Calverton
C/o Brown Shipley & Co.
123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Rome. November 2, 1936

Dear Mr. Calverton,

Your mysterious book is being laid aside until some future moment when I may be less occupied and preoccupied, but I have dipped into it, and in thanking you for sending it I can already say that it has started a train of thought in my mind which might lead to radical conclusions. Suppose that by hypnotism. we understand those biological tides which produce mass-conversions, religious epidemics, and climaxes or collapses in civilization, such as the intellectual barbarism. that made Germany uninhabitable for your friend in the book. There is a nation hypnotized for good or ill, at least temporarily: but who did the hypnotizing, and what determined the kind of hypnotic suggestion to be induced? Hardly Hitler; he is too slight a personage; hardly even Nietzsche or Treitschky or Houston Stewart Chamberlain. But suppose it was they, or one of them: who shall un-hypnotize the hypnotizer? Who shall hit upon the blessed prescription that might liberate, instead of constraining, the “man inside”? Does your book contain a fresh discovery of human nature, so that not only the machinery for imposing a regimen, but the character of the regimen to be imposed, could recommend itself to mankind in the long run? I happen to be reading Lao Tse at odd moments. I wonder if we have any better solution to propose than he proposed long ago.
Yours sincerely,
G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Five, 1933-1936.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: The New York Public Library, New York City

To William Cameron Forbes
C/o Brown Shipley & Co.
King’s College
Cambridge, England. November 1, 1896

My life here is very pleasant. My rooms are cheerful and well-situated, although my landlady’s aesthetic sense is not what I could wish, and her worsted roses under glass bells—now happily banished—are not what my eyes most love to feast upon. However, life is well-arranged. I dine in Hall at the High Table with the Dons, of whom I see a great deal also at other times. They are for the most part very quiet, cultivated, odd, youngish men. Most people here are shy, but very friendly and unaffected, easier to get on with than Oxford people if perhaps less interesting. As you might guess, I go often to watch the football “matches”. The game as played in England is very pretty, especially the passing while on the run, by which the long gains are usually made. There is no interference—the men run far apart, for the sake of the passing—and, strangest of all, the ball belongs to neither side after a down but is thrown into the middle of a double turtleback formation, and kicked (“heeled”) about until one side or the other succeeds in making it slip out where its backs can pick it up and pass it for a run or kick. The art of tackling is almost unknown but men are hurt all the same. Our game is much more glorious and exciting, but this is very good in its way, and is hard, varied exercise. Every man has frequent chances to kick, and team work tells in the heeling and passing. It’s too bad you didn’t take a more responsible position in coaching this year. You probably have been called on by this time to do more than you expected when you wrote. My own exertions are all directed to Plato at present. I hear two lectures a week and have one hour in private with Jackson of Trinity, who is excellent, most stimulating and enlightening. It’s hard stuff—Parmenides and Philebus—but very interesting to me on account of the deep logical and metaphysical questions involved. My Greek, too, is coming back in a rather reassuring manner, and I hope to be less ignorant in several ways than I was when the year began.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book One, [1868]-1909.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA

To Robert Seymour Bridges
Dover, England. October 31, 1923

My glimpse of England after four years has left me with mixed feelings. I fear my English days are over. Nothing I could now see or feel would be likely to equal the memories I have of other days, which, if not the beaux jours of England, were at least my beaux jours, and which it is almost a pity to overlay with sadder impressions. Oxford is very much itself in spite of obvious crowding, and the flocks of women on bicycles which come round the corners of New College Lane Sunt lacrymae rerum but so mixed with pleasure that all regrets become impertinent.

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