Category: LETTERS Page 46 of 274

Letters in Limbo ~ September 12, 1912

On September 12, 2024

To Charles Augustus Strong
Bertolini’s Palace.
Naples, Italy. September 12, 1912

Some other day I may answer the part of your letter about psychology: today I am hardly in the mood. You are quite right in saying that we disagree about the existence of unfelt feeling. I am not sure, however, that an unfelt feeling is a fact and not a word. I agree that there is something in an animal before he is aware of it—a very great deal, in fact. This is what I meant by the fact on which we agreed and the words about which we disagreed.

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.

Letters in Limbo ~ September 11, 1924

By David Spiech

On September 11, 2024

In LETTERS

To Charles Augustus Strong
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. September 11, 1924

How classical you have become! No wonder, with your residence in Italy and your Latin reading. But aren’t you going rather far in condemning flying buttresses? No doubt the motive was only economy—economy in carrying out an extravagant plan; and you may condemn this as not worthy of Aristotle’s magnanimous man. But I have always believed that the frankness of exhibiting such a device, and using it decoratively, had been rewarded by the effect. Sometimes the light and shade play wonderfully among those buttresses, and the labyrinthine effect is in itself poetical. As to thin columns, I agree: I have never liked them. When people speak of “lightness” and “clarity of design” in Gothic churches, I feel that they are picking out the faults: the true beauties are loftiness, intricacy, mystery, and tenderness of detail, so that one lovely nook after another is found nestling in the vast ill-defined whole. “Clarity” should go not with “lightness” but with elegance and modesty on the human scale.

From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Three, 1921-1927. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY.

Letters in Limbo ~ September 10, 1918

By David Spiech

On September 10, 2024

In LETTERS

To Benjamin Apthorp Gould Fuller
22 Beaumont St. Oxford
Sunninghill, Berk, England. September 10, 1918

It is a real pleasure to hear from you. I knew that you were in France officiating in some useful capacity, but had no definite address. Some six months ago I sent a pamphlet to you at Sherborn but I daresay it never reached you. The Harvard world seems far away and not very enticing: Heraclitus was right, I think, in believing that Dike presides over the lapse of things, and that when they pass away, it is high time they should do so. If you go round the world after the war, I hope it will not be at a hurried or an even pace, and that you will spend three quarters of the time of your journey in the places which after all are most interesting and where there is most (for us, at least) to discover—in western Europe. Then I shall hope to come across your path and perhaps even to make some excursion in your good company: this long confinement in England; though pleasant in itself, is beginning to grow oppressive, and I often think with envy of those in Paris or beyond. At the same time, I hate to face suspicious officials, and any unusual difficulties and complications in the machinery of travel; so I have remained in my Oxford headquarters now for three years, and expect not to abandon them until the war ends.

. . .

My good friend Strong has had a bad time—laid up with a paralysis of the legs—and is still hardly able to walk. The attack fortunately came on when he was at Val Mont above the lake of Geneva, a place he likes and where the doctors inspire him with confidence. He hopes soon to return to Fiesole: meantime I have been separated from him and have missed him, for in his quiet dull way he is the best of friends and the soundest of philosophers—good ballast for my cockleshell. . . . I am . . . deep in a book to be called Dominations & Powers,–a sort of psychology of politics and attempt to explain how it happens that governments and religions, with so little to recommend them, secure such a measure of popular allegiance. Of course, behind all this, is the shadow of the Realms of Being, still (I am sorry to say) rather nebulous, although the cloud of manuscript is already ponderous and charged with some electricity in the potential state. I don’t know if any lightning or thunder will ever reach mortals from it.

From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Two, 1910-1920. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Letters in Limbo ~ September 9, 1904

By David Spiech

On September 9, 2024

In LETTERS

To Charles Scribner’s Sons
Paris. September 9, 1904

Messrs Charles Scribners’ Sons
New York

The proof of the first volume of the Life of Reason (the first part having been delayed) reached me some days ago, and I am sorry not to have been able to despatch it before today. I have revised the whole and am sending it to you all together.

. . .

I have restored the u’s in “honour” etc, partly because I prefer them and partly because, if this book appears also in England, the other spelling would shock people too much. They will receive shocks enough from the substance without adding others in the manner.

From The Letters of George Santayana: Book One, [1868]-1909. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001. Location of manuscript: Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries, Princeton NJ

Letters in Limbo ~ September 8, 1928

By David Spiech

On September 8, 2024

In LETTERS

To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Hotel Continental,
Vigo, Spain. September 8, 1928

Dear Cory,

Got here unharmed but hot and dirty, two days ago. On the way, spent one day at Oporto—magnificently picturesque place, with the most impure architecture in the world, and the most romantic. Some day I will tell you about the cloisters of the cathedral—a delicious architectural joke: love-sick, over-muscular shepherds and shepherdesses all in white-and-blue tiles covering the walls, and inscribed in the beautiful Latin of the Song of Solomon!

My sister is well and apparently contented, but looks frightfully old and doesn’t say much for herself. She is staying in a fishing village where all the houses look like the cabins of sixteenth century ships. Under her windows is a fountain, where the barefoot village maids come to draw water and carry it off on jars poised on their heads. I don’t think I shall go there to live: there is an electric tram from Vigo that takes one there in an hour and makes a pleasant afternoon drive: in this hotel I have the best room with a fine view of the harbour where there are now seven Spanish war-ships. It is a splendid bay, surrounded by mountains, and the town neat and modern. Too much to eat: but there is a special (new) Spanish meal introduced before lunch, which I like very much: it fills an aching void without preventing it being refilled an hour later. It is called a vermouth, but besides the beverage it includes a dish of small olives and another of cold potatoes, fried—chips—which are much better (eaten with the fingers, as the ancients and all self-respecting Mohammedans should) than you might suppose. I will send you some picture cards another day, with such news as there may be to give.

Yours G.S.

From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Four, 1928-1932. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY.