Category: LETTERS Page 48 of 274

To Charles G. Spiegler
C/o Brown Shipley & Co 123
Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. September 2, 1939.

Dear Mr. Spiegler 1,

The sonnet about which you say “there has been rather heated discussion” was written fifty-five years ago, and I should hardly trust myself to say now exactly what interpretation, if any, might exactly correspond to what may have been in my mind when I wrote it. I say, if any, because at twenty the mind is susceptible to momentary lights, and my sonnet wasn’t written at one sitting. When I came to “the soul’s invincible surmise” I was probably thinking simply of Columbus; but when I came to “the light of faith,” I was probably thinking of the Catholic Church. And neither of these possible thoughts had much to do with the origin of the sonnet, which I can voutch for distinctly. In the Bacchae, of Euripides I had come upon
. . . words . . . I translated into the line: “It is not wisdom to be only wise”—or too knowing as one might say in prose. Nietzsche had not then been heard of, but the Bacchae is Dionysiac, and I was not blind to that romantic inspiration. The rest of the sonnet was built around that line, which became the second; but I daresay my interest was not exclusively literary; this was, I think, the first of my sonnets (among those published) and, though it seems to be the most popular, it is certainly one of the thinnest in rhythm and diction. But I was certainly in a state of emotional flux in regard to religion, not having yet reached the equilibrium which the twenty sonnets of the first series are meant to lead to. The process, however, took several years.

All this, however, seems to me of little moment. When once anything is given to the public, it belongs to the public, and they are at liberty to find in it what meanings they choose. Whether the author appreciated or not the possible suggestions of his words is a biographical question of no importance in the estimation of the extant work. He may have put into it unawares forgotten or potential perceptions, or even pure collocations of facts or ideas that only a later point of view could disclose to the mind of some other person.

If your interpretation is that my way of seeing and writing is intellectual, I think you are right; but it is intelligence about emotion—intelletto d’amore—so that your critics may be right too.

Yours very truly,
G Santayana

1. Charles G. Spiegler (b. 1911) failed in his initial attempt to obtain his license to teach English because he did not give the “correct” interpretation of Santayana’s Sonnet III, “O world, thou choosest not the better part!” (Complete Poems, 92), on the New York City Board of Examiners Test. Spiegler then asked Santayana for his interpretation. Spiegler became a New York City high school teacher and supervisor.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Six, 1937-1940.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: Collection of Mrs. Charles (Evelyn) Spiegler, Forest Hill NY

To George Sturgis
Glion-sur-Territet, Switzerland. September 1, 1929

You will have seen by my drafts that I have not moved from here all summer. It is not a place I like for itself, and it is not easy to take elderly walks without first making a journey to the water-level; but as you know, at first I came on Strong’s account, and then have stayed on in order to finish my book, and also because Cory, who had come to help me with it, liked the place, danced with the neurotic ladies, played tennis with the consumptive clergymen, and seemed to be enjoying himself. The book is now done, and Cory is leaving tomorrow with the MS. of the last chapters, which he will have type-written in Paris, so that we may make a final revision of the whole before it goes to the press. The book is called “The Realm of Matter”, and was frightfully difficult to write, as I fear it may be to read.

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 George Sturgis
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. August 31, 1924

The fine photograph of Rosamond and the boys arrived on the day after I had written to you, and I put off thanking you for it until the next occasion for a letter. I am very glad to see how Rosamond really looks in daily life: you are to be congratulated on having found a half—I won’t say so much better than the other—but so fit, to make good any deficiencies which your own half might have had, if it had had any. As to the boys, the phases of life pass by very rapidly at that age, but they both have an air of meaning to fight their way through the world, regardless of all obstacles, and of being able to do so. Health and energy! Yes, but people in the evening of life feel that there is a sort of danger in these privileges: so few people with strength know how to use it in securing something worth having, or in aiming at something attainable.

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

To Logan Pearsall Smith
Address C/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Paris. August 30. 1920

My early books were written too much under the pressure of American public sentiment—I don’t mean that this influenced my opinions, or even my style, very much, but that it made me write to justify my existence and make sure to myself that I did have an intellect: but I should have had more, perhaps, if I hadn’t been in such haste to exhibit it. My comfort is that . . . I am not yet too old to recast the more theoretic parts of my reflexion into a system that may be better articulated and more closely knit than my old divagations.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Three, 1921-1927.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: The Library of Congress, Washington DC

To Charles Augustus Strong
Glion-sur-Territet, Switzerland. August 29, 1929

The other day we had a casual discussion about “knowledge” and the immediate, and he became surprisingly intense, saying he had a sort of religious conviction that “knowledge” could only be of immediate data. This, in a supposed disciple of mine, was a bit disconcerting: but he said afterwards that it was only a question of words, that he preferred to call “knowledge” with Russell, what I call intuition: because what I call knowledge, being admittedly only “faith mediated by symbols”, was only belief; and belief is not knowledge. You see he is after certitude: and I tell you about it because possibly you may get into trouble together and misunderstand one another on this crucial point, if you are not forewarned of this thirst for certitude in the young mind. I don’t think his divergence from me is a matter of words only: it rests on the axiom that “experience” is of fact, and that its objects are existent states. This, of course, is in part your own contention, so that you may find him, on this point, in agreement with you against me: but I am afraid that in another aspect of the question, he will be recalcitrant to your doctrine, because while you say that the existence of the object is given immediately, you admit, I believe, that its given characters are for the most part only essences imputed to it by the psyche in view of her own reactions. This, if granted, would destroy the axiom of immediate certitude of fact: and I can’t see why the existence of the object is not imputed to it by the psyche as much as its essence.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Four, 1928–1932.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY