The Works of George Santayana

Category: LETTERS Page 56 of 274

Letters in Limbo ~ July 2, 1920

George_SantayanaTo Scofield Thayer
C/o Brown Shipley & Co. 123 Pall Mall, London
Paris. July 2, 1920

In Italy, two or three months ago, I received a copy of The Dial together with a letter, which in the confusion of travel I am afraid I did not answer. Now I receive two separate copies of the June number, with your new letter of June 17. It is now nearly ten years since I have been in America, and I can’t think even of one name with which to begin the list which you ask me to make out, of persons who might be interested in The Dial, and whom you do not know much better than I do. Your idea of bringing the old and the new together is interesting: but if you find that the public prefer their meat apart from their vegetables, why should you earnestly desire to serve them both up on the same plate? I think the vicissitudes of art at present, and of the faint though eager echoes that spread over America, like wireless vibrations, are not of much importance. It is all too voulu: something will gather head of itself some day when people least expect it.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Two, 1910-1920.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven CT.

Letters in Limbo ~ July 1, 1937

ezra-pound-1885-1972-in-the-1920s-everettTo Daniel MacGhie Cory
Hotel Savoia
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. July 1, 1937

For heaven’s sake, dear Cory, do stop Ezra Pound from sending me his book. Tell him that I have no sense for true poetry, admire (and wretchedly imitate) only the putrid Petrarch and the miserable Milton; that I don’t care for books, hardly have any, and would immediately send off his precious volume to the Harvard Library or to some other cesspool of infamy. That is, if he made me a present of it. If he sent it only for me to look at and return, I would return it unopened; because I abhorr all connection with important and distinguished people, and refuse to see absolutely anyone except some occasional stray student or genteel old lady from Boston.

I shouldn’t mind helping Ezra Pound if he were hard up, through you, for instance, if he wasn’t to know where the money came from: but I don’t want to see him. Without pretending to control the course of nature or the tastes of future generations, I wish to see only people and places that suggest the normal and the beautiful: not abortions or eruptions like E. P.

It is a shame that you should be persecuted like this and not allowed to enjoy a holiday; but you realize how dreary poor S. finds his days. In the old times, when I often lived or stayed with him, I used to excuse myself in my own mind for profiting so much by his money (living for nothing in the apartment, etc) by thinking that I made his life and mind more interesting to him, and that he was, in his demure secretive way, a good friend absolutely to be trusted. And I still think that I was a useful stimulus to him, as you are now. But it has become evident that he cared for me only . . . to serve as a whetstone for his dulness; and he has become intolerant of anybody’s being anything more. You now have to sharpen his edge, with an uncertain prospect of future benefits. It is too bad; but you feel, I know, that it is worth putting up with, not only in view of possible advantages later, but because there is a technical discipline involved, however tedious. Yours affly,

G.S.

P.S. Am reading the proof of the R[ealm] of T[ruth] and making a lovely index. The book is partly senile: I am correcting a few bad passages; but I can say of it, like the Curate of the Bishops egg: “Parts of it, my lord, are excellent”.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Six, 1937-1940.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY.

Letters in Limbo ~ June 30, 1951

YoltonTo John W. Yolton
6, Via di Santo Stefano Rotondo
Rome. June 30, 1951

The organising and directive force in living bodies is biological, not mental: I call it the psyche, in the sense given to this word in Aristotle’s De Anima. When such a psyche reaches its full development, it generates a hypostatic light, sensation, emotion, or images, and the whole drift of passions and thoughts. To say that I separate mind from matter is therefore exquisitely contrary to the fact. Nor is it in any definite sense “happiness” that crowns this development: there is a sort of happiness in the fulfilment of any natural function; but usually there is much else at work as well in the psyche, and much sacrifice and renunciation is involved in any real moral peace. It may be society in general that is given up for a particular love, or vice versa; or it may be a general submission of everything definite in the routine of a busy life. I do not deny that for some psyches that last may be the least of evils; but I see no reason for thinking it the compulsory duty of everybody. And the desire to do good and improve the world is the active side of the natural tendency to establish an equilibrium between oneself and the world: it may serve you; you may serve it; perhaps both things can be realised at once, and then tutti contenti.

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

Letters in Limbo ~ June 29, 1946

!CBYBK1!!2k~$(KGrHqMOKiUEzU9b9+c(BNHVzTibDw~~0_1To Mary Potter Bush
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. June 29, 1946

Dear Mrs. Bush,

Another box of yours, despatched on May 4th, has now arrived, with two tins of tea, two pairs of stockings, very welcome now that summer makes the thick kind uncomfortable, and four cakes of Castile soap. Thanks to you and to a few other friends I am now well provided with everything for a long while; and perhaps before long the market here will be better provided, and our begging season may come to an end. Thank you very much, especially for the feminine tact that makes you choose soap and stockings, besides the tea that I have pleaded for from the beginning. I am now assured of these things, as well as of coffee-which I got on without very easily, yet which when it presents itself certainly makes the morning more cheerful and the brain more active.

Have you heard of an unattached German writer, Rudolf Steiner, who has written a lot of theosophical books? A friend has sent me his Das Christenthum als Mystische Thatsache which I find strangely like my last book. He is almost clear.

Yours sincerely, G Santayana

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

Letters in Limbo ~ June 28, 1945

To David Page
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. June 28, 1945

Did you ever see an article of mine on “Many Nations in one Empire” published in 1934 in a review that a young man named Otis, who seemed to have an independent mind, had founded, and which had, I believe, a short career? The review was entitled “The New Frontier” and printed at Exeter, New Hampshire. I have a copy of that article somewhere, but can’t find it. It has occurred to me that it might be resurrected, in part rather than as a whole, and might seem to have some actuality, while the fact that it was written more than ten years ago would clear it of all appearance of being provoked by any contemporary criticism or contemporary event. Criticisms and events pass away quickly: requiescant in pace. But my article considers ideal possibilities; observes that material cooperation and organisation are evidently demanded in the world: it seems to have been what both sides in this war have been proposing to establish. And, admitting that, I asked what power would be competent to direct such an economic reorganisation. And I suggested that Russia, if it really allowed each minor nation to preserve its Kultur, would be the best, because it had the requisite military tradition and capacity, with no political commitments beyond the economic sphere. Now, of course, when the U.S. have become the leading military and economic power, it might seem that it was for the U.S. to control the general international economy. It may so turn out; but I should not myself subscribe to it as an ideal, because “Democracy” is apparently to be imposed as a condition for partnership in the materially co-operative society. The Russians also talk of “friendly” politics being imposed as a condition; which I excluded in my reflections as incompatible with vital freedom in nations and in individuals. But if the Russians abandoned their sectarian propaganda, their “historical materialism” would prepare them to guide material interests fairly, for the moderate benefit and peace of all.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Seven, 1941-1947.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY.

Page 56 of 274

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