One of the forthcoming volumes for The Santayana Edition is Volume 8: Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe. As a research assistant here at the Edition, part of my work involves doing various tasks to help develop many of the future volumes. For example, I have reviewed transcriptions, numbered 1200 microfilmed pages of letters from a university archive, searched for references to important people and concepts to be included in upcoming volumes, inventoried file cabinets to create a finding aid, and searched through the filing cabinets for material to be published in a volume.
Today (4/13/2016) I was tasked by Associate Editor, Kellie Dawson with finding a poem that Santayana had written entitled “On the Three Philosophical Poets.” This task was a bit tricky; there was more than one cabinet and file where the poem might be. Since she said the poem was mentioned and attached to a July 6th 1936 letter to John Wheelock, I decided that finding the letter would be the best way to locate the poem.[1] Initially I thought that finding the letter in the file with copies of Santayana’s letters would be simple, but as soon as I opened the drawer I remembered that the letters were not organized by date or the volume they pertain to.