To Cyril Coniston Clemens
Hotel Bristol
Rome. Christmas Eve, 1938
My dear Clemens,
All you do and say seems to illustrate a theory which, in my intention, applies only to the last and highest reaches of the Spiritual life, and which I myself am incapable of practising. The truth no longer interests you unless you can turn it into a pleasing fiction. This interview with me I suppose is the same of which, years ago, you sent me a rough draft, where I suggested some corrections in view of that lower and servile criterion, truth.¹ But probably in the interval the force of inspiration has been again at work, and you have produced a sheer poem.
. . . .
I return your Foreword, as I keep no files, the extreme modesty of my apartment (it’s not very cheap) precludes anything but a waste-paper basket.
I am at work on my last volume of formal philosophy, The Realm of Spirit; but if life lasts even longer, I daresay I shall find it impossible not to keep on writing something or other.
Yours sincerely,
G Santayana
1. Cyril Clemens, George Santayana: An American Philosopher in Exile, with a foreword by Joseph F. Thorning, S.J. (Webster Groves, Mo.: International Mark Twain Society, 1937). Proofs of this six-page pamphlet, containing Santayana’s handwritten corrections, are in the Perkins Library of Duke University.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Six, 1937-1940. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: William R. Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham NC