To Robert Traill Spence Lowell Jr.
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. April 28, 1951
My father—thinking of painting—used to say: “Imitate and you will be imitated.” This may now be true of the artists of each decade, but not on the grand historical scale. Greece, Santa Sofia, and all south and east of Rome, is a ruin, so that it can no longer be imitated, or even weighed in the same balance with what we can attempt.
. . . Ezra Pound has written me quite intelligibly and in a placid mood, on receiving my book. I am very glad I sent it to him.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Eight, 1948–1952. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.