To Richard Colton Lyon
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6,
Rome. May 8, 1949
The trouble will be at the end, when all the tolerant and sympathetic appreciation of each religion will be in great danger of one of two disasters: either, a quick emotional proof that one of the religions is absolutely sound, if you don’t remember the others; or else a sweeping conclusion that the history of religion itself is the true religion to end religion. I leave it to you to suggest here, as if it were well known, that salvation lies in the fact that religion is poetry and poetry is truer, in a Pickwickian sense, than science: for in regard to matter it is not more symbolic or metaphorical, and in regard to moral allegiance it is superior to worldliness.
My old friend and secretary, Daniel Cory, of whom I believe I spoke to you, is now in Rome and has been cramming me on the subject of modern concentrated poetry, especially T. S. Eliot; and I have reread, or read for the first (5 or 6) times all his poems except the plays. I think I have made progress, and if my great but yet unmet friend, Robert Lowell, (like you before you came to Rome) makes me a visit in the autumn, as I hope, I shall be better able to get a C in my examination. Pray for me when the time comes. There is a special patron for people passing examinations, Saint Expeditus, a young martyr.
Don’t overwork: it’s like overeating.
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.