Category: LETTERS Page 266 of 274

To 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.

To 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.

To Mary Potter Bush
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. June 29, 1946

Dear Mrs. Bush,

Another box of yours, despatched on May 4^th, 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.

To Guy Murchie
Chateau Frontenac.
Quebec, Canada. June 27, 1896

I can’t resist the impulse to write you a line from here, because I am thinking of you, wishing you were here, and wondering where in the world you are. If your father sold the mine in Newfoundland and you bought a farm in New Brunswick, why are you in Newfoundland and not chez toi, if, as they tell me now, you are in Newfoundland? I give it up: but of course it doesn’t matter if in some way you are finding what will ultimately satisfy you. Let me know soon what is up, for now when I pass the sad shores of Newfoundland I shall never know whether to gaze upon them with moist eyes and wave a metaphorical handkerchief in that direction, or whether the Mecca lies rather behind my back. You see, in spite of this then pursuit of vain knowledge, even the faithful need a little geography. We sail from here tomorrow, Sunday, morning. I like the place. The people are people. These are the long-sought peasants of America. I think it might be pleasant to live here: it would be like Europe, in the country.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book One, [1868]-1909.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Collection of Guy Murchie, Jr.