Category: LETTERS Page 269 of 274

To Henry Ward Abbot
C/o Brown Shipley & Co. 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Rome. June 10, 1931

Dear Harry,

Many thanks for introducing me to Miss Millay. I had seen her name, and possibly (if she ever wrote for The Dial) I may have read some piece of hers before: but all was lost in that terrible bog of false poetry into which I hate to step. Poetry, in the sense of versified passionate eloquence, seems to be a thing of the past. But I see that Miss Millay takes the bull by the horns and dresses up her poetry in the magnificent ruff and pearls of Queen Elizabeth. It is a wonderful performance: very rarely did I feel that the sawdust of modern diction was trickling out of the beautiful fancy-dress doll. The movement, and in particular the way of repeating and heightening a word, like a theme in music, are unexampled, as far as I know, in any contemporary performance. When it comes to the thought or the morality, just because it is somewhat genuine and modern, there is less nobility: a woman who was really in love and gave herself too freely to a lover who, liking her well enough at first, got tired of her in the end. The case demands repentance and sublimation, both of which Miss Millay avoids, in her evidently pragmatic philosophy. But without sublimation or repentance the feeling could not rise to the level of the versification. It is like very good Latin versification, such as is still occasionally produced by the well-educated.

I am at work on The Last Puritan and often wish I could show you a passage and ask you if it seems to you true to the life—to the inner life especially—of our old-fashioned friends.

I agree that the last years of life are the best, if one is a philosopher.

Yours sincerely, G.S.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Four, 1928–1932.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY.

To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Hotel Bristol
Rome. June 9, 1937

At first blush what you say about S. not having “yet” written “his letter” to Harvard is astonishing. I had supposed that you were named in the bequest itself, as an obligatory first holder of the Fellowship. Perhaps this was found irregular by the lawyers, and a letter of recommendation substituted, and not written! On reflection, however, the thing seems less alarming. Even if S. didn’t write the letter－(and I expect he will) you are now a recognized free lance in philosophy, as all philosophers ought to be, and just the sort of person indicated in S’s bequest, and also in mine; and I (if living) and other persons might exert some influence, if the Harvard authorities didn’t think of you of their own accord. Pity S. didn’t leave his Fellowship to Columbia, where he was professor and where you have friends. And more the pity that he didn’t leave the income of the money to you for life, and then the capital to some damned University. Besides, who knows if by that time Capitalism may have disappeared, with all Fellowships and endowed Universities? We know how our plans begin, but not how they will end.

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 Corliss Lamont
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. June 8, 1950

The argument from the simplicity of the transcendental ego is good, I think, but does not touch the “soul,” the psyche, or the person－and the crowning argument in the Phaedo about the number 3 being immortally odd (which you don’t dwell on in your summary of the arguments there) is also good but tautological: Socrates conceived as existing can never be (conceived as) dead; but it has nothing to do with time. This play between time and eternity in the more intelligent discussions of the subject has always interested and exasperated me. You have noticed, I see, what I think about Dante’s people in Purgatory and Paradise (in Hell they are more repetitions or continuations of their life on earth) that they are only the truth or the lesson of their existence in time, and evidently will never do anything or learn anything new. They are living monuments to themselves. But Dante could never have acknowledged that this is all that salvation can be, or union with God, who is non-temporal, because a material “other life” is required by the Jewish-Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh.

Has the belief in heaven been more often a longing not to live, than to live forever? I almost think so. And you know the verses of St. Theresa and St. John of the Cross: “Muero porque no muero”.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Eight, 1948-1952.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: Unknown.

To George Sturgis
Paris. June 7, 1922

Thank you for your letters of April 30, May 15, and May 24, the first of which crossed with my last to you. Please give Josephine my love and tell her I am sorry Arthur’s health is so deeply affected; but he has youth and no doubt courage, as well as good care, to help him through. As to your aunt Susie’s outburst on this subject, it is nothing to what you would hear everyday in that household. They live in an atmosphere of such intense partisanship in politics and religion that all the patriotism, self-sacrifice, or good policy and insight which they would praise on their own side seem to them criminal on the part of the enemy. Your aunt Susie is intelligent, and ought to be above this sort of thing; but more than intelligent she is, and has always been, enthusiastic and passionate. It has been her charm; but it has driven her to exaggerate her own allegiances and force herself to defend them in exaggerated language. In her heart she doubts and sees that it is, or may be, all make-believe; but this only intensifies her determination to blind herself and to bluff it out. It is very sad, because her convictions have not really brought her any happiness. She was seventy years old yesterday: you must overlook this aggressiveness in her language now and then, which is prompted by old scores which she has against things in general. She is hitting back with such weapons as remain to an old woman. I wish human nature and old age were more beautiful.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Three, 1921-1927.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.

To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. June 6, 1947

Did I tell you that I have got a volume of Camus that I long ago asked for and one of plays by Sartre from Paris? They are clever but nasty. Everything now seems to be rotten.

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.