The Letters of George Santayana Book Six, 1937—1940 The Works of George Santayana Volume V The Letters of George Santayana 6:3 To Charles Augustus Strong 2 January 1937 • Rome, Italy (MS: Rockefeller) Hotel Bristol, Rome Jan. 2, 1937 Dear Strong George and Margaret were here yesterday evening and gave me better news of the children. Johnny seems to be all right, the lump in the throat being declared imaginary–at least, if I understood what was said. I am going to see them at the Grand Hotel one of these day at 4 o’clock when they (and I) return from their outing. Margaret herself looked very well, much more natural than when I last saw her in the Piazza in Florence. I write to erase if possible any unpleasant impression caused by my reports. Glad you enjoyed Der Zauberberg. So did I, although I didn’t understand every word, and had to look some of them–when the sense mattered–in the dictionary bought to help me with Heidegger. There is a German translation of my novel “aus dem Amerikanischen.” Also, a Swedish translation. I ask myself why. Don’t they all read “American”? Yours ever G.S. 6:4 The Letters of George Santayana To Carl Sadakichi Hartmann 3 January 1937 • Rome, Italy (MS: Riverside) C/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, Jan. 3, 1937 Dear Mr. Hartmann It is very pleasant to know that my slightly farcical sketch of Boston in the 1870’s fall in more or less with your own memories. Although I have now lived for two thirds of the year in Rome almost since the end of the war, my contacts with Italy and Italians are quite external, most of the few people I see are Americans, and nothing has come to erase those early impressions: on the contrary, I suppose time and distance help to frame them in and make them seem more interesting than they were when actual. Besides, although this book has been revised and put in shape in recent years, much of it was written long ago—bits as far back as the early 1890’s—so that I had, sometimes, the living model before my eyes. I am pleased, too, that you should think Oliver worth knowing. His father is the sort of person that was likely to be one’s friend, or at least a familiar figure in one’s world; but the son is a harder personage to paint. The best of him was invisible. I am glad also to gather from your letter that, apart from your accident, you have been “roving about the world, often I don’t doubt in pleasant places like Washington. Yours sincerely GSantayana The Letters of George Santayana 6:5 To George Sturgis 15 January 1937 • Rome, Italy (MS: Houghton) Hotel Bristol, Rome Jan. 15, 1937. Dear George In regard to the royalty report from Scribner, I never suspected any fraud or illegality. What I felt was a certain sharpness in their business methods, not entirely for the first time. But as I said before, this is balanced now by Mr. Wheelock’s special friendliness and assiduity in looking after my books. He is taking great pains with the big edition of my collected works. Mercedes seems to have returned to Bayona near Vigo. In addition to the £120 she has already received from me, I have sent her a fresh cheque for £50, as communications are slow, though they now seem to be regular from Italy to the Nationalist part of Spain*: but I don’t think I can reach Madrid from here directly, and I don’t want to send money that might be confiscated by that government. We /iwill let the good Doctor Morejón wait, until the ground is at least partly cleared. [across page two] * I can perfectly well go on sending her money. No need of charging it to her account. She will need what you are keeping for refurnishing after the war. [end across] My Christmas present to the Sastre children reached Rafael in Avila safely. I have not yet heard from him directly but Luis has sent his thanks, and a longish letter has come from Eduardo, Pepe’s eldest son. He is in the army; Roberto also, who has been wounded before Madrid in the foot, and still needs crutches. Their brother-in-law, Ita’s husband, is also at the front. Josefina’s husband is at his post of government attorney or prosecutor (fiscal) at Lugo in Galicia. The tone of Eduardo’s letter is very enthusiastic and optimistic: but my sluggish blood refuses to be warmed, and I am doubtful of the issue, although in the international direction there seems to be some improvement and less danger of complications. Everybody is too terribly afraid of the next great war to go very far in the direction that would lead to it. I am reading my friend Bertrand Russell’s little book Which Way to Peace? with much of which I agree. Yours affly G.S. 6:6 The Letters of George Santayana The Letters of George Santayana 6:7 To Daniel MacGhie Cory 17 January 1937 • Rome, Italy (MS postcard: Columbia) Hotel Bristol, Rome, 17–I–’37 Janus hasn’t turned up; he is apparently double-faced, after all and has walked the other way.—I am finishing Chap. X of the R. of T. This makes four more chapters which I might send you to be typed, if that can be done conveniently; or we might wait until the remaining two chapters are ready, which I hope will be before you return to England from here. You might then take the rest of the book with you. This will do, unless you think it would be easier to revise the chapters now ready, if they were type-written at once. I am in no hurry about the revision, however. The point is to get the MS. done G.S. To August H. Wagner 17 January 1937 • Rome, Italy (MS postcard: Scheuermann) Hotel Bristol, Rome, 17–I–’37 In my Reason in Religion, in the chapters on A Future Life and on Ideal Immortality, you will find all I have to say on the subject of your letter. You are free, as far as I am concerned, to quote from those chapters.— The only new light that I have seen since that now distant date comes from the German philosopher Heidegger, who defines death (which can be nothing for experi- ence) as the wholeness of life. Death is only the fact that, like a 6:8 The Letters of George Santayana piece of music, a life has a particular character and limits. You will find this elaborately set forth, on idealistic grounds, in Heidegger’s works. Yours truly GSantayana To Daniel MacGhie Cory 25 January 1937 • Rome, Italy (MS: Columbia) Hotel Bristol, Rome. Jan. 25, 1937 Dear Cory Definitely, no Janus, but instead, oh, surprise! STRONG! A telegram on Thursday evening ordering me to come to see him the next day at the ^ ^ Minerva. Pleasant interview. Tired of Cannes: days and days sitting in the same room, sick of reading. Never going there again! Margaret & George, here with the children. Thought he would pay them a visit, and then return home. Reconciled to Italy. Has double the income of last year, and is going to order Dino to keep the furnace at full blast. Tutti contenti. Paulo maiora canamus. (Do you catch that? Stock Virgil quotation: “Let us sing higher things for a little while”.) 9 words for 3 In saying Taine, you show great perception. I first came upon Taine in my Sophomore year when we had, under Wm James, his De l’Intelligence for a text-book. It was not that that had any influence on me. I hardly remember the book, but vaguely believe that it treats of “ideas” as if they were atoms or chemical elements that got shaken up and clustr/ered together in the brain. But afterward—still, I think, in my undergraduate days—I came upon his books on Art in Greece, Art in the Renaissance, and afterwards, what is really splendid, his Ancien Régime. If you join that with Balzac, for the Restauration, you get precisely the method and the ideal of description and understanding that loomed before me when I wrote The Life of Reason. To see the thoughts and institutions of men in The Letters of George Santayana 6:9 their natural historical and psychological background. To realize that man is an imaginative animal, that his ideas are biological products, that his genius and happiness are momentary harmonies reached between his organism and the world. I still think that is right, and shouldn’t call the presupposition of the Life of Reason superficial: but the style is, often, verbose and academic, satisfied with stock concepts “Experience”, “ideals”, etc. and I move too much on the plane of reported opinions or imagined feelings, without the actual documents sufficiently in mind. Of course, I was more ignorant and my thoughts less thor- oughly digested than they are now. Your preference for my later books shows that you like red meat. When you say Spinoza, however, besides being too flattering, the compari- son is not biographically so true. My Sponizism is in the Life of Reason, less obviously, perhaps, yet more dominantly, than in Realms of Being. These, as you know, are not at all like Spinoza’s attributes. They are not aspects or forms of the same reality, absolutely parallel and co-extensive.