Recently Discovered Letters of George Santayana

The concerted efforts of three respected Santayana scholars have coalesced in this book that includes the transcription of the philosopher’s letters to Charles A. Loeser and to Albert von Westenholz. Daniel Pinkas discovered and analyzed them only recently and they are published here for the first time, in English and Spanish, translated by Daniel Moreno and presented by José Beltrán. The volume comprises the letters Santayana sent to his two friends over five long decades, spanning the nineteenth and twentieth century. This collection of epistolary writings constitutes a surprising mosaic-like jewel made up of a constellation of life episodes that pulsate in each and every letter and resonate suggestively in the echo-chamber of Santayana’s body of work. Pictures and books, persons and places, landscapes and voyages. So many comings and goings, so many departures and arrivals, crossing countries on trains and oceans on ships, staying in hotels and university residences, stopping off at memorable cafés, giving lectures here and there, reading and writing incessantly. By partaking, under the philosopher’s guidance, in the experience these pages offer, we will somehow make our own Santayana’s words at the end of these letters: ‘I saw things I shall never forget’.