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Almacén del padre de Loeser/Loeser’s father establishment

Daniel Pinkas

Among the countless challenges facing the truly monumental and still ongoing publication of the critical edition of The Works of George Santayana, none could have been greater than that of gathering, annotating, and contextualizing the more than three thousand letters that Santayana wrote throughout his life to his family, friends, colleagues, publishers and admirers. This collection ranges from 1868 (a letter to his sisters when he was only five) to 1952, the year of his death. The outcome of this stupendous task is housed in the eight books of letters, edited by the late William Holzberger, that constitute Volume 5 of the critical edition, published between 2003 and 2008.

At the outset of his introduction to The Letters of George Santayana, Holzberger provides an answer to the question: «Who was George Santayana?» that can hardly be improved upon as a succinct presentation of the author:

George Santayana (1863-1952) was one of the most learned and cultivated men of his time. Born in Spain and educated in America, he taught philosophy at Harvard University for twenty-two years before returning permanently to Europe at age forty-eight to devote himself exclusively to writing. He knew several languages, including Latin and Greek. Besides his mastery of English, he was at home in Spanish and French (though he modestly down-played his knowledge of those languages). As a young man, Santayana studied Italian in order to read Dante, Cavalcanti, Michelangelo, and other Platonizing poets in their own language; and, in later life, as a result of his long residence in Rome, he acquired facility in speaking Italian. While a student in Germany during 1886-88, Santayana lived with Harvard friends in an English-speaking boardinghouse in Berlin, thereby missing an opportunity to learn to speak German properly. However he could read the original versions of German literary and philosophical works. He also knew the world, having lived for protracted periods in Spain, America, England, France, and Italy. A true cosmopolitan, Santayana nevertheless always regarded himself a Spaniard and kept his Spanish passport current. He possessed many talents and had a multifaceted personality, and each of those facets is reflected vividly in his letters. World famous as a philosopher, he was also a poet, essayist, dramatist, literary critic, autobiographer, and author of a best-selling novel.²