Читать книгу Recently Discovered Letters of George Santayana. Cartas recién descubiertas de George Santayana онлайн
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After their college years, in the 1890s, Santayana and Loeser met several times in London. Santayana reports that his friend had become «very English, much to [his] taste»17 and that he was both vastly instructed and amused by Loeser’s «expert knowledge of how an English gentleman should dress, eat, talk, and travel.» Yet those meetings didn’t relieve Santayana of «the latent uneasiness [he] felt about [his] friend»: he actually suspected «a touch of madness in [Loeser’s] nature,»18 to such an extent that he wondered whether, when Loeser boasted of having two original works by Michelangelo in his collection, he was not indulging in wishful thinking. But no, the Michelangelos were authentic, and Loeser had got them cheap. He was a truly terrific collector.
It was in 1895, and with Loeser, that Santayana first visited Rome and Venice. Loeser turned out to be quite the ideal cicerone: «His taste was selective. He dwelt on a few things, with much knowledge, and did not confuse or fatigue the mind.»19 The first impressions upon arriving in Rome may have played a role in Santayana’s ultimate choice of residence: