Читать книгу Recently Discovered Letters of George Santayana. Cartas recién descubiertas de George Santayana онлайн

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While reading these texts one is easily transported to the thinker’s silent space as he reads or takes notes in the solitude of his study, and when the writer describes the urban landscape of the big cities, the noise and increasing bustle of the streets can almost be perceived. As we read these texts, of admirable plasticity and visual power, we experience a passage through different atmospheres, some denser and some lighter, where the aroma of the classical pervades contemporary experiences and moments, as when he visits the grape harvest in Avila and associates it with the lifestyle of The Georgics. The letters also seem to give us access to a world full of evocations and adventures —adventures pertaining to the realms of intelligence and reason— through the primacy of names that reverberate and stimulate our imagination: those of legendary ships (“I sail in the ‘Lusitania’”, “I sail… in the ‘Kaiser Wilhelm II’”, “my passage is taken in the ‘Kaiserin Auguste Victoria’”), those of always temporary residences (Colonial Club, King’s College, Hotel Manin, Hotel du Quai Voltaire, Grove Street…), the almost fictional titles of philosophical societies, or those toponyms so expressive of far away places and distant countries which paradoxically make us feel the world as a domestic space.