The Letters of George Santayana, Book Five, 1933-1936 (review)

226 Book Reviews The Letters of George Santayana, Book Five, 1933-1936 Edited and with an introduction by William G. Holzberger Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003 lxxvii + 609 pp. The legitimacy of interest in the less formal output of great writers — letters, diaries, e-mail, and telephone conversations — is hardly self-evident. Woody Allen did a reductio on the interest with his article on the collected laundry lists of the eminent thinker Hans Metterling.1 Proust drew a sharp distinction between an artist's work and an artist's private life, dismissing the latter, which is likely what letters reveal, as of litde or no importance, at best.2 W.H. Auden thought that letters should be destroyed, certainly not published, making an exception for an Oscar Wilde, whose life itself is an art form.3 It might be thought that the letters of the great philosophers would rise above mundane concerns and would provide statements and clarifications of philosophical views. To some extent this is true, and I will return to the point shortly. But to a considerable extent it is not true. As do other philosophers, Santayana in his letters gives lots of detail about where he is living, how his body is functioning, what he is eating, what he thinks about his friends and other people, and so on. If we want to make a moral assessment of Santayana then all this is relevant, but that seems more God's concern than ours. If we are simply interested in such things, then reading the letters definitely has a point, but should we be interested in such things? Suppose we had a shorter volume (one would probably do), the letters of Santayana with obvious or even possible philosophical import. Even then the reasons for our interest are not entirely obvious. There would be a reason if knowing the author's intentions in writing the work, intentions that the letters might reveal, would help us in understanding what the sentences in the work really mean. This is possible but there are two reasons why what we glean from the letters can be misleading. In the first place, letters tend to be less formal, less carefully thought out and presented. As Santayana says, "Letters are not textbooks "; he would not want to defend their "casual phrases" (p. 326). In the second place, the author may not know all that clearly before the event what he or she wants to say, and after the event there may be a concern with damage control, with spin-doctoring, with tailoring a message to specific audiences. Holzberger encourages doubt when he writes "Private letters usually represent the most spontaneous and unguarded form of written expression" (p. xlv). This can be true, and it is plausible in this case if Holzberger is correct in saying "Santayana probably never intended his correspondence to be published" (p. 430). Trying to understand a philosophical work in the light of more or less casual and ephemeral letters is unlikely to be a good idea. But Holzberger's claim Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society Winter, 2005, Vol. XLI, No. 1 Book Reviews 227 about Santayana's intentions seems implausible. Many authors intend or at least expect their letters to be published and plan accordingly. I find it very hard to believe on general grounds that any eminent writer by Santayana's time would not have such expectations. Moreover, on October 5, 1936, Santayana writes to Benjamin P. Schwartz who presumably had raised the possibility of publishing letters: "It seems to me that the time to publish any letters of mine that may be destined for that honour has not quite arrived. Wait until I am dead" (p.387). He then goes on to give Schwartz some useful information as to where letters may be found. So I think we should regard Santayana as knowing that his letters were not likely to be read only by the recipient. If, like me, you are a devotee of intertextuality theory there is no problem at all. There is no text with privileged status. The letters provide more text and we are always grateful for more. But not all people are...