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George Santayana, 1863-1952
Born Madrid, Spain
While teaching at Harvard University from 1889 to 1912, the philosopher, poet, and cultural critic George Santayana influenced a rising generation of American leaders. By the age of forty-eight, however, frustration with the "thistles of trivial and narrow scholarship" prompted Santayana to leave the academy and devote the next four decades to European travel and writing. In numerous books and essays, he delved into aspects of philosophy, history, politics, literature, and religion. Yet he is best remembered for trenchant aphorisms, such as "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Santayana was nearly blind and just six months from death when George Biddle visited him in Rome and made the drawing on which this etching is based. Displeased with the result, Santayana commented, "You have given me an ill-natured and unhappy look. I am neither." Biddle commented wryly in his diary, "Even the greatest philosophers can be vain."
George Biddle, 1952 |