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Poems
Poems
Poems
Audiobook2 hours

Poems

Written by George Santayana

Narrated by LibriVox Community

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George Santayana was born in Spain, educated in Boston and taught at Harvard before returning to Europe to spend the last forty years of his life writing. He is primarily known as a philosopher, his five-volume The Life of Reason being his magnus opus. But he also wrote a successful novel, The Last Puritan, as well as plays, essays and poetry. During his time at Harvard he influenced many of his student including T.S. Eliot and Robert Frost.

Of these poems which he chose to collect together in this volume he says, "What I felt when I composed those verses could not have been rendered in any other form. Their sincerity is absolute, not only in respect to the thought which might be abstracted from them and expressed in prose, but also in respect to the aura of literary and religious associations which envelops them. . . . In one sense I think that my verses, mental and thin as their texture may be, represent a true inspiration, a true docility. . . . For as to the subject of these poems, it is simply my philosophy in the making." (From the Preface)

The collection consists of fifty sonnets, a few odes an a selection of miscellaneous poems. The volume concludes with as essay about Santayana by poet and literary critic Edmund Gosse who says of Santayana's poetry, "Only in solitude can soliloquies be appreciated, and Mr. Santayana is not an author for loud streets..." Summary by Larry Wilson
LanguageEnglish
PublisherLibriVox
Release dateAug 25, 2014
Author

George Santayana

George Santayana, born Jorge Augustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana (1863–1952), was a Spanish-American philosopher, novelist, poet, and essayist. He is best known for his witty aphorisms, especially the phrase, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Santayana was born in Spain, but was raised and educated in the United States. He attended Harvard College and later taught philosophy there. During this time he wrote many of his seminal philosophical works, including The Sense of Beauty, The Life of Reason, and The Realms of Being. In 1912, Santayana moved to Europe, where he devoted his life to writing both fiction and nonfiction.

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