Putting the Right Quote in His Mouth

I came across a delightful quote today reading Current Book No. 1. The quote was attributed to George Santayana (1863-1952). It said: “There is no God and Mary is His Mother.” Tell you the truth, that didn’t sound like Santayana to me; but then my memories of that gentle philosopher go too many years back. This one has wit, to be sure, but there is also bite. So on returning home from Jeffrey’s Honda, where, believe it or not such delights visit me at right regular intervals while waiting, I turned to Bartlett’s—and amazed actually to find the quote attributed to Santayana. But the attribution, while assigned to the philosopher, was actually to the poet Robert Lowell (1917-1977), and specifically to a poem in Lowell’s Life Studies titled “For George Santayana.” So the search didn’t end there. Finally I found the poem and herewith reproduce its first stanza:

In the heydays of ‘forty-five,

bus-loads of souvenir-deranged

G.I.’s and officer-professors of philosophy

came crashing through your cell, 

puzzled to find you still alive,

free-thinking Catholic infidel,

stray spirit, who’d found 

the Church too good to be believed.

Later I used to dawdle

past Circus and Mithraic Temple

to Santo Stefano grown paper-thin

like you from waiting. . . .

There at the monastery hospital,

you wished those geese-girl sisters wouldn’t bother

their heads and yours by praying for your soul:

“There is no God and Mary is His Mother.”

Now I’ve been a writer, a poet—and also an editor. So I have sympathies for the editor of Bartlett’s who decided to stick this one in—and under Santayana. Irresistible. Particularly to certain Catholics of the damaged sort like me…