“Serious poetry, profound religion (Calvinism, for instance) are the joys of an unhappiness that confesses itself; but when a genteel tradition forbids people to confess that they are unhappy, serious poetry and profound religion are closed to them by that; and since human life, in its depths, cannot then express itself openly, imagination is driven for comfort into abstract arts, where human circumstances are lost sight of, and human problems dissolve in a purer medium.”—George Santayana, “The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy” (1911), reprinted in The Genteel Tradition: Nine Essays, edited by Douglas L. Wilson (1998)
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