Commentary: Would Santayana take it back?

By Joe Queenan

George Santayana was sitting in his stately, well-appointed Cambridge home when the housekeeper announced he had visitors. Seconds later, Mrs. Hudson ushered three oddly garbed men into the parlor, where he greeted them with sherry and cheroots.

"We'll cut right to the chase, Mr. Santayana," the tallest of the three, one Jared Polanski, said. "We're visitors from the 21st century, and we've come back in time to ask you for a huge favor."

"So H.G. Wells was right about time travel?" Santayana asked. "Or was that Jules Verne?"

"Well, mostly Wells, but Verne was definitely in the ballpark," the man replied. "In any case, we belong to a special team that gets sent back into The Past to try to prevent misfortunes from occurring in The Future. If you get my drift."

"I do," said the much-admired philosopher and essayist. "Tell me how I can be of assistance."

The second of the visitors, Travis O'Callaghan, now spoke up: "Over the course of your life, you will become an esteemed and beloved public figure, ultimately penning such classics as The Realms of Being and Scepticism and Animal Faith."

"That's wonderful," said Santayana. "Please continue."

"One day, you will write the immortal sentence, 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.' "

Santayana was impressed: "That's a good line," he told his guests. "When will I say that?"

"Somewhere around April 1904," Polanski replied. "It will soon become your most favorite saying. It will become such a popular aphorism that it will become a cliché. A mind-numbing cliché. An unbearable cliché. In some quarters, a hated cliché. By the time the 21st century rolls around, no hack journalist or politician will be able to talk about current events without citing it. It will be on the tip of every nitwit's lips."

Santayana did not take offense. He knew whereof they spoke: "You mean it will become incredibly annoying, like 'It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness'? That sort of thing?"

"Bingo," said Polanski. "It will become such a maddening, ubiquitous, insufferable cliché that no one will be able to pick up a newspaper or magazine without seeing it in print. It will drive thinking people like us mad. If there were some way to ban the expression, we'd do it. Some way to impose the death penalty on any journalist who used it."

"That seems a bit extreme," said the future author of The Last Puritan.

"It does, I understand that. But take it from me, this expression just sucks the life out of every conversation," Polanski noted.

"It makes it impossible to think," added O'Callaghan. "It's like 'It is what it is' or 'It's all good.' It just stops a conversation dead in its tracks."

"We're not blaming you," Polanski pointed out. "'Those who cannot remember the past' is a wonderful expression, a truly brilliant insight. It's just that ..."

"It got way overused," said his partner. "Every discussion of the past comes back to that same phrase. It just annoys the hell out of everybody."

Santayana thought over what he was hearing: "Have you fellows done this with anyone else?"

"Dozens of people. We got William Butler Yeats to agree not to write the line 'The center will not hold.' We got Oscar Wilde to agree not to write 'When good Americans die, they go to Paris. When bad Americans die, they go to America.' "

"How much persuading?" Santayana asked.

Polanski pointed to the third man, who now produced a truncheon, a bowie knife, a stiletto, a strip of piano wire, an electric saw, three baseball bats, and a pair of well-used brass knuckles. "We'd prefer to do it the easy way," O'Callaghan said. "But if we have to do it the hard way, so be it."

Santayana could see that he was backed into a corner. His visitors seemed absolutely determined to prevent him from ever writing or uttering the phrase that had made him immortal. "Just out of curiosity, what do I get out of this?" he asked.

"A $1,000 stipend and a solemn promise that your other famous expressions will remain intact," Polanski replied. "In fact, we'll make a concerted effort to get them cited more often by the leading lights of our era: noted intellectuals, esteemed luminaries, captains of industry, keen observers of the human condition, perhaps even stand-up guys, men of the people and working-class heroes, which is something to be."

"What other things did I say?" Santayana asked. "What's my second-most famous expression?"

The two men exchanged glances. "Well ... your second-most famous aphorism is 'Only the dead have seen the end of war.' "

"That's it?" said Santayana, miffed and crestfallen. "That's the second-most famous thing I ever said?"

The men looked down. They nodded.

"I'm a one-trick pony? I'm like Nathan Hale or Stephen Decatur, people who said just one thing they're remembered for? Is that it?"

Polanski nodded.

"You're the proverbial one-hit wonder," he said. "Mind you, it was a big hit."

"But now you want to simply kick away my one chance for immortality?"

"Not exactly," said O'Callaghan. "If you agree not to write 'Those who cannot ... ,' we'll let you have your choice of 'It ain't over till the fat lady sings,' 'Que sera, sera,' or 'Whatever goes around comes around.' "

"Who said those?"

"It doesn't matter. If you agree never to write 'Those who cannot remember the past,' etc., we're authorized to let you write 'The longest journey begins with a single step' or 'Today is the first day of the rest of your life' almost a century before anyone else thinks of them."

"You'd be helping humanity," said Polanski. "You have no idea how annoying that phrase is."

Santayana stroked his chin. "Gee, can I have a day or two to think it over?" he asked. "This is all kind of sudden."

"No," said the man in the corner, who had previously been silent. "You've heard your options. Now make up your mind. We have three more stops to make. Mark Twain. René Descartes. Aesop."

Santayana pondered the proposal. Then he went over to his desk, opened the top drawer, pulled out a pistol and shot the third man, the big oaf. Polanski and O'Callaghan looked on in horror.

"This is about the fifteenth time this year this nonsense has happened. Time travelers stop by and ask people like me not to write aphorisms we subsequently became famous for. Instead of going back and preventing the First World War from happening, or warning Custer about the Little Big Horn, you clowns pull stunts like this. You guys really tick me off."

He now shot the two remaining time travelers and summoned the maid. "Fetch Caleb and Jedediah and bury them in the cellar," he said, "like all the others."

"Very good, sir," said Mrs. Hudson. "Sounds like yet another case of 'We know not the day nor the hour.' "

"You got that right, babe," said George Santayana. "Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee."

Joe Queenan is the author, most recently, of "One for the Books." He wrote this for the Weekly Standard.