José Ortega y Gasset - James Bryant Conant, with W. Warder Norton as Intermediary. Correspondence (1935-1937). Part One

Abstract

In 1934, the President of Harvard University James Bryant Conant invited José Ortega y Gasset as Godkin Lecturer. In the fall of 1936, the philosopher fled from Madrid during the Spanish Civil War to settle in a small town in the southeast of France at the Alps' foot. In the process of recovering from an unfinished biliary disease which kept him prostrated in bed, and as a result of the economic scarcity secondary to the fled, Ortega and his family were getting through challenging moments. W. Warder Norton, Ortega's editor in New York, got in contact first with the Spanish philosopher, and then with Helene Weyl, Ortega's translator to German, who a couple of years before had moved to New Jersey fleeing the Nazi regime. Norton and Weyl worked together to remind James B. Conant that that moment would be the best to renew the invitation to the Spanish philosopher as Godkin Lecturer. President Conant agreed and invited Ortega for the following spring. The letters offered in this issue tell that story. The documents quoted and/or reproduced in here are held in the Harvard University Archives and the José Ortega y Gasset - Gregorio Marañón Foundation.