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From 1948, when he wrote his first letters to Evelyn Waugh, who was editing The Seven Storey Mountain, until his death in 1968, Merton corresponded with writers around the world, developing an ever-widening circle of friends. Here collected in the fourth volume of Merton's correspondence are his letters to Czeslaw Milosz, Henry Miller, Walker Percy, Boris Pasternak, and others.
- Sales Rank: #1780785 in Books
- Published on: 1993-08
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.50" h x 6.50" w x 1.25" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 314 pages
Amazon.com Review
Though he lived in an enclosed order, Thomas Merton was the most sociable of monks by mail. His first letter in this ever-surprising volume is to Evelyn Waugh, who in 1948 was editing The Seven Storey Mountain for English publication. Recounting how his work runs a gantlet of religious censors before being further altered by his publishers, Merton adds, "And after about four years a book appears in print." Hence, he pleads, "I need criticism the way a man dying of thirst needs water." The paradoxes of his life are all here: his great faith, his frustration with earthly authority, his obligation to honesty, and his essential sophistication. This is the man who "read Decline and Fall and Vile Bodies over more than any other book except for Ulysses: I mean before coming here."
The Courage for Truth includes 20 years of Merton's correspondence with fellow writers, among them Czeslaw Milosz, Boris Pasternak, James Baldwin, and even Henry Miller. Over time Merton's order gave him increasing intellectual and political leeway--though never quite enough. In one letter, he assures Milosz: "You can say nothing about the Church that can shock me. If I stay with the Church it is out of a disillusioned love, and with a realization that I myself could not be happy outside, though I have no guarantee of being happy inside either. In effect, my 'happiness' does not depend on any institution or establishment. As for you, you are part of my 'Church' of friends who are in many ways more important to me than the institution."
From Publishers Weekly
Famed Trappist monk Thomas Merton corresponded with an extraordinary range of writers, among them Evelyn Waugh, Henry Miller, Jacques Maritain, Walker Percy and William Carlos Williams. He spoke out boldly against political oppression, social injustice, racism and nuclear weapons, and expressed solidarity with Boris Pasternak, Czeslaw Milosz and James Baldwin. His letters to Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal and to Argentine feminist Victoria Ocampo reflect his deep love of Latin American culture. Spanning the years from 1948 to Merton's death in 1968, this fourth volume of his correspondence shows the crystallization of his belief that speaking the truth is an obligation which ultimately brings persons of integrity into confrontation with power structures and vested interests. Highly articulate and quietly inspirational, these letters also testify to Merton's conviction that contemplation is the source from which all action should flow. Bochen is secretary of the International Thomas Merton Society.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
The fourth volume of Merton's correspondence, complementing The Hidden Ground of Love, 1985 (letters on religion and society), The Road to Joy, 1989 (letters to friends), and The School of Charity, 1990 (letters on monastic spirituality). It's now apparent that Merton, already celebrated as an autobiographer and Christian contemplative, was also one of the great American letter-writers of the century. His range is as vast as his adopted nation (he was born in France): God, jazz, civil rights, atomic weaponry, obedience, rebellion, etc. Ably edited by Bochen (Religious Studies/Nazareth College of Rochester), this collection consists of letters to other writers; the contents all postdate Merton's bestselling literary debut, The Seven Storey Mountain (1948). The first epistles, in fact, are addressed to Evelyn Waugh, who was assigned the task of trimming Mountain for British publication. Here, Merton is the eager apprentice at the mentor's feet (``I need criticism the way a man dying of thirst needs water''), but not above passing on clever ideas for novels or urging Waugh to recite the rosary. Next comes a compilation of letters to three Christian writers: Jacques Maritain, with whom Merton discusses the joys of the hermit life; Czeslaw Milosz, who questions the value of political action; and Boris Pasternak, to whom Merton reveals some dreams. A flurry of letters to Latin American writers, most of them obscure--Ernesto Cardenal, once a novice monk under Merton's guidance, is a notable exception-- invites glossing-over. The great grab bag comes last: missives to American correspondents like James Baldwin, Walker Percy, William Carlos Williams, and Henry Miller (the two balding guys chuckle over their physical likeness). Less jocular than The Road to Joy, less profound than The School of Charity--but, for all that, a well-rounded monument to a well-rounded man. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Most helpful customer reviews
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful.
Thanking God For Three Cent Stamps
By Thomas J. Burns
This is definitely not a Thomas Merton primer. It is the fourth in a series of collected correspondences, with this particular volume devoted to exchanges between the cloistered Catholic monk and man of letters [literally and figuratively] and a bevy of international writers, some famous, some obscure. It strikes me that this is a work for a rather limited readership. There is in truth very little exchanged in these letters about the art of writing per se and more about the meaning of the lives and trials of the writers themselves. Consequently, one would need to know a good deal about Merton for these letters to make sense, nor would it hurt to have a passing understanding of the place of Evelyn Waugh, Jacques Maritain, Ernesto Cardenal, Boris Pasternak, and Czeslaw Milosz, to cite some of the Merton correspondents.
Those who have read Merton's seven volume journal will not be surprised that these letters reveal to some degree Merton's double life: the loyal churchman who observes monastic rubrics to the letter while questioning the very credibility of visible church structure and its coziness with American pragmatism. There is a surprisingly lively exchange between Merton and the poet Clayton Eshleman, the one correspondent in this volume who seems to have put the monk on the defensive about his inner contradictions.
The majority of the letters are addressed to South American poets, particularly Ernesto Cardenal, who had been a novice under Merton at Gethsemanae. Merton, who experienced a religious conversion of sorts in Cuba before entering the Trappists, enjoyed a romantic ideal of life south of the United States, and his interest in Hispanic poetry and authors strikes the reader as part escapist and part anti-capitalist. One cannot help but smile at his frequently professed desire to join Cardenal's experimental island community, Our Lady of Solentiname, when in his journal he expresses near horror at the prospect of living in the jungle of South Carolina [Mepkin Abbey] where he would die among snakes and alligators.
Generally speaking, Merton's letters here serve three purposes. First, they allowed him to vent feelings and frustrations that the writer believed would be misunderstood or outright harmful if expressed in the context of his monastery. Or put another way, his literary correspondences proved to him that he was not swallowed whole by the monastic mystique. Second, Merton's correspondences to writers-many agnostic or of undefined religious persuasion-met his need to believe that his monastic secluded existence served some sort of spiritual and secular reform mission. As much as he denied it, Merton did indeed question the relevance of a purely solitary contemplative life in a powerful country, and he desperately needed to establish solidarity with those behind the Iron Curtain and under repressive political regimes. I believe Merton to be sincere in this regard, though on paper the sentiment appears fawning at times and he sounds like the classic Cadillac liberal.
And finally, Merton wrote letters to other writers because "Amazon.com" had not yet been invented. From his mountain hideaway Merton conducted a book and poetry exchange operation that actually provokes outright laughter. Consider that his mail was censored and sometimes withheld without his knowledge by superiors, that he wrote to countries with irregular postal service, that he did have access to several publishing houses, that some of his correspondents were as unfocused as he was, and that Xerox machines were not yet in general use. It is quite possible there are monks in heaven who can honestly claim that their life's work consisted of sealing envelopes and mimeographing for Father Louis. That one of Merton's monastery responsibilities included reforesting is truly a sign of God's sense of humor.
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