November 17, 2023
Merton’s interest in books as a child gave hints of his potential as a writer. While he was born in France in 1915, his parents emigrated to the United States when Merton was almost two to avoid the war that was consuming Europe. After Merton’s mother died Merton’s grandfather (“Pop”) often took Merton to this office at the publisher Grosset and Dunlap where Merton wandered around the offices and showrooms filled with books. Often Merton settled into a leather chair and read whatever the company had published.
Years later, after his father brought Merton back to France, Merton continued to read books but now in French. He delighted in Dumas’s Les Trois Mousquetaires. Still later when he attended Oakam School in England his professors introduced him to Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Chaucer’s The Nun’s Priest’s Tale. While at Oakham he stayed with Tom Bennett, his Anglican godfather and friend of his father Owen, and his French wife, Iris, who introduced to him all manner of authors, musicians and artists.
On his own Merton discovered the romantic English poet William Blake. Merton exudes more than just high praise for the poet. Merton writes: “I think my love for William Blake had something in it of God’s grace. It is a love that has never died, and which has entered very deeply into the development of my life.” Blake, and his poetry, would, of course, become a central element to Merton’s understanding of the mystics and Merton selected Blake as the subject of his graduate thesis at Columbia University in New York City.
Later, at Columbia University, he met the Hindu monk Bramachari, who advised him to read his own religious traditions of mysticism rather than the Buddhist sacred literature. The monk said, “You should read St. Augustine’s Confessions and The Imitation of Christ [by Thomas à Kempis].” Merton realized there was much wisdom he had missed in the Christian tradition.
Oscar Wilde has remarked that there are three kinds of books: books to read, books to reread and books not to read at all. Perhaps it is time to reread Merton but which ones? Or perhaps for some, where to start reading?
Reflection
Merton said; “Both Christianity and Buddhism show that suffering remains inexplicable, most of all for the man who attempts to explain it in order to evade it….”
Conference in Calcutta [Kolkata], 1968. Quoted in America, July 13, 2012, “Thomas Merton and Dialogue with Buddhism,’ John A. Coleman.
Response
The question that arises is “What to do with suffering, specifically of others?”and how Merton’s writings might help.