"Introduction" by Robert Inchausti
Citation
Inchausti, Robert. “Introduction.” Echoing Silence: Thomas Merton on the Vocation of Writing, by Thomas Merton, edited by Robert Inchausti, New Seeds, 2007.
Quotes
The object of writing is to grow a personality which in the end enables one to transcend art. — Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar
- species: #quote
- themes: writing, Thomas Merton
“The artist enters into himself in order to work. But the mystic enters into himself, not in order to work, but to pass through the center of his soul and lose himself in the mystery and secrecy and infinite, transcendent reality of God living and working within him.” — Thomas Merton, The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton
Collations
Merton's initial purpose for writing
Thomas Merton began writing as a teenager in an effort to discover who he was and what he believed.
Writing brought Merton to asceticism
But in the process of writing his Joycean novels and poems, the young Merton transformed himself into the virtual opposite of what he intended to become—moving through the demanding integrity of art into the even more demanding integrity of Christian asceticism.
He converted to Catholicism in 1938 and joined a Trappist order in 1941.
Merton gave up writing as he entered the monastery
When Merton entered the monastery, he thought he had turned his back on the literary life forever. He sent his unpublished manuscripts back to his former college professor Mark Van Doren, fully expecting to write little, if anything, ever again.
Merton continued writing while in the monastery
He continued to write poetry in the monastery as a morning meditation, and he was given writing assignments by the abbot.
One of his autobiographical essays, blossomed into the international best seller The Seven Storey Mountain (1948).
And so Merton continued to write religious devotions, journals, and poetry well into the 1950s—exploring the existential dimensions of Thomist theology and the experience of contemplation. The signature book from this period was his devotional classic Seeds of Contemplation.
Soon Merton was corresponding with a host of influential contemporary artists and thinkers
As Merton succeeded as a writer, he felt writing was incompatible with asceticism
And yet despite his success as a writer, or perhaps because of it, Merton became more troubled than ever by the seeming incompatibility of his literary life with his vocation as a monk.
“The artist enters into himself in order to work. But the mystic enters into himself, not in order to work, but to pass through the center of his soul and lose himself in the mystery and secrecy and infinite, transcendent reality of God living and working within him.” (LE 350)
Reading the literature of mystics convinced Merton that writing could be complementary with asceticism
But after reading the literature of mystics, particularly Saint John of the Cross, Merton came to see that the mystic and artist were not mutually exclusive callings.
The work of the the artist, like the work of the peasant, can lead to the fullness of Being.
Merton transformed a contemplative culture critic in the 1960s, bridging the gap between sacred and secular
As the sixties unfolded, Thomas Merton was changing, unpacking his mind and shedding whatever false piety he might have acquired as a cloistered monk.
His book of social criticism Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (1966) signaled his full transformation from a mere Catholic apologist to a contemplative culture critic whose essays built a bridge from the sacred to the secular and from the modern to the millennial mind.
The last years of Merton's life
The last four years of his life, Merton lived alone in a hermitage in the woods and continued his dialogues with different religious and intellectual traditions. This last phase was cut short by his accidental death in Bangkok in 1968.
Merton's evolution as a writer and ascetic
Thomas Merton progressed from an inwardly divided modernist to a stylistic innovator who used language reflexively to construct a critique of itself.
Merton never really left the literary life behind, but he did see through its pretensions from the far side of the monastery wall, and this, in the end, allowed him to grow a personality (his presence as a person) that in the end allowed him to transcend art and narrow sectarianism.
The center of gravity of Merton's work and life
And though he moved in and out of particular interests, phases, roles, and themes, what is most consistent—what defines his attitude, orientation, style, and contribution—is his perennial return to origins, to emptiness, and to God.
Merton's work popularized contemplation through writing
In the process, he translated the “insider” speech of Catholic monasticism into the “universal” language of personal candor and existential revelation.
Thomas Merton brought contemplation into the twentieth century, divesting it of its antique scholasticism and ancient prejudices: making it efficient far beyond the inner circle of Christian initiates. He retained the best that was thought and said within the monastic counter culture—preserving its traditions while broadening its appeal and bringing it into dialogue with the contemporary world.
Merton’s writing on writing show us how we might do the same.