The Seven Storey Mountain by Merton
The Seven Storey Mountain: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition (1948)
by Thomas Merton
467 pages - Harvest
This is the autobiography of Thomas Merton, from his birth until the time when he took his vows at a Cistercian monastery at the age of 33. Merton was born in France, but in his early years his family moved often between France and Britain and the US. His mother died when he was young, and his father also passed away before he entered university. Merton first attended Cambridge University in England, but because of his freewheeling ways he was made to understand that he did not have a future there, and so he moved back to America and enrolled at Columbia. It was during his time at Columbia that he became more and more drawn to the Catholic Church, finally converting and being baptized. In his post-university years he did some teaching as he tried to discover his calling, finally becoming a Trappist monk and closing himself up in monastic duties for the rest of his life; as he put it, "the four walls of my new freedom." His only sibling, a brother, died soon after Thomas had entered the monastery, while fighting with the Royal Canadian Air Force in World War II.
This is quite a remarkable book, and the above summary doesn't do much justice to it at all. People have compared it favourably to St. Augustine's Confessions, but I thought that while that book was somewhat dull and obtuse, this one was full of life and immediacy. But perhaps that's just because Merton's times are so much closer to our own. Merton does not talk down to the reader, but he doesn't try to make things too complicated either. You can see that he's intelligent and well-read, but not without his faults or weaknesses. Perhaps the book's greatest strength is that it doesn't come across on simply an intellectual level, or as a recorded series of events, but with the full force and richness of life experience. Which is what Merton thought literature should truly be.
The book was written with Merton still in the first fervour of his conversion and his decision to dedicate his life to being a Trappist, and so it can come off as very fiery and a bit absolutist at times; and I think I was helped by my earlier reading of The Life You Save May Be Your Own, which was a biography of four American Catholic writers, including Merton, and illuminated some of the things Merton continued to struggle with, drawing especially from his journals which were published after his death. Merton certainly wasn't perfect, and he sometimes seems even quite flaky and restless, but the great advantage of the sacrifices he made and of his works is that they afford the possibility for the reader to recognize some common ground in each individual soul's struggle towards the light.
by Thomas Merton
467 pages - Harvest
This is the autobiography of Thomas Merton, from his birth until the time when he took his vows at a Cistercian monastery at the age of 33. Merton was born in France, but in his early years his family moved often between France and Britain and the US. His mother died when he was young, and his father also passed away before he entered university. Merton first attended Cambridge University in England, but because of his freewheeling ways he was made to understand that he did not have a future there, and so he moved back to America and enrolled at Columbia. It was during his time at Columbia that he became more and more drawn to the Catholic Church, finally converting and being baptized. In his post-university years he did some teaching as he tried to discover his calling, finally becoming a Trappist monk and closing himself up in monastic duties for the rest of his life; as he put it, "the four walls of my new freedom." His only sibling, a brother, died soon after Thomas had entered the monastery, while fighting with the Royal Canadian Air Force in World War II.
This is quite a remarkable book, and the above summary doesn't do much justice to it at all. People have compared it favourably to St. Augustine's Confessions, but I thought that while that book was somewhat dull and obtuse, this one was full of life and immediacy. But perhaps that's just because Merton's times are so much closer to our own. Merton does not talk down to the reader, but he doesn't try to make things too complicated either. You can see that he's intelligent and well-read, but not without his faults or weaknesses. Perhaps the book's greatest strength is that it doesn't come across on simply an intellectual level, or as a recorded series of events, but with the full force and richness of life experience. Which is what Merton thought literature should truly be.
The book was written with Merton still in the first fervour of his conversion and his decision to dedicate his life to being a Trappist, and so it can come off as very fiery and a bit absolutist at times; and I think I was helped by my earlier reading of The Life You Save May Be Your Own, which was a biography of four American Catholic writers, including Merton, and illuminated some of the things Merton continued to struggle with, drawing especially from his journals which were published after his death. Merton certainly wasn't perfect, and he sometimes seems even quite flaky and restless, but the great advantage of the sacrifices he made and of his works is that they afford the possibility for the reader to recognize some common ground in each individual soul's struggle towards the light.