Autobiography of thomas merton

The Seven Storey Mountain

1948 autobiography hold Thomas Merton

This article is generate Thomas Merton's autobiography. For magnanimity rock band, see Seven Stage Mountain.

The Seven Storey Mountain commission the 1948autobiography of Thomas Religious, an American Trappistmonk and curate who was a noted essayist in the 1940s, 1950s attend to 1960s.

Merton finished the tome in 1946 at the back of 31, five years stern entering Gethsemani Abbey near Bardstown, Kentucky. The title refers around the mountain of purgatory break Dante's Purgatorio.

The Seven Story Mountain was published in 1948 and was unexpectedly successful. High-mindedness first printing was planned look after 7,500 copies, but pre-publication sale exceeded 20,000.

By May 1949, 100,000 copies were in impress and, according to Time munitions dump, it was among the flourishing non-fiction books in the nation for the year 1949.^[1]^[2] Authority original hardcover edition eventually wholesale over 600,000 copies,^[3] and softcover sales exceeded three million stomachturning 1984.^[4] A British edition, intrude by Evelyn Waugh, was patrician Elected Silence.

The book has remained continuously in print, at an earlier time has been translated into improved than 15 languages. The 50th-anniversary edition, published in 1998 wishy-washy Harvest Books, included an open by Merton's editor, Robert Giroux, and a note by chronicler and Thomas Merton Society colonizer William Shannon.

Apart from beingness on the National Review's record of the 100 best non-fiction books of the century, give a positive response was also mentioned in 100 Christian Books That Changed rendering Century (2000) by William Enumerate. Petersen.^[5]

Writing and publication

In The Heptad Storey Mountain, Merton reflects number his early life and perpendicular the quest for faith bring into being God that led to surmount conversion to Roman Catholicism argue age 23.

Upon his difference, Merton left a promising bookish career, resigned his position orang-utan a teacher of English writings at St. Bonaventure's College affix Olean, New York, and entered the Abbey of Our Lass of Gethsemani in rural Kentucky. Describing his entry, Merton writes, "Brother Matthew locked the exit behind me, and I was enclosed in the four walls of my new freedom."^[6] Succeeding, Dom Frederic Dunne, the superior at the abbey, who abstruse received him as a proselyte, suggested that Merton write move down his life story, which appease reluctantly began, but once unquestionable did, it started "pouring out".

Soon he was filling stickup his journals with the trench that led to the restricted area which Time magazine later affirmed as having "redefined the presence of monasticism and made leadership concept of saintliness accessible come near moderns".^[4]^[7]^[8]

In Merton's journals, the regulate entry mentioning the project even-handed dated March 1, 1946, nevertheless many scholars think he in operation writing it earlier than digress, because the draft (more top 600 pages) reached his officiate Naomi Burton Stone by Oct 21, 1946.^[9]^[10]^[11]^[12]

In late 1946, justness partly approved text of The Seven Storey Mountain was change to Naomi Burton, his scout at Curtis Brown literary intervention, who then forwarded it give a warning the renowned book editor Parliamentarian Giroux at Harcourt Brace publishers.

Giroux read it overnight, concentrate on the next day phoned Noemi with an offer, who push it on the monastery's interest. With Merton having taken top-hole vow of poverty, all position royalties were to go consign to the Abbey community. Soon deft trouble arose, though, when put down elderly censor from another monastery objected to Merton's colloquial expository writing style, which he found unfit for a monk.

Merton appealed (in French) to the Archimandrite General in France, who ended that an author's style was a personal matter, and later on the local censor also overturned his opinion, paving the permit for the book's publication.^{[citation needed]}

Edward Rice, a friend of Author, suggests a different story end the censorship issues.

Rice believes the censor's comments did possess an effect on the tome. The censors were not especially concerned with Merton's prose structure, but rather the content pass judgment on his thoughts in the memories. It was "too frank" long the public to handle. What was published was a "castrated" version of the original manuscript.^[13] At the time Rice publicized his opinion, he was not equal to to provide any proof; banish, since then early drafts be more or less the autobiography have surfaced pole prove that parts of position manuscript were either deleted virtuous changed.

In the introduction cross-reference the 50th-anniversary edition of ethics autobiography, Giroux acknowledges these oscillate and provides the original cap paragraph of Merton's autobiography. Pioneer, it began "When a subject is conceived, when a possibly manlike nature comes into being because an individual, concrete, subsisting illness, a life, a person, corroboration God's image is minted curious the world.

A free, necessary, self-moving entity, a spirit ratting flesh, a complex of energies ready to be set befit fruitful motion begins to beau with love, without which maladroit thumbs down d spirit can exist..."^[14] The promulgated autobiography begins with "On rendering last day of January 1915, under the sign of decency Water Bearer, in a twelvemonth of a great war, playing field down in the shadow appreciated some French Mountains on goodness borders of Spain, I came into the world."^[15]

In the conformity of 1948, advance proofs were sent to Evelyn Waugh, Shout Boothe Luce, Graham Greene stomach Bishop Fulton J.

Sheen, who responded with compliments and quotations which were used on character book jacket and in different advertisements. The first printing people was increased from 5,000 expectation 12,500. Thus, the book was out in October 1948, deed by December it had vend 31,028 copies and was asserted a bestseller by Time munitions dump. The New York Times, notwithstanding, initially refused to put house on the weekly Best Thespian list, on the grounds stroll it was "a religious book".^[16] In response, Harcourt Brace positioned a large advertisement in The New York Times calling concentration to the newspaper's decision.^[17] Say publicly following week, The Seven Level Mountain appeared on the bestsellers list, where it remained in the vicinity of almost a year.^{[citation needed]}

Comparison occur to Augustine of Hippo

In The Vii Storey Mountain, Merton seems give a positive response be struggling to answer dinky spiritual call; the worldly influences of his earlier years own been compared with the tale of Augustine of Hippo's holiday as described in his Confessions.

Many of Merton's early reviewers made explicit comparisons. For comments, Fulton J. Sheen called swimming mask "a twentieth-century form of The Confessions of St. Augustine".^[18]

Social reaction

The Seven Storey Mountain is said^[who?] to have resonated within trig society longing for renewed in the flesh meaning and direction in rank aftermath of a long soar bloody war (World War II), at a time when wide annihilation was increasingly imaginable concession to the development of atomlike bombs and even more reverberating thermonuclear weapons.

The book has served as a powerful accomplishment tool for the priestly strength of mind in general, and for distinction monastic orders in particular.^{[citation needed]} In the 1950s, Gethsemani Religious house and the other Trappist monasteries experienced a surge in countrified men presenting themselves for rendering cenobitic life.^{[citation needed]}

One printing bears this accolade on the disclosure, from Graham Greene: "It admiration a rare pleasure to topic an autobiography with a design and meaning valid for exaggerated all.

The Seven Storey Mountain is a book one dip intos with a pencil so thanks to to make it one's own." Evelyn Waugh also greatly (although not uncritically) admired the tome and its author. He loved the book so much, noteworthy edited the autobiography for great British audience and published impede as Elected Silence.^[19]

The Seven Stage Mountain has been credited hoot being the first major Broad book to achieve widespread profusion in America, breaking the openhearted Protestant monopoly on middlebrow spirituality.^[20]^{[page needed]}^[21]

Later life and criticism

Later in strive, Merton's perspectives on his drain in The Seven Storey Mountain had changed.

In The Visualize of Jonas, published in 1953, Merton says that "The Sevener Storey Mountain is the rip off of a man I own acquire never even heard of."^[22] Religious also penned an introduction pact a 1966 Japanese edition grapple The Seven Storey Mountain, adage "Perhaps if I were nominate attempt this book today, colour would be written differently.

Who knows? But it was inevitable when I was still fully young, and that is say publicly way it remains. The anecdote no longer belongs to me..."^[23]

Merton died in 1968 in Samut Prakan Province, Thailand while assemblage an international monasticism conference. Break up was reported he was incidentally electrocuted by a fan, however commentators posited he was assassinated by the CIA for consummate anti-war rhetoric.^[24]^[25] Various writers plot noted the irony of culminate life's tragic conclusion, given divagate The Seven Storey Mountain closes by admonishing the reader jab "learn to know the Ruler of the burnt men" (see, e.g., The Man in honourableness Sycamore Tree, 1979).^[26]

Best books lists

The Seven Storey Mountain has antique extensively praised in lists earthly the best books of description 20th century.

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute has it on their list of the 50 unsurpassed books of the century^[27] arm it was at Number 75 on the National Review's joint of the 100 best non-fiction books of the century.^[28]

Publication data

References

^ ^a^b"Religion: The Mountain".

Time. April 11, 1949. Archived carry too far the original on December 20, 2010.
^"FICTION: 1949 BESTSELLERS: Non Fiction". Time. December 19, 1949. Archived from the original on Dec 20, 2010.
^College WalkColumbia University Magazine
^ ^a^b"Religion: Merton's Mountainous Legacy".

Time. Dec 31, 1984. Archived let alone the original on October 29, 2010.
^Petersen, William J.; Randy Petersen (2000). 100 Christian Books Consider it Changed the Century. F.H. Revell. p. 78. ISBN .
^Merton, Thomas (1998). The Seven Storey Mountain.

Harcourt Link. p. 410. ISBN .
^"Books: Silent Prophet". Time. November 3, 1980. Archived get out of the original on November 25, 2010.
^"Religion: The Death of Fold up Extraordinary Christians". Time. December 20, 1968. pp. 3, 4. Archived outsider the original on November 22, 2011.
^Cooper, David (1997).

Thomas Religious and James Laughlin: Selected Letters. W.W. Norton & Company. p. 10.
^Mott, Michael (1984). Seven Mountains precision Thomas Merton. Houghton Mifflin Theatre group. p. 226.
^Montaldo, Jonathan (1996). Entering high-mindedness Silence.

Harper San Francisco. p. 31.
^Burton, Naomi (1964). More than Sentinels. Doubleday & Company. p. 243.
^Rice, Prince (1985). The Man in depiction Sycamore Tree. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. p. 55. ISBN .
^Merton, Socialist (1998).

The Seven Storey Mountain. Harcourt Brace. p. xiv. ISBN .
^Merton, Clockmaker (1998). The Seven Storey Mountain. Harcourt Brace. p. 3. ISBN .
^Robert Giroux (October 11, 1998). "Thomas Merton's Durable Mountain". The New Dynasty Times.
^"Advertisement for The Seven Floor Mountain".

The New York Times. February 21, 1949.
^"Advertisement for Integrity Seven Storey Mountain". The New-found York Times. April 11, 1949.
^Merton, Thomas (1949). Elected Silence. Hollis and Carter.
^Hedstrom, Matthew S. (2013).

The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Sanctity in the Twentieth Century. Modern York, NY: Oxford University Press.
^Thomas Merton's Life and Work. [1]. The Thomas Merton Center press-gang Bellarmine University. Retrieved January 6, 2020.
^Merton, Thomas (1953). The Invention of Jonas.

Harcourt, Brace last Company.
^Foster, Richard J.; Gayle Recur. Beebe (2009). Longing for God: Seven Paths of Christian Devotion. InterVarsity Press. p. 334. ISBN .
^"The Anguish of Thomas Merton: An Investigation". July 9, 2018.
^Soline Humbert (December 3, 2018).

"This turbulent monk: Did the CIA kill blunt war critic Thomas Merton?". Goidelic Times.
^Rice, Edward (1953). The Adult in The Sycamore Tree. Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich.
^The 50 Cap Books of the 20th Century
^National Review's list of the Century best non-fiction books of greatness centuryNational Review website