Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals

Chapter One\ \ \ The Story of a Vocation\ \ \ 1939-1941\ \ \ October 1, 1939. 35 Perry Street. New York City\ Today has the smells of a feast. A girl sitting opposite me in the restaurant at breakfast: some perfume on that reminded me of several things. First, the perfume and the softness and complexion of her skin reminded me of a whole class of girls I had been in love with from fourteen on. The kind that are rather thin than plump, rather blonde than dark, who seem at the same time soft and sad, their sadness, a kind of mystery, a melancholy which makes them appear intelligent and good.\ Then the perfume too reminded me of all sorts of Sundays and feasts and the rich smells going with them at Douglaston. The smell of powder and perfume in my Grandmother's room. The smell of the same room, with all the heat on in the morning, with my Grandfather having breakfast in bed: the room smelling of perfume, powder, cold cream, radiator heat, fried eggs, toast, strong coffee. All at once.\ Other feast smells: Brilliantine I bought in Bermuda this year. Good, fat, lavender smell. Means sun and the white coral houses and the dark cedars. That nostalgia is now complicated by the fact that there's no going to Bermuda now, because of the war.\ Feast smells at Douglaston: cigar smoke, meaning Uncle Charles and the funny sheets (he bought the Tribune: Pop took the Times). Candy. Smell of dinners, of course. Smell of Christmas tree, noise of steam chirping in the radiator, at the sametime.\ Noises:\ Outside now it is raining.\ Noises of a cocktail shaker at Douglaston, first with a martini being stirred in it, then with something being shaken in it. Generally, sun outside, or late slanting sun through the French windows.\ Noise of a toy electric train going around its tracks. Noise of winding up a clockwork locomotive -- slower turn of the key, thickening catch of the spring.\ Noise of the cook chopping or pounding things in the kitchen.\ Noise of tires singing past the house on the road outside, in winter or in autumn when the road is light and bare and hard.\ Noise of a fire, cracking and snapping in the grate, just lit. The sheaves of sparks that rush up the chimney from time to time.\ Noise of the dog jumping up inside the door and scratching on it as you come up the steps.\ Noise of Pop walking upstairs, beating with his hand on the banister halfway between the beats of his feet on the hollow-sounding wooden steps.\ Noises of someone (never me!) shoveling coal into the furnace downstairs, the shovel chunkily bites in under the coal, which smothers its sound: the coal rushing off the shovel into the fire, leaving the shovel ringing slightly, full of a load.\ Noise of someone opening up the legs of a card table -- a drag and a sudden catch.\ Noise of starting the radio: click of the knob, the light comes on, then half a second later, a sudden swell of hum that dies again a little, while the radio settles down to think up a real sound. After that nothing very interesting comes out of the radio, as a rule.\ Noise of the cellar door banging shut: never one bang, but a bang and a quarter because of the bounce. Noise of footsteps on the cement steps leading down to the cellar. Noise of dragging ash cans up the cellar steps, step by step, the heavy, muffled bumping, muffled by the weight of the fine pinkish gray ash. All this took place under the window of the room I slept in: that room was Pop's den. It had an office desk and a swivel chair. Noise made by the swivel chair when you turned on it completely. First no noise at all, then a kind of slight, singing protest. (Noise of the drawers opening and shutting.) The protest of the chair comes not from making it turn, but it is uttered by a tough spring as you lean back in the chair and tilt it quite a bit.\ Noise of raking leaves, of mowing the grass, of digging with a spade, of raking ground or hoeing. Sweeping the sidewalk and the brick front steps.\ Noise of the sprinkler, as it turns scattering whirling threads of water around the air over the front lawn. Twenty or thirty feet away the leaves of the privet hedge move where you would not have suspected water was falling.\ Thank God then for all good smells and good sights and good sounds, but what is the good of being attached to them and sitting and turning over their memory and dwelling on the recollections they bring to you, cherishing a sadness for these things which are gone away? Pop and Bonnemaman are dead, and it will never again be the same as being sixteen and eighteen and living at Douglaston on vacations. What a vanity it would be anyway to moan over the happiness of those times because, at eighteen and twenty and twenty-one, while I was active and rushing about after all sorts of things, who can say those were very good or happy years for me when I was full of anger and impatience and ingratitude toward my family to an extent it is horrible to think about now? Then I was proud and selfish and denied God and was full of gluttony and lust. I was so filled with all these things that even now the unhappiness of them does not leave me at all but keeps forcing itself back upon me in thoughts and dreams and movements of anger and desire. I am still full of that same pride and wretchedness which is very strong and very hard to get rid of because of the strength of self-will which weakens love and prayer and resists God.\ But all these things were much...\ The Intimate Merton. Copyright © by Thomas Merton. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. 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\ Anne LamottA lot of my spiritual seeking began with Thomas Merton. He is an incredible source of light and comfort and humor. You meet a great spirit in this book.\ \ \ \ \ Kenneth WoodwardMerton's real autobiography is in his personal journals. They reveal an uncaged mind ceaselessly churned by contemporary events and culture...To those of us who devoured his bestselling books on contemplative prayer, it seemed that Merton had all the important questions answered. But in the journals we find him turning old answers into new questions. —Newsweek\ \ \ New York Times Book ReviewBrilliant social, political, and personal commentaries.\ \ \ \ \ Doris DonnellyMy suspicion is that bookshelves the world over will bend - at least temporarily - from the weight of this latest offering from Patrick Hart and Johnathan Montaldo, editors of The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals , before the book achieves the best-seller status it deserves and flies out of the stores...With the publication of this stunning diary-like memoir, the gravitational pull of Thomas Merton's legacy will have no end in sight. —The Merton Seasonal\ \ \ \ \ Merton SeasonalWith the publication of this stunning, diary-like memoir, the gravitational pull of Thomas Merton's legacy will have no end in sight.\ \ \ \ \ Frank McCourtI... rejoice in this rich volume, The Intimate Merton. It is a book I will keep by my bed for the spiritual nourishment and the pure joy in the writing.\ \ \ \ \ NewsweekMerton's real autobiography is in his personal journals. They reveal an uncaged mind ceaselessly churned by contemporary events and culture...To those of us who devoured his bestselling books on contemplative prayer, it seemed that Merton had all the important questions answered. But in the journals we find him turning old answers into new questions.\ \ \ \ \ New York Times Book Review...brilliant social, political, and personal commentaries.\ \ \ \ \ Merton SeasonalMy suspicion is that bookshelves the world over will bend - at least temporarily - from the weight of this latest offering from Patrick Hart and Johnathan Montaldo, editors of The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals, before the book achieves the best-seller status it deserves and flies out of the stores...With the publication of this stunning diary-like memoir, the gravitational pull of Thomas Merton's legacy will have no end in sight.\ \ \ \ \ TjurungaThe value of abridgement depends on the quality of the editors. Here we could ask for nothing more....[Patrick Hart and Jonathan Montaldo] produced a readable and moving condensation of Merton's journals that will doubtlessly attract a wide and appreciative readership.\ \ \ \ \ Frank McCourtI rejoice in this rich volume. . . It is a book I will keep by my bed for the spiritual nourishment and the pure joy in the writing.\ \ \ \ \ Anne LamottA lot of my spiritual seeking began with Thomas Merton. He is an incredible source of light and comfort and humor. You meet a great spirit in this book.\ \ \ \ \ Dianne AprileIn this sensitively culled and skillfully edited collection of diary passages, even the best-read student of Merton will come away knowing him better, appreciating him more...This book may be of even greater interest to the newcomer to Merton, the Catholic author and social activist who is arguably one of the best-read literary religious writers of our time. —The Courier-Journal\ \ \ \ \ Publishers Weekly"A path through the woods" is the description Hart and Montaldo Merton's last secretary and a Merton lecturer, respectively give to this condensation of the diaries faithfully kept by Merton before and throughout his 27 years as a Trappist monk at Our Lady of Gethsemani monastery in Kentucky. "Woods" serves as metaphor for Merton's full body of autobiographical work, encompassing the journals published during his life and the seven volumes that remained unpublished for 25 years after his death in 1968. This manageable portrait of Merton's inner and outer life, beginning in 1939, is condensed from the seven volumes and will likely suffice for all but Merton scholars and the most devoted aficionados. Merton's restlessness, his frustration with censorship of his anti-war writings and his affinity for nature are portrayed here. Readers are privy to his dreams and his experiences of divine and human love, including details of his secretive love affair. The volume ends as abruptly as his life, cut short at age 53 by accidental electrocution in Bangkok, where he was exploring Asian religions. The path cleared by Hart and Montaldo, worthy guides to this terrain, is a boon for busy readers, who will turn to Merton's journals not only for information about his life but to learn, from his spiritual self-scrutiny, more about themselves. Dec. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.\ \ \ \ \ Library JournalThis is a one-volume condensation of Merton's journals, which have been published over the last few years; its seven chapters correspond to the seven volumes of Merton's complete journals. Hart, who was Merton's last secretary, and Montaldo (Entering the Silence) have maintained all of Merton's central themes--including the controversial ones, like the relationship with the nurse identified as "M." and Merton's doubts about his vocation. Unfortunately, owing to deletions, the transitions are sometimes abrupt and jarring, and footnotes from the original identifying persons and terms have been removed. But this is certainly not an attempt to sanitize Merton's journals; all of Hart and Mantaldo's condensing is intended to make their riches available to those who do not want to wade through all seven volumes. A nice selection of photographs is included. Because Merton is probably the most widely selling American spiritual writer, this title is sure to be in great demand. For most libraries.--Augustine J. Curley, O.S.B., Newark Abbey, NJ Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.\ \ \ \ \ Marvin BarrettIndependent of the overall story line, the journals contain some of Merton's finest writing. \ — Parabola\ \