Thomas Merton was afforded the
privileges of being an educated man throughout his life by means of various
boarding schools, travel opportunities and university experiences. But regardless of the geography of where he
attended class, his love for reading superseded all. Reading was where he found inspiration, hope,
motivation and beauty. Merton’s love of
books led him into such genres as poetry and prose studying subjects like art
and eventually religion. “All his life
he was a voracious reader, a compulsive notetaker, and a committed writer.”[1] There are many instances of his appreciation
for literature woven throughout his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain. In it he writes of his time backpacking
through Europe taking only some rum and novels while he walked along the
coast.
This is evidence of what held
utmost importance to him at this time in his life. Even “after spending the day in museums and
libraries and bookstores and among the ruins,” Merton wrote, “I would come home
again and read my novels.”[2] Anytime he had a little extra cash he would
spend it on books, excited for what lay underneath the new covers. He mentions one day in New York where he
“happened to have five or ten loose dollars burning a hole in [his]
pocket…attracted by the window of Scribner’s bookstore, all full of bright new
books.”[3] Books opened up new worlds for Merton; his
excitement as he entered Columbia came through the brand new books he walked
out of the library with. He did not know
in his early years that he was searching for Christ through them, but he
eventually came to the acknowledgment of his need for the God of Creation as
many of his books opened up such dialogue.
Eventually he came to the realization that there was “a deeper sense of
power of literature to carry spiritual truth.”[4] Because of this, Merton found himself being
“drawn back into the Catholic atmosphere”[5]
through his studies of French Medieval Literature, among other literature,
during his time at Columbia and could feel its importance as he wrestled
through his own convictions.
[1]
William H. Shannon, ed., “Preface,” in The Courage for Truth: the Letters
of Thomas Merton to Writers (New
York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1993), vi.
[2]
Thomas Merton, The
Seven Storey Mountain, 50th ed. (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1999), 119.
[3]
Merton, Seven Storey, 187.
[4]
Lawrence S. Cunningham, Thomas Merton & the Monastic
Vision (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1999),
163.
[5]
Merton, Seven Storey, 187.
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