Word: mertonism
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More alarmed and alarming were William Vogt, who warned the world in Road to Survival that its growing population was rapidly using up the earth's substance, and Fairfield Osborn who, in Our Plundered Planet, lectured man for destroying the fertility of the land. Poet Thomas Merton, now a Trappist monk, lent poetic excitement to his autobiographical account of a worldly young pagan's conversion to Roman Catholicism, in Seven Storey Mountain. And, in a category all its own, there was Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, which was a continuing bestseller in spite...
Last week a remarkable book called The Seven Storey Mountain (Harcourt Brace; $3), the autobiography of a young poet who became a Trappist monk (TIME, Oct. 11), was a bestseller in its fifth printing. Thomas Merton's book was not designed to entertain; it does not offer readers escape-or tips on how to be popular or successful. In fact, the popular and successful reader may be made most uncomfortable by The Seven Storey Mountain. A sample of the book is its description of New York City's Negro quarter, Harlem...
Every human being, says Merton, should spend at least some time in contemplation. "No matter who you are or what you are, you are called to the summit of perfection: you are called to a deep interior life, perhaps even to mystical prayer, and to pass the fruits of your contemplation on to others...
...seven-tiered mountain, Dante's image of purgatory, is used by Merton as a symbol of the modern world...
Keep On Working. Merton's autobiography charts the gradual transformation of a worldly young pagan into a Roman Catholic ascetic. Most of its final hundred pages are a striking description of the life he now leads at the Trappist monastery of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky. The severe Trappist discipline includes a vow of perpetual silence, which can be broken only on certain occasions. It is a life of prayer, fasting and contemplation, spiced with hard work. His account of haying...