Collection
Status
Available
Description
The second volume of Thomas Merton's "gusty, passionate journals" (Thomas Moore) chronicles Merton's advancements to priesthood and emergence as a bestselling author with the surprise success of his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain. Spanning an eleven-year period, Entering the Silence reflects Merton's struggle to balance his vocation to solitude with the budding literary career that would soon established him as one of the most important spiritual writers of our century.
User reviews
LibraryThing member stevenschroeder
To love oneself perfectly, Merton writes in an entry near the end of this volume, is to disappear. For a writer, it is to disappear entirely into one's writing as God disappears entirely into the world-a disappearance that makes one fully, paradoxically, present. This is the record of a remarkable
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twentieth century figure perfecting his love in the process, as the subtitle has it, of becoming a monk and writer. The volume includes two fragments and a complete journal, only part of which was published during Merton's lifetime. In twelve pages, the second fragment-a journal memoir of Dom Frederick Dunne-renders Merton and his first abbot fully present and full of life. The other short fragment, what remains of Merton's novitiate journal, speaks to everyone who has asked (as Merton did), "How will I ever do this?" The complete journal from December 1946-July 1952, "The Whale and the Ivy," which describes the tension between writing and contemplation in which Merton lived at Gethsemani, is an exemplary piece of writing about writing as well as an invitation to active contemplation. This is the second of seven volumes scheduled to appear over the next three years. It will enchant readers who are new to Merton as well as those who encountered him for the first time in the premonastic journals of Volume One and those who have known him for a long time. It will leave new readers and old acquaintances anxious for the next encounter. Show Less
LibraryThing member LTW
To love oneself perfectly, Merton writes in an entry near the end of this volume, is to disappear. For a writer, it is to disappear entirely into one's writing as God disappears entirely into the world--a disappearance that makes one fully, paradoxically, present. This is the record of a remarkable
Show More
twentieth-century figure perfecting his love in the process, as the subtitle has it, of becoming a monk and writer. The book includes two fragments and a complete journal, only part of which was published during Merton's lifetime. The complete journal from December 1946 to July_ 1952, which describes the tension between writing and contemplation in which Merton lived at Gethsemani, is an exemplary piece of writing about writing, as well as an invitation to active contemplation. This is the second of seven volumes scheduled to appear over the next three years. It will enchant readers who are new to Merton as well as those who encountered him for the first time in the premonastic journals of volume one and those who have known him for a long time. It will leave new readers and old acquaintances anxious for the next encounter. Steve Schroede Show Less
LibraryThing member SithCrow
there's such a lovely voyeuristic thrill about reading journals, even ones that are all nice and cleaned up and put together like this. i have an immense amount of respect, by the way, for the gethsemane monk who had the task of taking merton's handwritten journals and putting them into shape for
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publication; his handwriting was appalling! but the journals are fascinating to read! vocation does not always come easily and reading merton's struggles with it is...like hearing the dalai lama joke about being angry enough to kill flies. reassuring in a strange kind of way. Show Less
LibraryThing member nicholasjjordan
I give it five stars, but you definitely have to be interested in Merton minutiae to feel that way about this book. Most of it is still actual, private journal, and his life is both as boring and as interesting as anyone's.
ISBN
0060654767 / 9780060654764