The Seven Storey Mountain: Fiftieth-Anniversary Edition
Read The Seven Storey Mountain: Fiftieth-Anniversary Edition Online
Authors: Thomas Merton
“
For I tell you that God is able of these stones
to raise up children to Abraham
”
Introduction copyright © 1998 by Robert Giroux
Note to the Reader copyright © 1998 by William H. Shannon
Copyright © 1948 by Harcourt, Inc.
Copyright renewed 1976 by the Trustees of the Merton Legacy Trust
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.
The poem “Song for Our Lady of Cobre” on
[>]
by Thomas Merton, from
The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton.
Copyright © 1944 by Our Lady of Gethsemani Monastery. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
The poem “For My Brother: Reported Missing in Action, 1943” on
[>]
, by Thomas Merton, from
The Collected Poems of
Thomas Merton.
Copyright © 1948 by New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1997 by The Trustees of the Merton Legacy Trust. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
Ex parte Ordinis:
Nihil obstat: F
R
. M. G
ABRIEL.
O’ C
ONNELL
, O.C.S.O.
F
R
. M. A
NTHONY
C
HASSAGNE
, O.C.S.O.
Imprimi potest: F
R
. M. F
REDERIC
D
UNNE
, O.C.S.O., Abbot of Our Lady of Gethsemani
Nihil obstat: J
OHN
M. A. F
EARNS
, S.T.D., Censor librorum
Imprimatur: ✠ F
RANCIS
C
ARDINAL
S
PELLMAN
, Archbishop of New York
ISBN
-13: 978-0-15-100413-3
ISBN
-10: 0-15-100413-7
ISBN
-13: 978-0-15-601086-3 (pbk)
ISBN
-10: 0-15-601086-0 (pbk)
e
ISBN
978-0-547-54381-9
v2.0113
IntroductionCHRISTO
VERO
REGI
by Robert Giroux
The Seven Storey Mountain
was first published fifty years ago, on October 4, 1948. As Thomas Merton revealed in his journals, he had begun to write his autobiography four years earlier, at the Trappist monastery in Kentucky where he had journeyed in December 1941, at age twenty-six, after resigning as a teacher of English literature at St. Bonaventure College in Olean, New York. “In a certain sense,” Merton wrote, “one man was more responsible for
The Seven Storey Mountain
than I was, even as he was the cause of all my other writing.” This was Dom Frederic Dunne, the abbot who had received Merton as a postulant and accepted him, in March 1942, as a Trappist novice.
“I brought all the instincts of a writer with me into the monastery,” Merton revealed, adding that the abbot “encouraged me when I wanted to write poems and reflections and other things that came into my head in the novitiate.” When Dom Frederic suggested that Merton write the story of his life, the novice was at first reluctant to do so. After all, he had become a monk in order to leave his past life behind. Once he began to write, however, it poured out. “I don’t know what audience I might have been thinking of,” he admitted. “I suppose I put down what was in me, under the eyes of God, who knows what is in me.” He was soon “trying to tone down” his original draft for the Trappist censors, who had criticized it severely, especially the account of his years at Clare College (Cambridge University), during which he had become the father of an illegitimate child (killed with the mother apparently in the bombing of London). For this Merton was “sent down”—expelled—from college, and his English guardian advised him (both his parents were dead) to leave England. He also told Merton to forget about his hopes of a London career in the diplomatic service, so Merton sailed for America and enrolled at Columbia College, where I met him in 1935.
The United States was still in the Depression; the times were serious and so were most undergraduates. Among Merton’s and my classmates were Ad Reinhardt, who became a famous painter; John Latouche, who became famous in the musical theater; Herman Wouk, who became a famous novelist; John Berryman, who became a famous poet; Robert Lax, Edward Rice, Robert Gibney, and Sy Freedgood, close friends who were associated with Merton on the college humor magazine,
Jester;
and Robert Gerdy, who became an editor at the
New Yorker.
We met on the campus when Merton walked into the office of the
Columbia Review,
the college literary magazine, and showed me some manuscripts, a story, and several reviews, which I liked and accepted. I thought to myself, “This man is a writer.” He was stocky, blue-eyed, with thinning blond hair, and he was a lively talker, with a slight British accent. He was a junior and I was a senior. He told me of his interest in jazz, Harlem, and the movies—especially W. C. Fields, Chaplin, Keaton, the Marx Brothers, and Preston Sturges, enthusiasms I shared. We were also enthusiastic about Mark Van Doren as a teacher. We went to a couple of movies at the old Thalia, and of course in those leftist days words like religion, monasticism, and theology never came up. I graduated in June 1936, failing to get a job in book publishing (as I had hoped) and finding one at CBS. Then in December 1939 Frank V. Morley, head of the Trade Department of Harcourt Brace & Company, hired me as a junior editor, with the approval of Donald C. Brace (who had cofounded this distinguished firm in 1919 with Alfred Harcourt). Among the first manuscripts I was asked to evaluate was a novel by Thomas James Merton, submitted by Naomi Burton of the Curtis Brown Ltd. literary agency. The hero of
The Straits of Dover
was a Cambridge student who transfers to Columbia and gets involved with a stupid millionaire, a showgirl, a Hindu mystic, and a left-winger; it all took place in Greenwich Village. I agreed with the other editors that the writer had talent but the story wobbled around and got nowhere. Six months later Naomi resubmitted it as
The Labyrinth
, an improved replay of the same novel, which was also rejected. ¡Vlerton was an interesting writer but apparently not a novelist.
For the first time after college, I encountered him in Scribner’s bookstore on Fifth Avenue; this was in May or June 1941. I had been browsing and felt someone touch my arm. It was Merton. “Tom!” I said, “it’s great to see you. I hope you’re still writing.” He said, “Well, I’ve just been to the
New Yorker
and they want me to write about Gethsemani.” I had no idea what he meant and said so. “Oh, it’s a Trappist monastery in Kentucky, where I’ve made a retreat.” This revelation stunned me. I had had no idea that Merton had undergone a religious conversion or that he was interested in monasticism. “Well, I hope to read what you write about it,” I said. “It will be something different for the
New Yorker.
” “Oh, no,” he said, “I would
never
think of writing about it.” That told me a great deal. For the first time I understood the extraordinary change that had occurred in Merton. I wished him well and we parted.
I next heard about him from Mark Van Doren, when I called our old teacher at New Year’s. “Tom Merton has become a Trappist monk,” Mark said. “We’ll probably never hear from him again. He’s leaving the world. An extraordinary young man. I always expected him to become a writer.” Tom had left with Mark his manuscript,
Thirty Poems,
and Mark later submitted it to my friend Jay Laughlin at New Directions, who published it in 1944. Little did we know how many other books would follow.
The partially approved text of
The Seven Storey Mountain
reached Naomi Burton late in 1946. Her reaction, as Tom noted in his journal, was good: “She is quite sure it will find a publisher. Anyway my idea—and hers also—is to turn it over to Robert Giroux at Harcourt Brace.” This entry was dated December 13. Fourteen days later he wrote in his journal: “Yesterday at dinner Father Prior handed me a telegram.... The first thought that came into my mind was that the manuscript of
Mountain
had been lost. Naomi Burton gave it to Harcourt Brace only a week ago. I knew quite well that publishers always make you wait at least two months before saying anything about it.... I waited until after dinner and opened the telegram. It was from Bob Giroux and it said: “
‘Manuscript accepted. Happy New Year!’
”
After I had received it by messenger from Naomi, I began reading the manuscript with growing excitement and took it home to finish it overnight. Though the text began badly, it quickly improved and I was certain that, with cutting and editing, it was publishable. It never once occurred to me that it might be a best-seller. Since Frank Morley had left the firm, Donald Brace was temporarily my boss. When I asked him to read it, I was finessed by his asking, “Do you think it will lose money?” “Oh, no,” I replied, “I’m sure it will find an audience.” I told him that Tom had been my classmate at Columbia (both Brace and Harcourt were Columbia men), but I was worried that I might not have been as objective as I should be. “Merton writes well,” I added, “and I wish you’d take a look at it, Don.” (I had just become the editor-in-chief) “No, Bob,” he said, “if you like it, let’s do it.” The next day I phoned Naomi with (for that era) a good offer, which she accepted on the monastery’s behalf (Merton, of course, did not receive one penny of his enormous royalties owing to his monastic vow of poverty; all income went to the community.) Then I sent off the telegram to the monastery.
There were two editorial problems—the offputting sermon-essay with which the book opened and the need of cutting. The opening was an example of misplaced “fine” writing. It began as follows:
When a man is conceived, when a human nature comes into being as an individual, concrete, subsisting thing, a life, a person, then God’s image is minted into the world. A free, vital, self-moving entity, a spirit informing flesh, a complex of energies ready to be set into fruitful motion begins to flame with potential light and understanding and virtue, begins to flame with love, without which no spirit can exist. It is ready to realize no one knows what grandeurs. The vital center of this new creation is a free and spiritual principle called a soul. The soul is the life of this being, and the life of the soul is the love that unites it to the principle of all life—God. The body that here has been made will not live forever. When the soul, the life, leaves it, it will be dead....
And so on and on for many more pages. I pointed out to Tom that he was writing an autobiography, and readers would want to know at the start who
he
was, where he came from, and how he got there. The opening was too abstract, prolix, dull. He cheerfully accepted the criticism and finally found the right beginning. In books that become classics (“A classic is a book that remains in print”—Mark Van Doren) the opening words often seem to be inevitable, as if they could not possibly have been otherwise—“Call me Ishmael,” “Happy families are all alike,” “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Merton’s new opening began: “On the last day of January 191 s, under the sign of the Water Bearer, in a year of a great war, and down in the shadows of some French mountains on the borders of Spain, I came into the world.” This is personal, concrete, vivid, and it involved the reader in the story immediately. There remained the job of editorial polishing—removing excess verbiage, repetitions, longueurs, dull patches. I must say that Merton was very responsive and cooperative about all these minor changes. “Really, the
Mountain
did need to be cut,” he wrote a friend. “The length was impossible. The editor at Harcourt was, is, my old friend Bob Giroux.... When you hear your words read aloud in a refectory, it makes you wish you had never written at all.”