Witness to Freedom

by Thomas Merton

Overview

Witness to Freedom is the fifth and final volume in the extraordinary correspondence of "one of the most original and challenging minds of the mid-twentieth century" (John Tracy Ellis, The New York Times Book Review). Dramatic and revealing, these letters deal with periods of serious crisis in Thomas Merton's life and vocation, giving readers, in his own words, the details and behind-the-scene facts of his personal struggles as well as his lifelong commitment to peace.
This remarkable collection includes the unpublished "Cold War Letters" (as well as a complete list of the series), with Merton's original preface, which confirms their continuing relevance in the cause of peace. There are letters to ecologist Rachel Carson; artist and type designer Victor Hammer; Merton's friend and agent Naomi Burton Stone; his teacher Mark Van Doren; the Canadian philosopher Leslie Dewart; the French Arabic scholar Louis Massignon; and other famous as well as unknown correspondents. There is a courageous open letter to the American hierarchy on the issue of war. Witness to Freedom shows Merton as a living witness against war, perhaps one of the greatest of our century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781429966863
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	06/04/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	370
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) is one of the foremost spiritual thinkers of the twentieth century. Though he lived a mostly solitary existence as a Trappist monk, he had a dynamic impact on world affairs through his writing. An outspoken proponent of the antiwar and civil rights movements, he was both hailed as a prophet and castigated for his social criticism. He was also unique among religious leaders in his embrace of Eastern mysticism, positing it as complementary to the Western sacred tradition. Merton is the author of over forty books of poetry, essays, and religious writing, including Mystics and Zen Masters, and The Seven Story Mountain, for which he is best known. His work continues to be widely read to this day.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Art and Freedom

It is the greatest glory of Christian art that it expresses the freedom of the children of God.

PREFACE TO WILLIAM CONGDON'S

In My Disc of Gold

Copy of an unfinished engraving by Victor Hammer, used as an illustration in the second limited edition of Hagia Sophia. Printed with the permission of Carolyn Reading Hammer

To Victor Hammer

Born in Vienna on December 9, 1882, Victor Hammer was brought up in the old quarter of the city among modest artisans. At the age of sixteen he entered the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and learned to support himself by drawing and painting. An inveterate traveler, he visited many places in Europe and before he had reached the age of forty had gone twice to the United States. He became famous as a typographer who formulated principles that others were to follow; he was also adept in bookbinding and calligraphy.

With Hitler's rise to power and the spread of Nazism to Austria, Hammer gave up his position as professor of art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and came to the United States. In 1939 he accepted the position of professor of art at Wells College in Aurora-on-Cayuga, New York, where he taught lettering, drawing, and painting and, with his son Jacob, founded the Wells College Press and the Hammer Press. In 1948 he retired from Wells College to become artist-in-residence at Transylvania College in Lexington, Kentucky. He and his wife, Carolyn, whom he married in 1955, lived in a historical residence in Gratz Park in Lexington. One of his presses was brought from Florence and became the King Library Press. Under the imprint he had used in Italy, Stamperia del Santuccio, he printed special limited editions of several of Merton's books. On one of his visits to the Hammers, Merton saw a triptych that Victor had painted. The central panel showed a woman and a young boy standing in front of her; the woman was putting a crown on the child's head and Merton asked who the woman was. Hammer answered that he had begun to paint a madonna and child, but it had not turned out as he expected and he no longer knew who the woman was. Merton said, "I know who she is. I have always known her. She is Hagia Sophia."

On May 2, 1959, Hammer wrote to Merton asking him to come bless the triptych and also to explain in more detail what he had said about Hagia Sophia. Merton did so in the following letter. The contents of this letter later grew into the text of his long poem, "Hagia Sophia," printed by Hammer in a limited edition; it was also published in Emblems of a Season of Fury and appears in Collected Poems.

May 14, 1959

I have not rushed to reply to your letter — first, because I have been a little busy, and second, because it is most difficult to write anything that really makes sense about this most mysterious reality in the mystery of God — Hagia Sophia [Holy Wisdom].

The first thing to be said, of course, is that Hagia Sophia is God Himself. God is not only a Father but a Mother. He is both at the same time, and it is the "feminine aspect" or "feminine principle" in the divinity that is the Hagia Sophia. But of course as soon as you say this the whole thing becomes misleading: a division of an "abstract" divinity into two abstract principles. Nevertheless, to ignore this distinction is to lose touch with the fullness of God. This is a very ancient intuition of reality which goes back to the oldest Oriental thought. (There is something about it in Carolyn's wonderful book Peaks and Lamas [written by Marco Pallis], incidentally.) For the "masculine-feminine" relationship is basic in all reality — simply because all reality mirrors the reality of God.

In its most primitive aspect, Hagia Sophia is the dark, nameless Ousia [Being] of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the incomprehensible, "primordial" darkness which is infinite light. The Three Divine Persons, each at the same time, are Sophia and manifest her. But where the Sophia of your picture comes in is this: the wisdom of God, "reaching from end to end mightily" is also the Tao, the nameless pivot of all being and nature, the center and meaning of all, that which is the smallest and poorest and most humble in all: the "feminine child" playing before God the Creator in His universe, "playing before Him at all times, playing in the world" (Proverbs 8). (This is the Epistle of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.) This feminine principle in the universe is the inexhaustible source of creative realizations of the Father's glory in the world and is in fact the manifestation of His glory. Pushing it further, Sophia in ourselves is the mercy of God, the tenderness which by the infinitely mysterious power of pardon turns the darkness of our sins into the light of God's love.

Hence, Sophia is the feminine, dark, yielding, tender counterpart of the power, justice, creative dynamism of the Father.

Now the Blessed Virgin is the one created being who in herself realizes perfectly all that is hidden in Sophia. She is a kind of personal manifestation of Sophia. She crowns the Second Person of the Trinity with His human nature (with what is weak, able to suffer, able to be defeated) and sends Him forth with His mission of inexpressible mercy, to die for man on the Cross, and this death, followed by the Resurrection, is the greatest expression of the "manifold wisdom of God" which unites us all in the mystery of Christ — the Church. Finally, it is the Church herself, properly understood as the great manifestation of the mercy of God, who is the revelation of Sophia in the sight of the angels.

The key to the whole thing is, of course, mercy and love. In the sense that God is Love, is Mercy, is Humility, is Hiddenness, He shows Himself to us within ourselves as our own poverty, our own nothingness (which Christ took upon Himself, ordained for this by the Incarnation in the womb of the Virgin) (the crowning in your picture), and if we receive the humility of God into our hearts, we become able to accept and embrace and love this very poverty, which is Himself and His Sophia. And then the darkness of Wisdom becomes to us inexpressible light. We pass through the center of our own nothingness into the light of God.

I wrote that first page without keeping a carbon, but I am getting someone to copy it because I am going to want to know what I said. I say these things and forget them, and then someone refers to them again and I can no longer remember what is being talked about. I cannot remember what it was I said when I was there in Lexington and we were looking at the triptych.

The beauty of all creation is a reflection of Sophia living and hidden in creation. But it is only our reflection. And the misleading thing about beauty, created beauty, is that we expect Sophia to be simply a more intense and more perfect and more brilliant, unspoiled, spiritual revelation of the same beauty. Whereas to arrive at her beauty we must pass through an apparent negation of created beauty, and to reach her light we must realize that in comparison with created light it is a darkness. But this is only because created beauty and light are ugliness and darkness compared with her. Again the whole thing is in the question of mercy, which cuts across the divisions and passes beyond every philosophical and religious ideal. For Sophia is not an ideal, not an abstraction, but the highest reality, and the highest reality must manifest herself to us not only in power but also in poverty, otherwise we never see it. Sophia is the Lady Poverty to whom St. Francis was married. And of course she dwelt with the Desert Fathers in their solitude, for it was she who brought them there and she whom they knew there. It was with her that they conversed all the time in their silence.

I wish I had a fuller remembrance of your pictures. I just remember the general idea. The story you tell of its growth is very interesting and revealing and I am sure Hagia Sophia herself was guiding you in the process, for it is she who guides all true artists, and without her they are nothing.

When [Ad] Reinhardt [the painter, Merton's classmate] was here he was discussing art too. His approach is very austere and ascetic. It is a kind of exaggerated reticence, a kind of fear of self expression. All his paintings are very formal and black. I certainly do not think he is a quack like so many others; on the contrary, he is in strong reaction against them. I think you and he would be in fundamental agreement. It is a pity he was not able to get over there. He is certainly not a brilliant success (like so many of the others who are making fortunes with their stuff).

Now J. Laughlin, whom you know, is coming down in June. He wants very much to see you, and will write to you about it. My novice, who was in the hospital, came out but is going back, and it is possible that perhaps it might be necessary for me to make one trip more. I do not know what the future will bring, but until I know more about it let us wait and expect the possibility at any rate. If nothing comes up, then we could plan on you both coming over here later in June. I could write about that. I think often of the Desert Fathers, and the work [is] progressing. And how is the broadside? Maybe we could make a little broadsheet on Sophia, with the material begun here???

I am really enjoying Peaks and Lamas, and also the Athos book has been very fine — and the Hesiod. When you have thought about this material on Sophia, perhaps we could make a further step toward thinking of a title. I am so happy to be involved in what is clearly a very significant work, spiritually as well as artistically.

Thank you for the photostats from the [Catholic] Encyclopedia [on Wisdom]. I looked them over, and they just begin to touch on the mysterious doctrine. Carolyn should try to get for the Library a book by Sergius Bolgakov, called The Wisdom of God, published in London in the thirties. It would cover very well the Sophia theme. I have notes on it, but the book is very technical in its way.

On January 21, 1962, Hammer wrote to Merton and asked him what he thought "brainwashing" meant. How, he asked, can we escape it with all the newspapers and other means of communication?

Cold War Letter 24b]

c. January 25, 1962

As for brainwashing, the term is used very loosely about almost anything. Strict technical brainwashing is an artificially induced "conversion," brought about by completely isolating a person emotionally and spiritually, undermining his whole sense of identity, and then "rescuing" him from this state of near-collapse by drawing him over into a new sense of community with his persecutors, now his rescuers, who "restore" his identity by admitting [him] into their midst as an approved and docile instrument. Henceforth he does what they want him to do and likes it, indeed finds a certain satisfaction in this, and even regards his old life as shameful and inferior.

In the loose sense, any mass man is a "brainwashed" man. He has lost his identity or never had one in the first place, and he seeks security, hope, a sense of identity in his immersion in the pressures and prejudices of a majority, speaking through TV, newspapers, etc. Having no real power or meaning in himself, he seeks all in identification with a presumably all-powerful all-wise collectivity. Whatever the collectivity does is right, infallible, perfect. Anything approved by it becomes legitimate and even noble. The worst crimes are virtues when backed up by the all-powerful collectivity. All that matters is to be part of the great, loud mass.

It seems to me that the great effort of conscience that remains for modern man is to resist this kind of annihilating pressure, this defection, in every possible way. The temptation comes unfortunately from very many angles, even seemingly good sources. The Cold War is the deadly influence that is leading Western man to brainwash himself.

When the process is completed there will be nothing left but the hot war or the decline into totalitarian blindness and inertia, which also spells hot war in the end. The prospects are very dark, aren't they? Yet I think that perhaps some providential accident may happen that will wake everyone up. Some kind of plague of radiation, perhaps, something unexpected and unforeseen that will force people to their senses. But can we say we have done anything to deserve this? I hardly think so. Fortunately, if we only get what we deserved, we would never have very much of anything good. God is not simply just, He is also and above all merciful. I wish that this had not been so thoroughly forgotten ...

The French situation is very disturbing indeed. Much evil can come of this. Everyone expects De Gaulle to get it this year sometime, and I wonder how long he can survive. He has been a good man in many ways, yet perhaps mistakenly messianic too. But what could any reasonable human being [have] done with Algeria? If he goes, then France goes too. And this may be the spark that will finally ignite everything. The next few months will tell us a thing or two. And the next three years, or four: well, to call them fateful is putting it so mildly as to be ridiculous.

I wonder if there is going to be much left of the Western world by 1984 to fulfill George Orwell's prophecies.

Meanwhile, we have only to be what we are and to retain the spirit and civilization which we were blessed with, and to keep as human as we can.

[Cold War Letter 71]

May 1962

More and more I see that it is not the moral principles which are at stake but, more radically, the whole outlook of modern man, at least in America, and the basic assumptions which tend to guide his thought, if it can be called thought. We are living in an absurd dream, and a very bad one. And it is the fruit of all sorts of things we ought not to have done. But the whole world is in turmoil, spiritually, morally, socially. We are sitting on a thin crust above an immense lake of molten lava that is stirring and getting ready to erupt. Nothing will stop this eruption. But at least we can refrain from setting off bombs that will start it in some far worse way than it normally would.

November 9, 1963

I shudder at the thought of attempting a long didactic poem on art. Yet who knows, someday it may happen. I generally end up doing what I never expected to do, and I suppose that is a very good thing. However, I am firmly resolved to do anything but this at the moment.

Of course, one could approach the subject of art as a way of "knowing" and seeing. You sometimes cannot see a thing at all unless you take pains to make something like it. And yet not like it. Nothing gets to be known without being changed in the process.

As to saying "What is art?," well, I don't think there is much chance of making any sense out of the question if one is looking for a pure essence. On the other hand, the question is not without meaning. It is a matter of communication, not of discovery: not of defining the thing and getting command over it, but of clarifying one's own concepts and conveying what one means, or does not mean.

After all, one has to be able to say that abstract expressionism is not art, and I think that clarifies most of what needs to be said about it, both for and against. That is precisely what is "for" it: that it is not art, though it seems to be. I know this statement is scandalous, and I think the ambiguities are bad ones in the long run (it should not pretend to be art, which in fact it does). I do not think that throwing paint on canvas and saying "This is art" merits twenty thousand dollars. It is too obvious. However, even the obvious has its place.

If I write a long didactic poem on art it will certainly not be about this.

December 18, 1963

Thanks for your good letter: I find you much more scrupulous about the treatment of religious subjects than most artists would be. In fact, the use of the "vexillum" or cross-flag in the iconography of the Resurrection [Hammer had done a painting of the Resurrection] is not common these days. I suppose it is a late-medieval motif, suggested by the Crusades. In any event, there is no reason on earth why you should even give it a second thought. The flag is simply a sign of victory, and I suppose it means that the artist wants you to recognize the Resurrection, in case the tomb does not look sufficiently like a tomb. There are certainly other ways of doing this.

(Continues…)

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Table of Contents

Title Page,
Introduction,
I. - Art and Freedom,
II. - War and Freedom,
1. The Cold War Letters,
2. Postscript to the Cold War Letters,
3. The Bay of Pigs Invasion,
4. The Peace Hostage Program,
5. The Second Vatican Council: Schema XIII,
6. On War and Peace,
III. - Merton's Life and Works,
1. To Naomi Burton Stone,
2. Merton's Schools,
3. Reading, Writing, Reviewing,
4. Religious Life,
5. Vocation Crisis: 1959–1960,
6. Some "Gethsemani" Letters,
7. Reflections on Life's Meaning,
8. The Final (Asian) Journey,
IV. - Religious Thought and Dialogue,
1. To Herbert Mason,
2. To Louis Massignon,
3. To Leslie Dewart,
4. Other Letters on Religious Thought,
ABBREVIATIONS FOR MERTON WRITINGS CITED IN TEXT,
The Thomas Merton Letters Series,
Acknowledgments,
Index,
Copyright Page,