WITH ROOTS IN ETERNITY

THE EX-CON AND THE SECULAR MONK WITH A SEXUAL MYSTICISM

Parallel and Convergence in Thomas Merton and Henry Miller

Angus F. Stuart
 

When Thomas Merton sent a picture of himself to Henry Miller in June 1964, Miller was struck by their physical resemblance; Merton’s face to him seemed to combine his own and that of French author Jean Genet, he wrote in a response dated July 4, 1964; “You too have the look of an ex-convict, of one who has been through the fires.” Merton was clearly delighted, and replied commenting that he also had noticed their physical similarity, though adding that the person he was most often likened to was Picasso. “Still,” he writes, “I think it is a distinction to look like Picasso, Henry Miller, and Genet all at once. Pretty comprehensive. It seems to imply some kind of responsibility.” To Miguel Grinberg, also pictured with Merton and whom Miller likened to a "a pugilist and a vagabond," Merton wrote (in a letter dated July 12, 1964), "only ex-convicts and vagabonds have any right to be moving about and breathing the air of night which is our ordinary climate." He said something similar in his August 16 response to Miller: "It seems to me that the only justification for a man's existence in this present world is for him to either be a convict, or a victim of plague, or a leper, or at least look like one of these things." Merton and Miller see reflected in each other’s faces their own self-understanding of themselves standing on the margins (or on the outside) of society.
 

In a letter dated October 6, 1965, Merton tells Chilean poet Hernan Lavin Cerda, “Miller is a very good friend of mine and has much to say, but he is old. Here he is very famous but he is read, above all, for ‘kicks’ because he has a reputation of being pornographic. Actually he is a kind of secular monk with a sexual mysticism....” Thomas Merton and Henry Miller had been in correspondence with each other since April 1962 when Miller had written to Merton to say how “moved” he was by Merton’s satirical poem on Hiroshima, Original Child Bomb, and how “stimulated” he is by Merton’s writings, “especially by that one on the Desert Fathers!” Prior to this, messages and greetings to one another had been mediated by their mutual contacts James Laughlin and Bob MacGregor at New Directions who published both Miller and Merton.
 

In November 1961 Miller had written to MacGregor that he “...Was happy to get the new annual with Merton’s fragment on the Desert Fathers.... I feel closer to him, his way of thinking, than any other American author I know of.” Laughlin passed these comments on to Merton, who responded, “Well that is a testimonial. I am really warmed by it. To me that is an indication that I am perhaps after all a Christian. I believe that this inner recognition that cuts right through apparent external barriers and divisions is of crucial importance today.” Through both reading one another and their correspondence Merton and Miller came to see that such “external barriers and divisions” are indeed illusory and that they had more in common than might be expected. In many ways Merton had more in common with the likes of Henry Miller than he did with many in the Catholic Church; and Miller, who could be quite dismissive of Christianity, was no doubt pleasantly surprised to find he had so much in common with Merton whom he initially regarded as a “Father Brown” figure, the priest-detective in a number of novels by G.K. Chesterton.
 

Beyond some superficial parallels between Merton and Miller – both having spent significant periods of their lives in New York and France, both fluent in French and familiar with French literature, both having run into trouble with censorship – a deeper parallel is found in their relationship to “the world” as manifested in mid-twentieth century America and western civilization. Both became increasingly disenchanted with the world in which they had grown up, both rejected it in different ways, turning away from it and stepping outside the bounds of conventional society. Yet by the time they had begun to encounter one another's writing and connected with each other through their letters, each had experienced a turning back towards the world and a re-engagement with it.
 

Merton entered the monastery in order to leave the world behind, including his life as a writer, and embrace the anonymity of a monk dedicated to God. As the years went by he came to realize that the idea of leaving the world was an illusion, culminating in his famous epiphany on the corner of Fourth and Walnut in Louisville in March 1958 which was “like waking from a dream of separateness” (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p.156 ). Miller too had turned away from the bounds of conventional society in his early thirties when he quit his job in the personnel department at the Western Union Telegraph Company in New York to devote himself to writing. This was in the early 1920s; it was more than ten years before he found success, and only after he had moved to France where Tropic of Cancer was published but banned everywhere else, including America where it remained unpublished until 1961. At the end of his time in France, with gathering storm clouds over Europe, Miller travelled to Greece in 1939 at the invitation of his friend Lawrence Durrell who was living at the time on the island of Corfu. During these months in Greece Miller underwent a rebirth of his own and the beginning of a renewed turning back towards the world.
 

Miller’s account of his time in Greece was published by New Directions (1941) as The Colossus of Maroussi, one of two books by Miller that Merton, who said he had often thought of writing to him, said he had read when he replied to that first letter from him in 1962, and which he described as “a tremendous and important book.” In Colossus Miller contrasts the ancient world or, better, the timeless or eternal world, of Greece with both old world Europe and new world America, both of which he saw as in decline. With an impending war, already described as a “world war,” there is much the same ambivalence that we find in Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain. Both writers see the deteriorating world situation as not simply to do with specific powerful individuals like Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin, but rather emanating from “civilization” itself, though Merton identified himself as part of the problem whereas Miller comes across as more detached from it.
 

Despite a number of negative comments about Christianity, at one point referring to it as “a blight,” it is easy to see what impressed Merton about the book. As with much of Miller’s other writing, it articulates a profound spiritual sensibility often making use of striking Christian imagery, as in this piece in which Miller describes the effect of the light in Greece on him:
 

"The light is no longer solar or lunar; it is the starry light of the planet to which man has given life. The earth is alive to its innermost depths; at the center it is a sun in the form of a man crucified. The sun bleeds on its cross in the hidden depths. The sun is man struggling to emerge towards another light. From light to light, from calvary to calvary. The earth song. . . ."

(The Colossus of Maroussi, p.57).

For Miller, the "man crucified" is an emblem for all humanity, as it is in Christianity too, rightly understood; but the "man struggling to emerge towards another light" is not only humanity in general but Miller himself as he struggles to be born anew. Miller journeys from one illumination to another. When he passes through the Straits of Poros he describes it as passing through a womb; his inner experience of re-birth is reflected in his outer journey. At Epidaurus the outward peace he finds reflects a deep inner peace, in which he is prepared to let go of the struggling and striving with the world and with himself:
 

"It is the morning of the first day of the great peace, the peace of the heart, which comes with surrender. I never knew the meaning of peace until I arrived at Epidaurus. Like everybody I had used the word all my life, without once realizing I was using a counterfeit. Peace is not the opposite of war any more than death is the opposite of life.... I am talking of course of the peace which passeth all understanding. There is no other kind. The peace which most of us know is merely a cessation of hostilities, a truce, an interregnum, a lull, a respite, which is negative. The peace of the heart is positive and invincible, demanding no conditions, requiring no protection. It just is. If it is a victory it is a peculiar one because it is based entirely on surrender, a voluntary surrender, to be sure." (The Colossus of Maroussi, p.76)

Miller's move from New York to Paris and his writing of Tropic of Cancer, based on his experiences there, had been a journey of self-discovery as an artist. In the follow-up, Tropic of Capricorn, where he turned from the present to the past for literary inspiration, he wrote that his deepest desire was not to live, "but to express myself" (Tropic of Capricorn, p.13). In contrast, The Colossus of Maroussi tells how he, as an artist, discovers a greater self as he makes the transition from art to life. Towards the conclusion of the book Miller writes, "I shall pass from art to life, to exemplify whatever I have mastered through art by my living." He speaks of "a growing liberation, supplemented more and more by a desire to serve the world in the highest possible way" (pp.205-206).

Just as Merton's turning away from the world by becoming a monk found its fulfilment in an increasing return towards the world in the late-1950s and 1960s, epitomized by the Fourth and Walnut experience, so also we see Miller turning back towards the world in his desire to find fulfillment not so much in art as in life. "To live creatively," he writes, "...means to live more and more unselfishly, to live more and more into the world, identifying oneself with it and thus influencing it at the core, so to speak." He then goes on to compare the role of art to that of religion: "Art, like religion, it now seems to me, is only a preparation, an initiation into the way of life. The goal is liberation, freedom, which means assuming greater responsibility." Miller's journey of liberation, becoming free from the demands and expectations of the world, ultimately led him to assume a growing responsibility towards the world.
 

At the conclusion of Colossus Miller writes, “I was proud and arrogant, content to live the false, restricted life of the city man. The light of Greece opened my eyes, penetrated my pores, expanded my whole being. I came home to the world, having found the true center and the real meaning of revolution.” All of this resonated with Merton reading it at the very time when he was experiencing his own “real meaning of revolution” wherein a turning away from the world was working its way round to fulfilment in a turning back to the world, a return to the world with a renewed sense of vision.
 

The other of book of Miller’s that Merton mentioned he had read in his first letter to him was Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, so titled because the oranges in a triptych by artist Hieronymus Bosch represent the fruit of paradise, and Miller came to experience Big Sur, where he settled after his return to America, as a paradise albeit not without imperfections but, as he says, “Any paradise worth the name can sustain all flaws in creation and remain undiminished, untarnished.” (Big Sur, p.25)
 

This was a new beginning for Miller continuing the transition begun in Greece, as J.D. Brown writes, “from the civilized to the primitive, from art to life, from the air-conditioned nightmare to a back-country monastery.” Whether it is paradise or not depends on how you see it: “There seems to be an unwritten law here which insists that you accept what you find and like it, profit by it, or you are cast out.” (Big Sur, p.26) Not that anyone is doing the casting out; it is the place itself. For those who have eyes to see, it is paradise; it is not about acceptance in a passive sense, but about embracing life and whatever it brings, to “profit by it” and so discover paradise. This echoes what Miller says about finding true peace through acceptance and surrender in The Colossus of Maroussi; it signifies a profound abandonment and trust in providence that is also found in Merton’s monasticism:
 

“...all prayer, reading, meditation, and all the activities of the monastic life are aimed at purity of heart, an unconditional and totally humble surrender to God, a total acceptance of ourselves and our situation as willed by Him.” (Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer, p.83)
 

Purity of heart, Merton says, is the aim of the monastic life; purity of heart involves surrender to God and acceptance of ourselves and our situation. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Matthew 5:8). Purity of heart, this surrender and acceptance, is about a way of seeing – seeing the Divine at work in our life and situation. This new way of seeing, this purity of heart, leads to a new spiritual identity; one is transformed, becomes new, born again, through this new vision, this new way of seeing that is to do with acceptance and surrender. How we see affects how we are, or as Miller says in Big Sur, “To see things whole is to be whole” (p.144); and as Merton says in his poem Hagia Sophia, “There is in all things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness.”
 

In a striking passage, Miller writes, “I have come to believe that through being receptive, keeping one’s mind and heart open – showing faith and trust, in other words – one’s desires, or prayers, are realized. By prayer I do not mean asking, hoping, begging or bartering for that which one desires but, without formulating it, living the thought – ‘Thy will be done!’ In short, acknowledging wholeheartedly to ourselves that, whatever the situation we find ourselves in, we are to regard it as an opportunity and a privilege as well as a challenge” (Big Sur, p.205). In this articulation of “faith and trust” together with Miller’s attitude of surrender and acceptance that began in Greece and came to full expression in his life at Big Sur it is easy to see how Merton could identify with Miller and characterize him as “a kind of secular monk.”
 

At Gethsemani Merton discovered his “roots in eternity,” (Sign of Jonas, p.337) and with such roots in eternity he was able to re-engage with the “world” in a new way, not as something separate from himself or itself cut-off from eternity but as also being rooted in eternity, the “hidden wholeness.” This re-engagement with the world, conscious of his own roots in eternity, enabled him not only to recognize that the world itself was rooted in eternity but to write from this perspective offering the possibility of a new vision for those with eyes to see. Conscious of his roots in eternity, Merton was able to recognize others, like Miller, who also had “come home to the world” through a transcendent vision. Miller writes of his experience of coming to Big Sur and finding himself in paradise: “Seeking intuitively, one’s destination is never in a beyond of time or space but always here and now. If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things. Which is to say that there are no limits to vision. Similarly there are no limits to paradise” (Big Sur, p.25). The parallel between being “eternally anchored” and having “roots in eternity” is striking.
 

Merton enclosed the photo of himself in a letter to Miller in which he praised the latest New Directions collection of essays spanning Miller’s writing, Stand Still Like The Hummingbird, which bears resemblance in style and content to Merton’s own collection, Raids on the Unspeakable, published at around the same time. "I cannot let your hummingbird get away without a resounding shout of approval," Merton writes. In the same way that Miller recognized himself in Merton’s face, Merton recognizes himself Miller's writing: "All that you say seems to me as obvious as if I had said it myself and you have said it better than I ever could. It needs to be said over and over again." Merton further adds, "I resound to everything you say, Europe, Zen, Thoreau, and your real basic Christian spirit which I wish a few Christians shared!"
 

Merton recognizes himself in this “secular monk with a secular mysticism,” perhaps himself aspiring to the kind of integration of eternity in the world that Miller seems to embody; and Miller in turn recognizes in Merton an outsider like himself, an outlaw, “an ex-convict ... one who has been through the fires” and bears the traces of it. Miller seems to admire Merton’s monasticism, encouraging him to keep to his “(wonderful) way” in one letter, and to “Keep writing – and praying!” in another. Yet whilst revelling in the irony of their simpatico of spirit, Merton’s embrace of formal religion remains an enigma for him. Following Merton’s death in 1968, Miller concludes a letter dated April 22, 1969 to Bob MacGregor of New Directions: “By the way, I admired Merton greatly. He was a real radical, a true anarchist, even if a Christian.” No doubt this was meant as a supreme compliment. He then adds in parenthesis, “(Was St. Francis a Christian – or a great revolutionary spirit killed by the Church?)”
 

Sources:

Brown, J.D. Henry Miller. New York: Ungar, 1986.

Cooper, David D. (ed.) Thomas Merton and James Laughlin: Selected Letters. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. 1997.

Merton, Thomas. Sign of Jonas. London: Hollis & Carter, 1953.

Merton, Thomas. Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. New York: Doubleday, 1966 (Image edition, 1989).

Merton, Thomas. Contemplative Prayer. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1973.

Merton, Thomas. The Courage for Truth: Letters to Writers, selected and edited by Christine M. Bochen. New York: Harcourt Brace (Harvest edition), 1994.

Miller, Henry. Tropic of Capricorn. New York: Grove Press, 1961.

Miller, Henry. The Colossus of Maroussi. New York: New Directions, 1941.

Miller, Henry. Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. New York: New Directions, 1957.

Shapero, Ken. “Dear Henry: Love, Thomas.” Louisville Today 5 (May 1981): 32-37.

Wickes, George (ed.). Henry Miller and James Laughlin: Selected Letters. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. 1996.