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.

Fruit of Paradise - A Way of Seeing

The other book of Miller's that Merton mentioned he had read in that first letter to Miller besides The Colossus of Maroussi ("a tremendous and important book") was Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. Personally speaking, this is my real entry point and awakening to the parallels and similarities between Thomas Merton (who I had been reading for nearly twenty years) and Henry Miller (of whom I had read only the two Tropics). I began reading Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch on a visit to the Big Sur coast in February 2009 (ontheroad2009.blogspot.com) having previously read Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur recounting a very different experience on that coast. I fell in love with Miller’s book at once, and was pleasantly surprised and profoundly impressed with the deep sense of spirituality that he articulated. Having re-read the Tropics since, I have become more conscious of the spirituality they also contain, but Miller’s Big Sur is of a different order altogether; perhaps not as important as literature as the Tropics but it had a profound impact on me and opened my eyes to another side of Miller. If this was Merton’s first encounter with Miller’s writing (along with Colossus) I am not surprised that he connected with it so readily and identified with Miller’s way of thinking so closely. At the time that Merton and Miller were in correspondence with one another Merton had not read either of the Tropics, and I am not aware that he ever did.

Whereas the Tropics broke new ground as literature, blending autobiographical novel with surrealistic mysticism and social commentary, the literary style of both Colossus and Big Sur was more straightforwardly autobiographical. Colossus recounted Miller’s transformational months in Greece when he experienced something of a re-birth, returning to America at the end of it to begin a new life; a life that was to become profoundly contemplative and increasingly monastic, in a secular sense. He had even spoken of giving up writing altogether in order to make the transition from art to life complete, much as Merton has entered the monastery in 1941 believing that he was leaving his life as a writer behind. As we know, neither ceased to write; instead their writing went through changes and transformations that reflected their growth and development as human beings.

On his return to America, after some unsuccessful attempts to make some money, Miller secured a $750 advance from Doubleday publishers to tour America and write up his impressions. He bought a 1932 Buick, learned to drive, and set out on October 26, 1940. The end result is The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, eventually published by New Directions in 1945. His disenchantment with mid-twentieth century America parallels that of Thomas Merton in The Seven Storey Mountain culminating in his flight from the world and seeking refuge in the monastery of Our Lady of Gethsemani in December 1941. In 1942 Miller moved to southern California hoping to work as a writer in Hollywood, but did not really have the heart for it and made no real effort to get a job. In 1943 he made some money from his painting; he had taken up watercolor, and for a few months was able to sell as many as he could turn out. In February 1944 he visited Big Sur and stayed in various locations before settling in a rent-free cabin on Partington Ridge, remaining there for the next fifteen years or so.

Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch is Miller’s account of his years in Big Sur which he came to regard as a kind of paradise, hence the title of the book: the oranges in a triptych by artist Hieronymus Bosch represent the fruits of paradise. 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.” It was a new beginning in a new place, but more than this, it was a new and broader vision of finding himself in paradise. Miller writes:

“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. Any paradise worth the name can sustain all flaws in creation and remain undiminished, untarnished.” (Big Sur, p.25)

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, he says, is doing the casting out; it is the place itself. For those who have eyes to see, he seems to say, this is paradise; it is not only 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. It means renunciation of all deluded images of ourselves, all exaggerated estimates of our own capacity in order to obey God’s will as it comes to us in the difficult demands of life in its exacting truth. Purity of heart is then correlative to a new spiritual identity – the ‘self’ as recognized in the context of realities willed by God.” (Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer, p.83)

Purity of heart, Merton says, is the aim of the monastic life, and equates to surrender to God and acceptance of ourselves and our situation. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Matthew 5); so this 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).

Later 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.”

There seems to be a very close parallel here in the thinking of Merton and Miller, so close as to be a convergence in vision: “without formulating it, living the thought – ‘Thy will be done!’” (Miller); “an unconditional and totally humble surrender to God, a total acceptance of ourselves and our situation as willed by Him” (Merton). For both of them, this surrender and acceptance expresses an attitude of faith and trust – in God, in life – a way of seeing and constructing reality that makes them who they are; an outlook on reality in which they find their identity.

The parallels and convergence in Thomas Merton and Henry Miller should not be overplayed; where there is convergence there is also divergence. Whilst they clearly admired each other’s writing and found they could identify with it, and clearly they revelled in the irony of finding so much congruence in their vision of reality, they were living very different lives: Merton as the cloistered monk steeped in the community life and discipline of prayer; Miller living quietly as he pleased in Big Sur, sometimes with wife and children. In a sense, Merton was not so much an ex-con as a convict by choice, living in his cell as if in paradise; though on his journeys beyond the monastery in the last year of his life – to California, New Mexico, Alaska, Asia – he perhaps then experienced the feeling of being an ex-con on parole. Merton’s description of Miller as “a kind of secular monk with sexual mysticism” seems accurate; Miller lived his life with the conviction of a monk, but a monk very much in and of the world, and the “sexual mysticism” perhaps denotes Miller’s reaching for the sublime and eternal rooted in the sensual experience of the world; physical reality as the entry point for spiritual encounter; the recovery of the divine within humanity through human life fully lived.

Sources:

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

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

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.

Colossus - A Tremendous and Important Book

In his first letter to Miller dated July 9, 1962 in reply to Miller's initial letter of April 20, 1962, Merton says that he has often thought of writing to Miller and that he has read Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch and The Colossus of Maroussi which he regards as "a tremendous and important book" (CFT, p.274).

Colossus is Miller's account of his time in Greece in 1939 where he had gone at the invitation of Lawrence Durrell who was living on the island of Corfu. Miller has promised himself that he is going to do no writing for a year, and this gives him opportunity to reflect on his life in France, as well as further reflect on America having written about his years there before going to France in Tropic of Capricorn. In Colossus Miller contrasts the ancient world - perhaps more accurately, timeless world - of Greece with both old world Europe and new world America, both of which he sees as in decline. With an impending war - already (published in 1941) recognized as a "world war" - we see much of the same ambivalence towards it that we find in Merton's Seven Storey Mountain of the same period, though perhaps Merton identifies himself more as part of the problem than does Miller. 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.

Both Miller and Merton at this time of the late-1930s were disenchanted with America, with western-civilization, with the conventional mores, values, aspirations and appetites of the world. Merton's response was to turn to Catholicism and ultimately to enter the monastery as a way of rejecting the "world" in order to find an alternative path. Miller's rejection of "civilization" (a word he uses rather than the "world") is equally robust and goes back much further to his quitting a regular job with Western Union back in the early 1920s to become a writer, if not earlier still, and is evident in his move to Paris, France later that decade and his life and writings there. Like Merton, Miller articulates and even embodies a radical rejection of conventional life with its values and expectations. Reading The Colossus of Maroussi one can see many places where Merton would indeed be applauding and resounding with a loud "Amen!"

In Miller we find the same distrust and disdain for technology that that we often find in Merton:

"One should not race along the Sacred Way in a motor car - it is sacrilege. One should walk, walk as men of old walked, and allow one's whole being to become flooded with light." (COL, p.45)

But unlike Merton there is an explicit rejection of Christianity which describes at one point as "blight." The passage above continues:

"This is not a Christian highway: it was made by feet of devout pagans on their way to initiation at Eleusis. There is no suffering, no martyrdom, no flagellation of the flesh connected with this processional artery. Everything here speaks now, as it did centuries ago, of illumination, of blinding, joyous illumination." (COL, p.45)

Yet Miller is clearly familiar with the teachings of Jesus and with the Old and New Testaments, and often seems to speak approvingly of Jesus, and even seems to have a profoundly Christian voice as well as a deep spiritual consciousness. There seems to be more of a rejection of the structures of authority and institutional religion than there is of Jesus himself, and in this he would no doubt find sympathy in Merton.

As part of Miller's rejection of conventional society (and with it Christianity too, in as much as it has become identified with that society), there is a profound disdain for money and wealth:

"I have seen Greeks walking about in the most ludicrous and abominable garb imaginable - straw hat from the year 1900, billiard cloth vest with pearl buttons, discarded British ulster, pale dungarees, busted umbrella, hair shirt, bare feet, hair matted and twisted - a make-up which even a Kaffir would disdain, and yet, I say it sincerely and deliberately, I would a thousand times rather be that poor Greek than an American millionaire." (COL, pp.49-50)

There is something reminiscent of St. Francis in these words, another figure that Miller is often found referring to with approval.

An example of Miller's use of powerful Christian imagery is found in his experience of the light he found in Greece. Light is a recurring theme throughout the book, and there is clearly a parallel between the light that Miller describes outwardly and what is going on inwardly in his heart during these months. He writes:

"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. . . ." (COL, 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.

Along with light, peace (and, in some places, the lack of peace) is another powerful motif, particularly in face of the gathering storm clouds over Europe and the early weeks and the War. On the day he went to Epidaurus he writes:

"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. The poverty of language, which is to say the poverty of man's imagination or the poverty of his inner life, has created an ambivalence which is absolutely false. 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, and 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." (COL, p.76)

A couple of pages later he concludes:

"At Epidaurus, in the stillness, in the great peace that came over me, I heard the heart of the world beat. I know what the cure is: it is to give up, to relinquish, to surrender, so that our little hearts may beat in unison with the great heart of the world."

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. The peace he experiences at Epidaurus reflects the advent of a deep inner peace within himself, where he is prepared to let go of the struggling and striving with the world and with himself: "all conquest is vain, even the conquest of self, which is the last act of egotism." (COL, p.80). "Epidaurus," he says, "is merely a place symbol: the real place is in the heart, in every man's heart, if he will but stop and search it." Words that could easily have been spoken by Merton too.

Miller's move from New York to Paris and his writing of Tropic of Cancer, based on his experience there, was 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." (CAP, p.13) In contrast, The Colossus of Maroussi tells how he, as an artist, discovers a greater self; the Colossus tells of the movement from art to life. Towards the end of the book (pp.205-206) Miller writes, "I shall pass from art to life, to exemplify whatever I have mastered through art by my living." He speaks of feeling "a growing liberation, supplemented more and more by a desire to serve the world in the highest possible way."

Here we see, in the same way that Merton's turning away from the world by becoming a monk was followed by a turning towards the world in the late-1950s and 1960s - most clearly manifested in his epiphany on the corner of Fourth and Walnut in Louisville, so also we see Miller turning towards the world in his desire to find fulfillment not so much in art but more importantly 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 in relation to the more important business of life: "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 has been about his own liberation, becoming free from the demands and expectations of the world, ultimately in order to assume a growing responsibility towards the world.

It is striking that at a time of Merton's growing openness to the world he should be exposed to such material from Miller as The Colossus of Maroussi, detailing such a transformational and regenerative experience in Miller's life journey, and the books that followed, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, The Wisdom of the Heart and, later, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird, all of which are both prophetic and profoundly religious in the best sense of the word. Merton clearly had an appetite for and enjoyed such writing, finding aspects of his own way of thinking affirmed and reflected in it, which likely contributed further to his broadening vision.

Miller concludes his Colossus with a kind of benediction:

"The Greek earth opens before me like the Book of Revelation. I never knew that the earth contains so much; I had walked blindfolded, with faltering, hesitant steps; 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. No warring conflicts between the nations of the earth can disturb this equilibrium. Greece herself may become embroiled, as we ourselves are now becoming embroiled, but I refuse categorically to become anything less than the citizen of the world which I silently declared myself to be when I stood in Agamemnon's tomb. From that day forth my life was dedicated to the recovery of the divinity of man. Peace to all men, I say, and life more abundant."

Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi. Published in 1941 by New Directions.

Merton's response: "a tremendous and important book" - letter to Henry Miller dated July 9, 1962.

Sources:

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

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

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

The New Directions Link

James Laughlin, founder and editor-in-chief of New Directions publishing in New York, was instrumental in putting Thomas Merton and Henry Miller in touch with each other, having published both during the 1940s and 1950s. Laughlin urged Miller to visit Merton in his monastery in Kentucky, as he often did himself. In turn, he arranged for Miller's "forbidden" books to reach Merton in the cloister by means of the monastery's consulting psychiatrist, Jim Wygal, in Louisville.

It is apparent in the correspondence between Merton and Laughlin that Merton had already read the book by Joseph Delteil (in French) on St. Francis of Assisi that Miller was later to send him. In a letter to James Laughlin dated April 20, 1960 Merton writes, "I can see where Henry Miller would like it, and I like it too in the same way."

In a letter dated February 27, 1961 from Miller to Bob MacGregor of New Directions, Miller concludes by saying, "And my best to Thomas Merton (a sort of 'Father Brown')." Father Brown is a priest-detective in a number of novels by G.K. Chesterton.

In October (Oct. 5, 1961) Miller again writes to MacGregor saying, "I found that 'duologue' between Merton and Suzuki very, very exciting. What Merton has to say about Paradise and Heaven - most interesting. Do send me the finished product, when out. If you have published Merton, send me one, won't you, that you think I'd like. Not a novel - the metaphysics. I like his thinking. Give him greetings from me some time. Never read a line of his before. . . ." The piece "Wisdom in Emptiness: A Dialogue by Daisetz T. Suzuki and Thomas Merton" was to appear in New Directions 17, an annual anthology.

On October 24, 1961 Merton tells Laughlin he was encouraged to hear Miller's comments when he received a number of Miller's books from Bob MacGregor later that month; books which, he says, he "read mostly with a good deal of interest and sympathy, especially the essay on bread which is one of the best" ["The Staff of Life" in Remember to Remember. ND, 1961]. He also tells Laughlin, "[Miller's] 'Murder the Murderer' is in many ways like something I wrote at the time, on a much smaller scale, in the Secular Journal. . . ."

On November 13, 1961 Miller writes to MacGregor: ". . . Was happy to get the new annual with Merton's fragment on the Desert Fathers. Do give him greetings from me whenever you write him. I feel closer to him, his way of thinking, than any other American writer I know of. By the way, the man he ought to read is, Erich Gutkind. Author of The Absolute Collective (one of my very great favorites, along with Berdyaev's work) and Choose Life. Merton might find Gutkind as enthralling to grapple with as Suzuki. Of course he is thoroughly anti-Christian, but in another sense closer to Merton than the so-called Christian apologists."

James Laughlin passed these comments on to Merton who responded in a letter dated December 1, 1961: "Thanks for the quote from Henry Miller. 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. It is in this kind of recognition that Christ is present in the world, not just in the erection and definition of barriers that say where He is and where He isn't. There are no such barriers. Those who imagine them too literally are in illusion." These comments in turn were passed on to Miller in a letter from Laughlin dated December 12, 1961. Laughlin continues, "Isn't that fine? You and Tom have so much in common and your wonderful spirit of understanding humanity, that I hope some time the two of you can get together. If you are ever down there in Kentucky, you ought to go see him. I suppose that Father Abbot would bar the door if there were too much advance publicity on your visit, at least if he has been reading the newspapers, but I think if you just turned up there would be no trouble about seeing Tom and that you would enjoy him greatly." Laughlin tells Miller that Merton is indeed interested in the Gutkind books he had mentioned and that he was going to "round them up for him."

The next month on January 17, 1962 Miller replies to Laughlin, "It was nice to get Thomas Merton's note about me, but I don't think I'll ever get to his neck of the woods." So it proved, he never did.

In April (April 20, 1962) Miller writes to Merton from Paris expressing admiration for Original Child Bomb, Merton's poem about Hiroshima, as well as Wisdom of the Desert, and promises to send Joseph Delteil's book on St. Francis. On May 10, 1962 Merton tells Laughlin, "Henry Miller wrote. I am very glad to hear from him and will write." He adds that he will take a look at the Deteil book again which "seemed quite good" when he glanced at it before (in 1960). In July he tells Laughlin he is reading it seriously and that it has "plenty of life and imagination and it wallops hard." He says that it ought to be published, though says nothing about who should translate it. He adds, "I think all decent clean living American hundred percent beatniks like you and me would like it. I think the squares and the cardinals might not like it but who cares? It is a religious book that calls horsedung by its popular name, which is one of the things it has in common with St. Francis." I want this book.

August 1962 finds Merton reading Miller's Wisdom of the Heart which he had recently received and he tells Laughlin (August 16, 1962) that it "is extraordinarily good & I'm discussing it with a priest poet here who is a fine guy and thinks like Gutkind (it is Dan Berrigan, the Jesuit - know his work?)" In June 1963, he tells Laughlin he has read "a life of old Henry Miller, which was really interesting. I really like him" (June 14, 1963). This the book My Friend Henry Miller: An Intimate Biography by Alfred Perles.

On February 27, 1964 Merton asks Laughlin about the new Henry Miller book, Stand Still Like The Hummingbird, and the next month (March 20, 1964) thanks him for sending it. He says, "As usual, I am completely in agreement. He is wise and persuasive and I think is one of the very few people who really makes any kind of sense." Merton writes to Miller expressing his appreciation of Hummingbird enclosing the picture of himself and Miguel Grinberg, and when he receives Miller's response (dated July 4, 1964) he writes to Laughlin on July 8 to say: "I got a very good letter from Henry Miller. I had sent him a snapshot of me and Miguel Grinberg and he said I looked like an ex-convict and also like him (Miller) and also some like Genet. These are all compliments and I am pleased."

Miller and Merton's names then disappear from the published correspondence of each of these men with New Directions until after Merton's death (December 10, 1968). Then Miller concludes his April 22, 1969 letter to Bob MacGregor by saying: "By the way, I admired Merton greatly. He was a real radical, a true anarchist, even if a Christian." Then he adds in parenthesis, "(Was St. Francis a Christian - or a great revolutionary spirit killed by the Church?)"

Sources:

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

Laughlin, James. Random Essays: Reflections of a Publisher. Mt. Kisco, New York: Moyer Bell Limited, 1989. p.7. (See "Thomas Merton and his Poetry" pp.3-31).

Laughlin, James. Byways: Memoir. Edited with an introduction by Peter Glassgold. New York: New Directions, 2005. p.221

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

Henry Miller is a Good Friend of Mine

In the years of their correspondence with each other, Merton mentioned Miller and his growing friendship with him in a number of letters to others. In August 1962, in that first summer of their correspondence, Merton tells Ernesto Cardenal that he has been in contact with Miller who "has written some extraordinary essays recently, especially a book called The Wisdom of the Heart" (August 17, 1962. CFT p.134).

The following year in June 1963 he tells Miguel Grinberg, "Henry Miller is a good friend of mine" who has a very good insight into the world that "is falling into a state of confusion and barbarism, for which the responsibility lies, perhaps, with those who think themselves the most enlightened." He tells Grinberg that Miller has said "many really urgent things about the modern world and where it is going," and that the problem is the "dehumanization of man" (June 21, 1963. CFT p.196). A year later, after Grinberg has visited Merton at Gethsemani and had pictures taken together, Merton tells Grinberg that he had sent one of the pictures of the two of them to Miller who had responded that Grinberg looked like "a pugilist and a vagabond" and Merton an "ex-convict" as well having resemblance to Genet and himself (July 12, 1964. CFT p.199). Merton comments, "only ex-convicts and vagabonds have any right to be moving about and breathing the air of night which is our ordinary climate."

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." Miller would have been almost 74 years old at this point. Merton tells Cerda that Miller is "very famous but he is read, above all, for 'kicks' because he has a reputation of being pornographic." Merton continues, "Actually he is a kind of secular monk with a sexual mysticism" (CFT p.205). There is undoubtedly truth and insight in Merton's assessment of Miller, particularly in the essential life he had begun to live on the remote Californian coast at Big Sur, but one wonders what exactly he meant by the phrase "sexual mysticism" - though reading some of Miller's work (particularly the Tropics which Merton had not read) one can recognize this in Miller. But what exactly did Merton mean by it? And one wonders whether there is some projection going on, and whether Merton perhaps identifies himself with, and aspires to be, a "kind of secular monk" perhaps even with a "sexual mysticism."

Sources:

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

The Letters

On April 20, 1962 Henry Miller wrote a short letter to "Father Louis" from Paris expressing his admiration for Merton's Original Child Bomb saying he was "much moved," and how stimulated he is by Merton's writings, especially The Wisdom of the Desert. He begins the letter though by telling Merton that he will shortly be sending him a book (in French) by Joseph Delteil on Saint Francis believing that Merton would enjoy it. He refers to meeting Bob MacGregor (of New Directions) in New York and talking of Merton.

On July 9, 1962 Merton replies saying that he has often thought of writing to Miller and that he has read Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch and The Colossus of Maroussi which he regards as "a tremendous and important book." He says how he has wanted to discuss their common interest in Jean Giono, and the need for a good selection of Giono to be published in English. The Delteil book has arrived but Merton has not yet read much of it. He refers to his own "banned book" (Peace in the Post-Christian Era) commenting in parenthesis to Miller, "you are not the only one, you see!" and Merton encloses a copy for Miller along with a couple of mimeographed items. He asks Miller if he has read New Seeds of Contemplation, that perhaps James Laughlin has sent to him already. Merton concludes by encouraging Miller to "keep speaking out" and says he is in his prayers.

Miller replies on July 31, 1962 that he has read New Seeds of Contemplation and was "much, much impressed." He adds, "To me you belong with Emerson and Thoreau, who were (and still are) most radical thinkers." He tells Merton that he visited Ireland and found "nothing but 'faith and poverty.' But wrong faith, wrong kind of poverty," and adds, "I often find atheists more religious minded - don't you?" He encourages Merton to keep to his "(wonderful) way!"

A week later on August 7, 1962 Merton writes agreeing with Miller on the difficulty of translating Delteil into English (Miller had said that he doubted a good translator could be found because of Delteil's "unusual French"). Merton is tempted to try it himself and would enjoy the challenge but has no time; "a living and riotous book it would make: a life of St. Francis as there never yet was in English" - an intriguing and tantalizing prospect! But Merton says he has to "save energy for some strong statements that may be needed here and there." He says he will write to Delteil - did he do so?

Merton is reading Miller's The Wisdom of the Heart which he tells Miller is "you at your best ... very fine material everywhere, one insight on top of another," and says he is looking forward to The Time of the Assassins, Miller's book about French poet Rimbaud.

He agrees that that Miller is probably right about Ireland and likens religion to a monster of the Apocalypse - "the greatest orgy of idolatry the world has ever known" and describes idolatry as "the greatest and fundamental sin," and that "the greatest and most absurd difficulty of our time is keeping disentangled from idols." He laments that he does not have an answer but "...it is no longer a matter of answers. It is a time perhaps of great spiritual silence."

Merton clearly likes that Miller has likened him to the transcendentalists, though he admits he has not read Emerson except little bits that he has liked. Thoreau he admires "tremendously," who is one of the reasons, he says, that he felt justified in becoming an American citizen - "he and Emily Dickinson, and some of my friends, and people like yourself." He says, "It is to me a great thing that you say I am like the transcendentalists. I will try to be worthy of that."

Merton sends another brief note a few days later on August 11, 1962 to say that he is reading Miller's "magnificent essay on Raimu" (in The Wisdom of the Heart). That same day Merton wrote in his journal: "Henry Miller's tremendous essay on Raimu deeply significant, touches the real nerve of our time, the American nihilist, the movie dreamer, who commits crime in his sleep, a bomb wrapped in ideals, as against Raimu the human European, caught in the mess of real politics." (Journals Vol. 4, p.237)

Then the correspondence goes quiet for a while until Miller sends a card on January 8, 1963 to say he is reading the Thomas Merton Reader "slowly each night" adding, "How wonderful. What a lucid, exciting thinker you are. A joy to read you." He sends another card on January 12, 1963 to say "how deeply moved" he was by reading of Merton's early life in France (in the Reader): "My God, all those wonderful place names you reel off - and that wonderful father of yours!" He tells Merton he was in Prades a year earlier and how he said "a silent prayer for the first time in ages." He adds: "You see I know nothing about your life and have been reading you backwards. No matter. I could read you standing on my head. God bless you! I say. Long life. Keep writing - and praying!"

I am struck by the heartfelt admiration these two writers have for each other - both for their writings and, even more so, for one another as fellow human beings, kindred spirits.

In the spring of 1963 Merton writes Miller to say that he is happy with the two postcards about the Reader. Merton sends some poems by Robert Lax plus some translations and a poem of his own. On May 12, 1963 Merton again thanks Miller for all his cards. He also says that he is reading Alfred Perles book My Friend Henry Miller: An Intimate Biography and comments on the similarities with his own life: "It all sounds so familiar: it is the kind of life in many ways that I was always intending to lead and did lead, to some extent." He affirms that he is still at the monastery, despite "all sorts of legends" about him being elsewhere, but refers to his attempts to get permission to go to Mexico as a hermit which were "squashed by administrative and political maneuvers which I could not block." He has no desire, he says, to go back to New York (which he would in fact do within the year to see D.T. Suzuki) but that he would like to see Europe again which, he says, is not beyond the bounds of possibility (but he never did so). On the whole he accepts that his place is to be a monk at Gethsemani: "It seems to me that I am here for a reason, just as you are where you are for a reason. And the reason seems to be pretty much the same in both cases. We are here to live, and to 'be,' and on occasion to help others with the recharging of batteries."

Merton laments that he has not read Miller's novels but feel that he would enjoy them now as opposed to before he entered the monastery when he was "too ambivalent and too doubtful of myself." He hopes to read them someday but warns Miller not to send them because of the "barrier of censorship."

Apparently Lax's poems did not "click" with Miller (which suggests there is at least one missing piece of correspondence from Miller), and Merton invites Miller to stay a day or two at the monastery "if you happen to be this way."

The correspondence goes quiet again until June 22, 1964 when Merton writes to say, "I cannot let your hummingbird [Stand Still Like The Hummingbird] get away without a resounding shout of approval." Merton "liked it from the first," and said, "I have been getting into it again and like it more and more." In Miller's writing Merton recognizes himself: "All that you say seem 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!" He encourages Miller to "keep giving us so many good things" and again invites him to come to the monastery if he is in the vicinity, though he can't imagine why he would be. He also mentions that he met D.T. Suzuki recently and they "agreed warmly about everything." And finally he says that "thanks to you" he is going to "dig up" everything he can find of J.S. Powys.

In this letter Merton also enclosed a recent photograph of himself with Miguel Grinberg. A month later on July 4, 1964 Miller writes to say how he "can't get over" the photo Merton sent him, saying "you are as familiar to me as if I had known you in my dreams." Miller comments on the resemblance of Merton to himself and to Jean Genet - "seems to combine my mug and Genet's" - and he continues, "You too have the look of an ex-convict, of one who has been through fires." He says, "The three of us [Miller, Merton and Genet] have been through hell and I think bear traces of it."

Miller is interested to hear that Merton has met with Suzuki; and he says how he adored "Father John (Powys)" though he adds, "a Christian he never was - nor an atheist either, for that matter. Just a wonderful pagan, a heathen, if you like, endowed with a true catholic 'universal' spirit."

The final letter we have is dated August 16, 1964 in which Merton also comments on the similarity in their faces and saying that the person he is mostly likened to is Picasso: "Still 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." Earlier in May (May 11, 1964) Merton had written to Miguel Grinberg having received the pictures from him saying, "I look like Henry Miller." In July (July 12, 1964) he again writes to Grinberg saying, "I sent Henry Miller a picture of the two of us in the front garden of the monastery amid cold winds, snow, fallout, sleet, darkness, chaos and night. He thought he was able to discern in me a likeness to himself, and I agree as I had already thought of that myself. Maybe I said it in a letter." He adds that Miller also thought Merton looked like Genet and an ex-convict and Grinberg like "a pugilist and a vagabond." Merton concludes, "In all these things he is undoubtedly partly right, for 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." He mentions that he has just finished reading Camus' The Plague which he found "very sobering." Of course, one has to take what is said in personal letters in the context in which they are written as opposed to more formal published statements, but these words give an indication of Merton's own self-understanding as someone on the margins (or on the outside) of society, not unlike the position of Miller himself with whom he clearly identifies in ways more than the physical resemblance in which he delights!

Sources:

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

Merton, Thomas. Turning Towards The World: Journals Vol. 4, 1960-1963. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1996.

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