Merton-Seven Storey Mountain

THE SEVEN STOREY MOUNTAIN

The title is in imitation of the seven st9rey s of the Purgatory of the Divine

Comedy of Dante. "This was published on 4th Oct. 1948. The book was soon selling in all parts of the country at an average of 2000 copies every working day. . . and by Labor day, 1949... almost 300,000 copies had been sold." Merton describes very poetically and vividly his life-experiences and his search for .God in this book. Here we find his reflections on suffering, his disillusionment with the modem educational system, the need for faith, his experience of the presence of God in the beauties of nature and his immense joy in being accepted for ordination to priesthood. The book has three parts. In the first part, Merton describes his early life~his parents' marriage, his childhood experiences and his mother's death due to cancer. "Prayer? No, prayer did not occur to me. How fantastic that will seem to a Catholic -that a six-year old child should find out that his mother is dying, and not know enough to pray for her."(P.14) His father takes him to France and he is enrolled in a school there. Later, they move to England and Merton joins a school there. While he is at the High School, he hears about the fatal sickness of his father: " I sat there in the dark, unhappy room, unable to think, unable to move, with all the innumerable elements of my isolation crowding in upon me from every side: without a home, without a family, without a country, without a father. . . without god.. . without heaven, without grace, without anything. . . "(p, 72) He describes very poignantly his feelings about his father's suffering: "What I could I make of so much suffering? It was a raw wound for which there was no adequate relief.. , we were in the condition of most of the world, the condition of men without faith in the presence of war, pain... suffering... death. You just had to take it, like a dumb animal."(p.82) About his father's death and its impact on his life: "Here was a man with a wonderful mind and a great talent and a great heart: who had... shaped my soul. and to whom I was bound by every possible kind of bond of affection and attachment. "(p. 84). " There was no room for any God in that empty temple full of dust and rubbish which I was to guard against all intruders... to devote it to the worship of my own stupid will."(P.85) Influence of the poetry of Blake on Merton:"The providence of God was eventually to use Blake to awaken something of faith and love in my own soul. . . " Reads the poetry of Hopkins, Merton mentions his visit to Rome and his attempt to pray in a church, "Another thing that Catholics do not realize about converts is the tremendous, agonizing embarrassment and self-consciousness which they feel about praying publicly in a Catholic Church (p.11