27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A journal containing some of Merton's most intense writings., September 24, 1998
In Learning to Love, the penultimate of the seven volumes of Merton's complete journals we have presented to us the only volume of the seven not containing any journal material printed previously. With earlier volumes parts of the text were already familiar to readers through their having been previously published. In volume six the writing is totally new to the reader though a large part of its content, Merton's 1966 affair with a student nurse, has been in the common domain since the publication of the official biography.
Monica Furlong in her 1980 biography described 1966 as "a rather quiet time in Merton's life." Subsequent biographies revealed that 1966 had not been quiet but contained one of the most critical and formative events of Merton's monastic life, events recounted in intense detail in Learning to Love. This volume although it covers the shortest time span of any of the journals published so far contains as much material as any that has preceded it and this suggests the nature and the intensity of that material.
This volume is made up of three separate sources - Merton's daily journal; an additional account Merton wrote during the summer of 1966 about his relationship with the student nurse called "A Midsummer Diary for M."; and finally a number of entries from "Notebook 17" which cover the beginning of 1966. In her introduction to this volume Christine Bochen notes that "A Midsummer Diary for M." was one of two additional accounts Merton kept of his relationship with M. and the other account, entitled "Retrospect", was not made available for publication.
In editing this volume Christine Bochen has divided her material up into four parts: "Being in one place" a short section covering January to March 1966; "Daring to Love" which covers the period of Merton's relationship with M. and his attempt to reconcile himself with his solitary life; "Living love in solitude" which covers September to December 1966 as Merton worked at recommitting himself to his monastic life; and "A life free from care" the last section of this journal covers January to October 1967 and presents a picture of Merton living fully his life as a hermit and writer.
It is good at last to be able to read Merton's own account of this period. What would have been really fascinating would be to know what Merton himself would have included if he was editing this journal for publication. As it stands this volume is dominated by Merton's affair with M. The first section, "Being in one place" is very short and then the reader is rocketed into Merton's affair and his journal for a time scarcely contains anything else except his speculations and reflections on their relationship. These reflections continue, though in a much lesser form through the last months of 1966 and into 1967 and at times overshadow some of the excellent journal writing contained in these passages. With his "Midsummer Diary for M." included as an appendix at the end of this volume the reader is once again thrown into Merton's intense self-examination and is in danger of this relationship obscuring the blossoming of a far more mature Merton, partly as a result of this relationship, in the entries from September 1966 through to October 1967. If Merton were to have prepared this material for publication I think it is this material he would have concentrated on, though by no means to the exclusion of his relationship with M.
In the first section of Learning to Love many of the themes readers will have encountered in earlier journals are still present. Prominent in this section is Merton's interest in the poet Rilke. Merton had begun a serious study of Rilke the previous autumn and found in him a like voice. Both men had struggled over their relationships with women and a sense of their inability to love and to be loved. Merton had also been struggling with the difference between solitude and loneliness since his move to the hermitage and with thoughts of death as he felt his own physical body deteriorating and as some of his friends from his time at Columbia died. Over the course of this journal themes develop in Merton's life and through his relationship with M. he found that he could "love with an awful completeness" and that his loneliness was transformed into solitude and that he could face death and the destructive forces in himself as "I no longer fear them, [the destructive forces] as I no longer fear the ardent and loving forces in myself." After this period Merton never again spoke of his "inability to love, or to be loved."
This experience filters through into some of Merton's conferences to the monastic community, especially his lectures on Rilke where he speaks of "learning to love" as the hardest of all the tasks in the monastery, and of solitude as central to love. The effect of this relationship and the discoveries Merton made through it are reflected in the journal entries for 1966 and into 1967. After the intense journal entries of March to September 1966 Merton's journal takes on a very different open and world-embracing tone as his new sense of love and compassion is extended to the wider world. The authors he was reading in this period - Camus, Eliot, Zukofsky, Muir, Sartre, Faulkner, Jones, Bachelard - and their thought effected his own thought and writing in his final, most creative, years including his books Cables to the Ace, The Geography of Lograire, Ishi Means Man, as well as essays on Zen, Camus, Cargo Cults, Faulkner and the monastic life.
Readers will find this sixth volume of Merton's journals a veritable contrast to earlier journal, some, I am sure, will love it whilst other will not like the Merton who comes across from its pages. Whatever our reaction it is a part of the whole Merton and a part of the paradoxical figure readers have grown to expect from Merton.
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Triumph of love--human and divine, November 23, 1998
By A Customer
This book, by a much loved and respected spiritual director for many mature persons, albeit only through his books, allows one to see first hand the struggles of a committed monk to remain faithful to his promise. Merton honestly relates his feelings and his battles to make sense of a love that, on one hand, could destroy all he had worked to achieve and yet, on the other hand, made him more human and therefore more real. The triumph of this struggle brings hope to all of us.
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful and very human, November 12, 2004
This review is from: Learning to Love: Exploring Solitude and Freedom (The Journals of Thomas Merton Vol. 6) (Paperback)
This was actually the first I ever read or heard of Merton. I read this book at a time when I was going through a bit of a struggle myself in regards to who I was and what I believed. I was raised Catholic, but no longer felt that I had any place in the Church and then I felt guilty for having those feelings. What Merton does so beautifully and bravely is to show his own struggles and his own humanity to the world. He struggles with the idea of being a hermit vs his desire to change the world; with his love and devotion to the Church vs his love of a woman; with his need for solitude vs. his need to be surrounded by other intelligent, compassionate minds. It's a fascinating read. I think one of the things that struck me most about it was how unselfconsciously he writes about what he's going through. It's not a book overflowing with self-judgment or condemnation. On the contrary, it's a book filled with the idea that he is as human as the rest of us and has the same flaws and desires, yet what he does with those flaws and desires is really up to him. That's no small discovery. It's one we could all stand to make about ourselves.
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