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Striving Towards Being: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Czeslaw Milosz

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This volume consists of about a decade's worth of correspondence (1959-68) between the sometimes sagacious Trappist monk Thomas Merton and the Lithuanian-born Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, later to become a Nobel laureate for Literature. Milosz was residing in Paris when the correspondence began, but he soon moved to Berkeley, California, to teach at the university. Merton was writing from Gethsemani, Kentucky, apart from one or two notes from his travel in 1968.

These are two alert minds, discussing everything from Communism to segregation, Catholicism to television, campus unrest to poetry. We see in Milosz a salubrious skepticism toward some of Merton's progressive enthusiasms, and even a sharp critique of those who would equate the flaws of American capitalism with the grave sins of Stalinism (Milosz uses the word "injustice" rather pointedly). During campus unrest at Berkeley, Milosz notes that the More Compassionate Than Thou seem to have compassion for everyone but "squares." Milosz is neither pacifist nor anarch, and in one or two instances provides a valuable counterpoint to Merton's views -- particularly on communism, which Milosz saw up close.

Interesting, to see the views of both men concur about the liturgical changes in the Catholic Church (not much enthusiasm for them); about confession, Milosz explains some "problems" he has had, and Merton gives us his views on what occurs during the Sacrament. There is much about poetry -- one or two poems by each author are included -- and about a magazine which Merton edited in his final days, "Monks Pond."

Mertonians will enjoy this volume, and even persons such as this reviewer, whose respect for Merton is not to be confused with discipleship or idolatry. Milosz has a sharp mind, able to discourse with breathtaking ease about Marx, Hegel, and the heresy of Socinianism (?!) -- about the plight of four Polish writers nicknamed Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta -- about the spirit of the Sixties & some of its less palatable side effects. I was inspired by "Striving Towards Being" to explore the poetry of Czeslaw Milosz, and was not disappointed.

Czeslaw Miloscz and Thomas Merton have always been two of my favorite writers; until this book I had not known they were friends. This book celebrates that rare thing I remember from youth: a friendship of ideas between kindred spirits. These letters were written at the beginning of the 1960's -- a rare moment of cultural clarity on both sides of the "iron curtain." Forty years later, with the triumph of capitalism and our so-called "individualism" all but assured, with religious questions making the daily news, it is a good thing to step back and view the world's conversation as it was beginning, when there were two poets for whom ideas and ethics were living and breathing and more exciting than money. God, freedom, community -- they're all here as well as prophetic looks at mass media, individualism and other buzz words. Milosz and Merton really make them buzz. Read this.

This is the third copy of STRIVING TOWARDS BEING that I have purchased online.
I believe that the other two were from an online competitor. But, by my recollections, Amazon was as fast if not faster than the other two purchases.
Good for you!