Sonia Petisco Martínez - Thomas Merton's Poetics of Self-Dissolution

This poem is based on Rubinus’ Historia Monachorum and it reads as follows:

MACARIUS THE YOUNGER

I

The place in which he lived

Is called Scete.

In wide open desert

A day and night’s journey

From the monasteries at Nitria.

No road, no path,

No land marks

Show the way there.

You must go by the stars.

Scarce is the water:

Where found at all

It smells poisonous as tar

But is safe to drink.

Few live there

Far apart

Out of one another’s sight

True men of God:

Such a place

Suffers only those

Who have made up their minds.

There is great love among them

And love for any other

Who can get that far.

If any traveller

Should reach that place

He receives much care:

One who crosses such wastes

Has needs.

II

Now one day someone brought a bunch of grapes to Macarius at Scete.

He, forgetful of his own thirst, took the grapes to another

Who was unwell.

He in turn, happy and thanking God for so much love

Took the grapes to yet another.

So the grapes went from cell to cell, all around the desert

No one knowing where they first started.

Until at length one came to Macarius, saying: “Here, Father, are good

grapes. Take them, they will refresh you.”

Then Macarius was very glad to see the worth of those men

Who lived hidden in the Desert at Scete. 3

It is obvious that the aforementioned lines are evoking the words pronounced by Jesus two or three times during the Last Supper: “This is my commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12). The four evangelists insist on this law and St. John in his Gospel develops it in detail, a sort of invitation to community. The new commandment of love confirms this community, (Congregavit nos in unum Christi amor ) which means abandoning the particularity or personality of each of us in favour of the formula “love one another,” with this impersonal “one” at which the English language points. In this regard, the symbol of the grapes might represent the death of the individual which precedes the resurrection of the community or the resurrection of Lógos , a death which for Merton implied a fierce fight against his own biased world views, a destruction and oblivion of his self, his mask, his disguise, the worst of miseries. 4It is utterly impossible to define the nature of communal space, he will tell us. “We all add up to something far beyond ourselves. We cannot yet realize what it is. But we know […] that we are all members of the Mystical Christ, and that we all grow together in Him for Whom all things were created.” 5Let us thus go to the desert among the hearts devoted to God, beata solitudo , not in search of a narcissist dialogue but to engage in compassionate clarity, hearty friendship, and secret philia 6

The next poem is as splendid as it is audacious, and it immediately reminds us of T.S. Eliot in The Waste Land and of García Lorca in Poet in New York . It is included in his book Early Poems (1940-1942) and draws its inspiration from the time when Merton spent several years as a student of English Literature at Columbia University before becoming a monk. It is a direct affront, a genuine portrait of New York’s reality at the time of the Second World War, with many European cities already destroyed and bombarded. In my opinion, the lines of the poem are very close to Christ’s teaching: “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also” (Luke 6:29).

Merton does not remain silent but instead, in a kind of painful and jubilant ritual, he spells out city life and its progress, a sort of prison where alienated masses survive and are subdued to the vanity of the faith ruling the world. With an unwonted and ambiguous rhythm throughout the poem, Merton casts an unceasing rain of images shaping a grotesque scenery to denounce the monotony, weariness, luxury, squandering and superficiality of the American society: a whole collective illusion based on false ideas, fantasies and distractions which power imposes on it. We are all accomplices – he explains –, perfectly adapted to a futile world which has lost all its moral values and suffers the ever-growing sadness and condemnation to personal individuality. This is a theme that he further discussed in his essay “Rain and the Rhinoceros.” 7The poet, like Berenger, the main character in Ionesco’s play, challenges “the entire herd” and he urgently gets involved in the task of revealing to us the pack of lies which comprise this reality. This unveiling becomes, without a shadow of doubt, a main source for his rebellion, for all his creative thrust. His cry against money and imposed poverty, true essences of modernity, brings the following poem to an end, leaving it open for further reflection by the reader.

HYMN OF NOT MUCH PRAISE FOR NEW YORK CITY

When the windows of the West Side clash like cymbals in the setting

sunlight,

And when wind wails amid the East Side’s aerials,

And when, both north and south of thirty-fourth street,

In all the dizzy buildings,

The elevators clack their teeth and rattle the bars of their cages,

Then the children of the city,

Leaving the monkey-houses of their office-buildings and apartments,

With the greatest difficulty open their mouths, and sing:

“Queen among the cities of the Earth: New York!

Rich as a cake, common as a doughnut,

Expensive as a fur and crazy as cocaine,

We love to hear you shake

Your big face like a shining bank

Letting the mad world know you’re full of dimes!

“This is your night to make maraccas out of all that metal money

Paris is in the prison-house, and London dies of cancer.

This is the time for you to whirl,

Queen of our hopped-up peace,

And let the excitement of your somewhat crippled congas

Supersede the waltzes of more shining

Capitals that have been bombed.

“Meanwhile we, your children,

Weeping in our seasick zoo of windows while you dance,

Will gobble aspirins,

And try to keep our cage from caving in.

All the while our minds will fill with these petitions,

Flowering quietly in between our gongs of pulse.

These will have to serve as prayers:

“‘O lock us in the safe jails of thy movies!

Confine us to the semiprivate wards and white asylums

Of the unbearable cocktail parties, O New York!

Sentence us for life to the penitentiaries of thy bars and nightclubs,

And leave us stupefied forever by the blue, objective lights

That fill the pale infirmaries of thy restaurants,

And the clinics of thy schools and offices,

And the operating-rooms of thy dance-halls.

“‘But never give us any explanations, even when we ask,

Why all our food tastes of iodoform,

And even the freshest flowers smell of funerals.

No, never let us look about us long enough to wonder

Which of the rich men, shivering in the overheated office,

And which of the poor men, sleeping face-down on the Daily Mirror ,

Are still alive, and which are dead.’” 8

Merton’s contempt for metropolitan life grew bigger and bigger. Faithful to the commands of his own destiny, the monk deemed it urgent to begin a journey from the unreal city (London, New York) to the paradisiacal city (the Trappist community). 9Therefore, at the beginning of the forties, he entered the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani (Kentucky). On joining the monastery in 1941, he wrote a poem entitled “A Letter to My Friends.” It is addressed to his university friends Robert Lax and Edward Rice, with whom he shared many good moments of study and discussion during their time as students at Columbia. They enjoyed a lasting intimate friendship and a close intellectual collaboration witnessed to in their contributions to The Columbia Jester magazine. In the summer of 1939, they spent a few months together at a small cottage situated in the west side of New York State, writing novels, and reading books, amongst which was Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce. 10