''The Seven Storey Mountain'' is the
1948 autobiography
An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life.
It is a form of biography.
Definition
The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...
of
Thomas Merton
Thomas Merton (January 31, 1915 – December 10, 1968) was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist and scholar of comparative religion. On May 26, 1949, he was ordained to the Catholic priesthood and giv ...
, an American
Trappist
The Trappists, officially known as the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance ( la, Ordo Cisterciensis Strictioris Observantiae, abbreviated as OCSO) and originally named the Order of Reformed Cistercians of Our Lady of La Trappe, are a ...
monk
A monk (, from el, μοναχός, ''monachos'', "single, solitary" via Latin ) is a person who practices religious asceticism by monastic living, either alone or with any number of other monks. A monk may be a person who decides to dedica ...
and priest who was a noted author in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. Merton finished the book in 1946 at the age of 31, five years after entering
Gethsemani Abbey
The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani is a Catholic monastery in the United States near Bardstown, Kentucky, in Nelson County. The abbey is part of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (''Ordo Cisterciensis Strictioris Observantiae''), ...
near
Bardstown, Kentucky
Bardstown is a home rule-class city in Nelson County, Kentucky, United States. The population was 11,700 in the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Nelson County.
Bardstown is named for the pioneering Bard brothers. David Bard obtained a l ...
. The title refers to the mountain of
purgatory
Purgatory (, borrowed into English via Anglo-Norman and Old French) is, according to the belief of some Christian denominations (mostly Catholic), an intermediate state after physical death for expiatory purification. The process of purgatory ...
from
Dante
Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called (modern Italian: '' ...
's ''
Purgatorio
''Purgatorio'' (; Italian for "Purgatory") is the second part of Dante's ''Divine Comedy'', following the ''Inferno'' and preceding the '' Paradiso''. The poem was written in the early 14th century. It is an allegory telling of the climb of Da ...
''.
''The Seven Storey Mountain'' was published in 1948 and was unexpectedly successful. The first printing was planned for 7,500 copies, but pre-publication sales exceeded 20,000. By May 1949, 100,000 copies were in print and, according to ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' magazine, it was among the best-selling non-fiction books in the country for the year 1949.
The original hardcover edition eventually sold over 600,000 copies, and paperback sales exceed three million by 1984.
[ A British edition, edited by ]Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (; 28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires ''Decli ...
, was titled ''Elected Silence''. The book has remained continuously in print, and has been translated into more than 15 languages. The 50th-anniversary edition, published in 1998 by Harvest Books, included an introduction by Merton's editor, Robert Giroux
Robert Giroux (April 8, 1914 – September 5, 2008) was an American book editor and publisher. Starting his editing career with Harcourt, Brace & Co., he was hired away to work for Roger W. Straus, Jr. at Farrar & Straus in 1955, where he becam ...
, and a note by biographer and Thomas Merton Society founder William Shannon.
Apart from being on the ''National Review
''National Review'' is an American conservative editorial magazine, focusing on news and commentary pieces on political, social, and cultural affairs. The magazine was founded by the author William F. Buckley Jr. in 1955. Its editor-in-chief i ...
'' list of the 100 best non-fiction books of the century, it was also mentioned in ''100 Christian Books That Changed the Century'' (2000) by William J. Petersen.
Writing and publication
In ''The Seven Storey Mountain'', Merton reflects on his early life and on the quest for faith in God that led to his conversion to Roman Catholicism at age 23. Upon his conversion, Merton left a promising literary career, resigned his position as a teacher of English literature at St. Bonaventure's College in Olean, New York
Olean ( ) is a city in Cattaraugus County, New York, United States. Olean is the largest city in Cattaraugus County and serves as its financial, business, transportation and entertainment center. It is one of the principal cities of the Southern ...
, and entered the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani
The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani is a Catholic monastery in the United States near Bardstown, Kentucky, in Nelson County. The abbey is part of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (''Ordo Cisterciensis Strictioris Observantiae''), ...
in rural Kentucky. Describing his entry, Merton writes, "Brother Matthew locked the gate behind me, and I was enclosed in the four walls of my new freedom." Later, Dom Frederic Dunne, the abbot
Abbot is an ecclesiastical title given to the male head of a monastery in various Western religious traditions, including Christianity. The office may also be given as an honorary title to a clergyman who is not the head of a monastery. The fem ...
at the abbey, who had received him as a novice, suggested that Merton write out his life story, which he reluctantly began, but once he did, it started "pouring out". Soon he was filling up his journals with the work that led to the book which ''Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' magazine later described as having "redefined the image of monasticism and made the concept of saintliness accessible to moderns".
In Merton's journals, the first entry mentioning the project is dated March 1, 1946, but many scholars think he started writing it earlier than that, because the draft (more than 600 pages) reached his agent Naomi Burton Stone by October 21, 1946.
In late 1946, the partly approved text of ''The Seven Storey Mountain'' was sent to Naomi Burton, his agent at Curtis Brown literary agency, who then forwarded it to the renowned book editor Robert Giroux
Robert Giroux (April 8, 1914 – September 5, 2008) was an American book editor and publisher. Starting his editing career with Harcourt, Brace & Co., he was hired away to work for Roger W. Straus, Jr. at Farrar & Straus in 1955, where he becam ...
at Harcourt Brace
Harcourt () was an American publishing firm with a long history of publishing fiction and nonfiction for adults and children. The company was last based in San Diego, California, with editorial/sales/marketing/rights offices in New York City an ...
publishers. Giroux read it overnight, and the next day phoned Naomi with an offer, who accepted it on the monastery's behalf. With Merton having taken a vow of poverty, all the royalties were to go to the Abbey community. Soon a trouble arose, though, when an elderly censor from another abbey objected to Merton's colloquial prose style, which he found inappropriate for a monk. Merton appealed (in French) to the Abbot General in France, who concluded that an author's style was a personal matter, and subsequently the local censor also reversed his opinion, paving the way for the book's publication.
Edward Rice, a friend of Merton, suggests a different story behind the censorship issues. Rice believes the censor's comments did have an effect on the book. The censors were not primarily concerned with Merton's prose style, but rather the content of his thoughts in the autobiography. It was "too frank" for the public to handle. What was published was a "castrated" version of the original manuscript. At the time Rice published his opinion, he was unable to provide any proof; however, since then early drafts of the autobiography have surfaced and prove that parts of the manuscript were either deleted or changed. In the introduction to the 50th-anniversary edition of the autobiography, Giroux acknowledges these changes and provides the original first paragraph of Merton's autobiography. Originally, it began "When a man is conceived, when a human nature comes into being as an individual, concrete, subsisting thing, a life, a person, then God's image is minted into the world. A free, vital, self-moving entity, a spirit informing flesh, a complex of energies ready to be set into fruitful motion begins to flame with love, without which no spirit can exist..." The published autobiography begins with "On the last day of January 1915, under the sign of the Water Bearer, in a year of a great war, and down in the shadow of some French Mountains on the borders of Spain, I came into the world."
In the middle of 1948, advance proofs were sent to Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (; 28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires ''Decli ...
, Clare Boothe Luce
Clare Boothe Luce ( Ann Clare Boothe; March 10, 1903 – October 9, 1987) was an American writer, politician, U.S. ambassador, and public conservative figure. A versatile author, she is best known for her 1936 hit play '' The Women'', which h ...
, Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading English novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquir ...
and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen
Fulton John Sheen (born Peter John Sheen, May 8, 1895 – December 9, 1979) was an American bishop of the Catholic Church known for his preaching and especially his work on television and radio. Ordained a priest of the Diocese of Peoria in ...
, who responded with compliments and quotations which were used on the book jacket and in some advertisements. The first printing run was increased from 5,000 to 12,500. Thus, the book was out in October 1948, and by December it had sold 31,028 copies and was declared a bestseller by ''Time'' magazine. ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', however, initially refused to put it on the weekly Best Sellers list, on the grounds that it was "a religious book". In response, Harcourt Brace placed a large advertisement in ''The New York Times'' calling attention to the newspaper's decision. The following week, ''The Seven Storey Mountain'' appeared on the bestsellers list, where it remained for almost a year.
Comparison with Augustine of Hippo
In ''The Seven Storey Mountain'', Merton seems to be struggling to answer a spiritual call; the worldly influences of his earlier years have been compared with the story of Augustine of Hippo
Augustine of Hippo ( , ; la, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Af ...
's conversion as described in his '' Confessions''. Many of Merton's early reviewers made explicit comparisons. For example, Fulton J. Sheen
Fulton John Sheen (born Peter John Sheen, May 8, 1895 – December 9, 1979) was an American bishop of the Catholic Church known for his preaching and especially his work on television and radio. Ordained a priest of the Diocese of Peoria in ...
called it "a twentieth-century form of ''The Confessions of St. Augustine''".
Social reaction
''The Seven Storey Mountain'' is said to have resonated within a society longing for renewed personal meaning and direction in the aftermath of a long and bloody war (World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
), at a time when global annihilation was increasingly imaginable due to the development of atomic bombs
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...
and even more powerful thermonuclear
Thermonuclear fusion is the process of atomic nuclei combining or “fusing” using high temperatures to drive them close enough together for this to become possible. There are two forms of thermonuclear fusion: ''uncontrolled'', in which the re ...
weapons. The book has served as a powerful recruitment tool for the priestly life in general, and for the monastic orders in particular. In the 1950s, Gethsemani Abbey and the other Trappist monasteries experienced a surge in young men presenting themselves for the cenobitic
Cenobitic (or coenobitic) monasticism is a monastery, monastic tradition that stresses community life. Often in the West the community belongs to a religious order, and the life of the cenobitic monk is regulated by a Monastic rule, religious ru ...
life. It is a well-known bit of Catholic lore that, after the book's publication, many priests entered monasteries or seminaries with a copy in their suitcase.
One printing bears this accolade on the cover, from Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading English novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquir ...
: "It is a rare pleasure to read an autobiography with a pattern and meaning valid for us all. ''The Seven Storey Mountain'' is a book one reads with a pencil so as to make it one's own." Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (; 28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires ''Decli ...
also greatly (although not uncritically) admired the book and its author. He admired the book so much, he edited the autobiography for a British audience and published it as ''Elected Silence''.
''The Seven Storey Mountain'' has been credited as being the first major Catholic book to achieve widespread popularity in America, breaking the liberal Protestant monopoly on middlebrow spirituality.
Later life and criticism
Later in life, Merton's perspectives on his work in ''The Seven Storey Mountain'' had changed. In ''The Sign of Jonas'', published in 1953, Merton says that "''The Seven Storey Mountain'' is the work of a man I have never even heard of." Merton also penned an introduction to a 1966 Japanese edition of ''The Seven Storey Mountain'', saying "Perhaps if I were to attempt this book today, it would be written differently. Who knows? But it was written when I was still quite young, and that is the way it remains. The story no longer belongs to me..."
Merton died in 1968 in Samut Prakan Province, Thailand
Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...
while attending an international monasticism conference. It was reported he was accidentally electrocuted by a fan, but commentators posited he was assassinated by the CIA for his anti-war
War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...
rhetoric.
Various writers have noted the irony of his life's tragic conclusion, given that ''The Seven Storey Mountain'' closes by admonishing the reader to "learn to know the Christ of the burnt men" (see, e.g., ''The Man in the Sycamore Tree'', 1979). ''The Seven Storey Mountain'' propelled Merton into a life of paradoxes: a man who left an urban intellectual career for a labor-oriented rural existence, only to be led back into the realm of international opinion and debate; a man who spurned the literary world for the anonymity of cenobitic
Cenobitic (or coenobitic) monasticism is a monastery, monastic tradition that stresses community life. Often in the West the community belongs to a religious order, and the life of the cenobitic monk is regulated by a Monastic rule, religious ru ...
life in a Trappist monastery, only to become a world-famous author; and a man who professed his devotion to remain fixed in the confines of a monastic cell
A cell is a small room used by a hermit, monk, nun or anchorite to live and as a devotional space. Cells are often part of larger cenobitic monastic communities such as Catholic and Orthodox monasteries and Buddhist vihara, but may also form sta ...
, only to fulfill an urge to travel throughout Asia
Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...
.
Best books lists
''The Seven Storey Mountain'' has been extensively praised in lists of the best books of the 20th century. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) is a nonprofit educational organization that promotes conservative thought on college campuses.
It was founded in 1953 by Frank Chodorov with William F. Buckley Jr. as its first president. It sponsors ...
has it on their list of the 50 best books of the century and it was at Number 75 on the ''National Review
''National Review'' is an American conservative editorial magazine, focusing on news and commentary pieces on political, social, and cultural affairs. The magazine was founded by the author William F. Buckley Jr. in 1955. Its editor-in-chief i ...
''s list of the 100 best non-fiction books of the century.National Review's list of the 100 best non-fiction books of the century
''National Review
''National Review'' is an American conservative editorial magazine, focusing on news and commentary pieces on political, social, and cultural affairs. The magazine was founded by the author William F. Buckley Jr. in 1955. Its editor-in-chief i ...
'' website
See also
*
List of works by Thomas Merton
Below is a bibliography of published works written by Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk of The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani
The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani is a Catholic monastery in the United States near Bardstown, Kentucky, in Nelson C ...
*
Friendship House
Friendship House was a missionary movement founded in the early 1930s by Catholic social justice activist Catherine de Hueck Doherty, one of the leading proponents of interracial justice in the period prior to the mid-20th-century civil rights m ...
Publication data
* ''The Seven Storey Mountain'', 1948, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1998 50th anniversary edition: (hardcover), (paperback), (large print), (audio CD, abridged), (audio cassette tape
(All Libraries)
References
Further reading
* Forest, James H. ''Living With Wisdom: A Life of Thomas Merton, Maryknoll'', NY: Orbis Books, 1991
* Furlong, Monica. ''Merton: A Biography'', Liguori, MO: Ligouri Publications, New Edition 1995.
* Hart, Patrick, Montaldo Jonathan (editors). ''The Intimate Merton. His Life from His Journals'', San Francisco: Harper Collins 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005
* Merton, Thomas. ''Elected Silence'', London: Hollis and Carter, 1949.
* Merton, Thomas. ''The Seven Storey Mountain'', New York: Harcourt Brace, 1948.
* Merton, Thomas. ''The Sign of Jonas'', New York: Harcourt Brace, 1953.
* Merton, Thomas. Ed. Jonathan Montaldo. ''Entering the Silence: The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume Two, 1941-1952'', Harper San Francisco, 1996.
* Mott, Michael. ''The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton'', Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984.
* Neuhoff, Andrea.
Making America's Monk: Editing The Seven Storey Mountain', University of California, Santa Barbara, 2010.
* Rice, Edward. ''The Man In The Sycamore Tree'', San Diego: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1985.
* Shaw, Jeffrey M. ''Illusions of Freedom: Thomas Merton and Jacques Ellul on Technology and the Human Condition.'' Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2014.
External links
''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
''
Official website Thomas Merton Center
{{DEFAULTSORT:Seven Storey Mountain, The
1948 non-fiction books
American autobiographies
Books about Christianity
Books about spirituality
Literary autobiographies
Trappist Order
Cistercian literature