Raids on the UnspeakableHere this concern finds expression in poetic irony and in meditations intentionally dour. In these brief, challenging pieces, Father Merton does not offer consolation or easy remedies. He looks candidly and without illusions at the world of his time. Though he sees dark horizons, his ultimate answer is one of Christian hope. To vary the perspective, he writes in many forms, using parable and myth, the essay and the meditation, satire and manifesto, prose poetry and even adaptations from a medieval Arab mystic (Ibn Abbad) to humanize and dramatic his philosophical themes. The themes of Raids on the Unspeakable are as old as the myths of Prometheus and Atlas, and as timely as the human evils of today. They range from the "Message" written for an international congress of poets to the beautiful yet disturbing Christmas meditation, "The Time of the End Is the Time of No Room." And there are essays inspired by the world of three significant contemporary writers: Flannery O'Connor, the French novelist Julien Green, and the playwright Eugene Ionesco. A number of Father Merton's own drawings are also included in the book--not as "illustrations," but as "signatures" or :"abstract writings," which stand in their own right as another personal statement. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
absurd ADOLF EICHMANN Aeschylus Allah anti-art artist atheism Atlas watches Auschwitz become believe bell Christ Christian clock cloud collective contempt crowd darkness death dervishes despair destroy drum earth Eichmann emptiness eschatological eschatology everything Father Fatman fire Flannery Flannery O'Connor freedom gift gods guilt hate heard heart Hesiod hope human Ibn Abbad innocent invented Ionesco JULIEN GREEN justice kind knew light live Lord madness magic maize mean MEDITATION mercy mind myth needs ness never obsession ocean oilcloth ourselves peace perhaps Philoxenos poets possible Prome Prometheus quails question rain reality reason Rhinoceros sane sanity seriously silence sleep smile smoke society solitude speak spirit stand Sufis Sufism tell temptation thing thirteen Thomas Merton thought tion tribulation Tritons true truth tsars Unspeakable Victor Hugo void waiting whole world words Zeus
Popular passages
Page 47 - We rely on the sane people of the world to preserve it from barbarism, madness, destruction. And now it begins to dawn on us that it is precisely the sane ones who are the most dangerous. It is the sane ones, the well-adapted ones, who can without qualms and without nausea, aim the missiles and press the buttons that will initiate the great festival of destruction that they, the sane ones, have prepared. What makes us so sure, after all, that the danger comes from a psychotic getting into a position...
Page 125 - God alone is worthy of supreme seriousness, but man is made God's plaything, and that is the best part of him. Therefore every man and woman should live life accordingly, and play the noblest games and be of another mind from what they are at present.
Page 23 - There will always be a place, says lonesco, "for those isolated consciences who have stood up for the universal conscience" as against the mass mind. But their place is solitude. They have no other. Hence it is the solitary person (whether in the city or in the desert) who does mankind the inestimable favor of reminding it of its true capacity for maturity, liberty and peace. It sounds very much like Philoxenos to me. And it sounds like what the rain says. We still carry this burden of illusion because...
Page 22 - Rhinoceritis, he adds, is the sickness that lies in wait "for those who have lost the sense and the taste for solitude" The love of solitude is sometimes condemned as "hatred of our fellow men." But is this true? If we push our analysis of collective thinking a little further we will find that the dialectic of power and need, of submission and satisfaction, ends by being a dialectic of hate. Collectivity needs not only to absorb everyone it can, but also implicitly to hate and destroy whoever cannot...
Page 19 - ... a confrontation with poverty and the void, a renunciation of the empirical self, in the presence of death, and nothingness, in order to overcome the ignorance and error that spring from the fear of "being nothing." The man who dares to be alone can come to see that the "emptiness" and "usefulness" which the collective mind fears and condemns are necessary conditions for the encounter with truth. It is in the desert of loneliness and emptiness that the fear of death and the need for self-affirmation...
Page 45 - It is much worse to consider this calm, "well-balanced," unperturbed official conscientously going about his desk work, his administrative job which happened to be the supervision of mass murder. He was thoughtful, orderly, unimaginative. He had a profound respect for system, for law and order. He was obedient, loyal, a faithful officer of a great state. He served his government very well.
Page 49 - I am beginning to realize that "sanity" is no longer a value or an end in itself. The "sanity" of modern man is about as useful to him as the huge bulk and muscles of the dinosaur. If he were a little less sane, a little more doubtful, a little more aware of his absurdities and contradictions, perhaps there might be a possibility of his survival. But if he is sane, too sane . . . perhaps we must say that in a society like ours the worst insanity is to be totally without anxiety, totally "sane.
Page 10 - What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world...
Page 11 - They have constructed a world outside the world, against the world, a world of mechanical fictions which contemn nature and seek only to use it up, thus preventing it from renewing itself and man.
Page 22 - Only the man who has fully attained his own spiritual identity can live without the need to kill, and without the need of a doctrine that permits him to do so with good conscience. ... it is the solitary person (whether in the city or the desert) who does mankind the inestimable favor of reminding it of its true capacity for maturity, liberty and peace.