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On this 40th anniversary of Thomas Merton's death, we offer a
reflection by Frederick Smock, Chair of the English Department at Bellarmine
University.
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The monk/poet's journey toward
silence
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Special to The Courier-Journal
On the occasion of the 40th
anniversary of Thomas Merton's death, I want to think about silence. Certainly,
Merton took a vow of silence, and he was occasionally silenced by the Vatican.
But I am not thinking of those forms of silence. Rather, I want to think about
silence and the poet's art.
Much of a monk's life is spent
in silence. Much of a poet's life is spent in silence, too -- a poet spends a
fraction of his time actually writing poems. Merton was both a monk and a poet,
and thus well-acquainted with silence. Like meditation, and like prayer, poetry
is surrounded by silence. Poetry begins and ends in silence. Silence is also
inherent within a poem, like the silences between notes in music. As the great
Chinese poet Yang Wan-li said, a thousand years ago, "A poem is made of words,
yes, but take away the words and the poem remains."
Still, when
we think of silence, we do not necessarily think of Merton. He was a voluble
man, and a prolific writer. He continues to publish, posthumously. He always
seems to be speaking to us. Bookshelves groan under the accumulating weight of
his oeurvre. However, late in his life, Merton lamented the fact that
he had written so many editorials, and not more poems and prayers -- forms that
partake of silence. "More and more I see the necessity of leaving my own
ridiculous 'career' as a religious journalist," he wrote in his journal (Dec. 2,
1959). "Stop writing for publication -- except poems and creative
meditations."
"What do I really want to do?"
Merton asked himself, in his journal (June 21, 1959). "Long hours of quiet in
the woods, reading a little, meditating a lot, walking up and down in the pine
needles in bare feet." What a man commits to his journal is, at once, the most
private and the most authentic version of his self. Books written for public
consumption are not errant, just not as heartfelt. In his journal for the Feast
of St. Thomas Aquinas (March 7, 1961), Merton wrote, "Determined to write less,
to gradually vanish." He added, at the end of that entry, "The last thing I will
give up writing will be this journal and notebooks and poems. No more books of
piety."
Life is a journey toward
silence, and not just the silence of death. Youth talks a lot -- is noisy. Old
age is reticent. There is so much to consider, after all. Older men tend to hold
their tongues. They know the wisdom of forbearance. To have seen many things is
to reserve judgment. In this modern era, when news and politics are dominated by
endlessly talking heads, silence becomes a precious commodity. The mere absence
of speech sounds like silence. But true silence is a presence, not an absence. A
fullness. A richness that depends for its worth on the purity of intent, not
just the lack of distractions.
In a late journal entry (Dec.
4, 1968), Merton wrote of visiting the grand stupas of Buddha and Ananda at Gil
Vihara, Sri Lanka. "The silence of the extraordinary faces. The great smiles.
Huge and yet subtle. Filled with every possibility, questioning nothing, knowing
everything, rejecting nothing...." Speaking of the figure of Ananda, Merton
concluded, "It says everything. It needs nothing. Because it needs nothing it
can afford to be silent, unnoticed, undiscovered." He also photographed these
statues, focusing on their beatific serenity.
When we are silent, we can
hear the wind in the trees, and the water in the brook, and is this not more
eloquent than anything that we ourselves might have to say? Of living in his
newly-built hermitage, Merton wrote in his journal (Feb. 24, 1965), "I can
imagine no other joy on earth than to have such a place and to be at peace in
it, to live in silence, to think and write, to listen to the wind and to all the
voices of the wood, to live in the shadow of the big cedar cross, to prepare for
my death...."
Is it ironic for a writer to
praise silence? No more so, perhaps, than to praise ignorance, which is what
Wendell Berry does in his poem "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front."
There Berry writes, "Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered, he has
not destroyed." So, perhaps we should praise silence, for as much as a man has
not said, he has not lied.
Praise of silence runs
throughout Merton's meditations. For just one example: of his teaching of the
novices at Gethsemani, he wrote (July 4, 1952), "Between the silence of God and
the silence of my own soul stands the silence of the souls entrusted to
me."
Certainly, since his death,
Merton has been silent -- if not silenced. There is also the soft rustle, just
out of hearing, of the poems and prayers he did not live to write.
Frederick Smock is chairman of the English Department at Bellarmine
University. His recent book is Pax Intrantibus: A Meditation on the Poetry
of Thomas Merton (Broadstone
Books).
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Robert Toth
Executive Director The Merton Institute for Contemplative Living
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