‘The Seven Storey Mountain’ Is a Tale of Profound Inner Transformation
‘The Seven Storey Mountain’, by Thomas Merton, reviewed.
The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton’s memoir, belongs to a tradition of spiritual autobiography that includes St. Augustine’s Confessions and John Bunyan’s Grace Abounding. Interestingly, Thomas didn’t want to write it. Dom Frederic Dunne, the abbot at his monastery, convinced him to do it, which was just as well: it was an instant, wholly unexpected best-seller (though the The New York Times initially refused to include it on their list since it was religious), and one that inspired thousands of young men to flock to Catholic monasteries in the U.S. Evelyn Waugh was tasked with editing a version.
One reason for its impact is that it made ‘the concept of saintliness accessible to moderns’, as Time put it. But it is also, in my view, because it is a hero’s journey. There are no dragons nor hidden treasure of the literal kind; but the main character is locked in an interior struggle against his demons and the expectations of society. And he does, in the end, win out.
There are no dragons nor hidden treasure of the literal kind; but the main character is locked in an interior struggle against his demons.
The story starts, logically enough, with Thomas’s childhood, which was made tricky by the early loss of his mother and the roaming, somewhat disjointed lifestyle led by his artist father. Thomas later goes to America, where he attends Columbia University and makes some friends. But he soon grows disillusioned with the academic life and its secular priorities. He sinks into a kind of spiritual void, as the general emptiness of a non-religious life becomes increasingly plain. And here, his tone becomes more contemplative. Inevitably, the worldly Thomas finds himself drawn to the Church.
The central theme of his memoir is the search for meaning and truth in a turbulent world. His early life is unfulfilling and characterised by change and an absence of roots. In the enduring, indeed eternal life of the Church, it seems he finds an anchor and the constancy and stability he so badly needed as a child and younger man.
But another, more interesting theme, is the general superficality and tedium of modernity, with its individualism, utilitarianism and exaltation of getting and spending. Thomas is a thoughtful sort of guy. He wants to immerse himself in something deep and rich. He views the surrounding culture as a means for people to distract themselves from themselves, lest they realise quite how hollowed out their lives have become.
Thomas is a thoughtful sort of guy. He wants to immerse himself in something deep and rich.
This presages the general ennui we see today. ‘Deaths of despair’ are up; both men and women get more and more unhappy; and a tiny, wealthy sliver of society lead placeless, cultureless lives of pleasure-seeking while sneering at the habits and customs of the ordinary many. Thomas Merton’s concerns are enduring and universal. He is after a real encounter with the world, with the ‘isness’ of things – with God. For some, the austerity of a monk’s life is a turn-off; but for Thomas, it is the means to go much, much deeper into reality than 1940s U.S. culture allowed.
His prose is a strange but effective blend of easy exposition and more considered philosophical pondering. He has an elegant if rather too formal prose style, and – his greatest flaw – he is not big on humour. But The Seven Storey Mountain is a really, really good book. And you don’t have to be Catholic (or even religious) to engage strongly with the story of a man with real inner turmoil. He feels profoundly at odds with the world around him, and rather than try to change that world, he changes himself.
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