MERTON'S CORRESPONDENCE WITH:
van der Post, Laurens, 1906-1996
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Descriptive Summary
Record Group: Section A - Correspondence
Dates of materials: 1959-1961
Volume: 7 item(s); 10 pg(s)
Scope and Content
This is a file in the correspondence of Thomas Merton under the heading: "van der Post, Laurens".
Biography
Laurens van der Post was a writer born in South Africa. He writes about the conflicts of having been born into a Boer family, educated by the British who had recently defeated them, and hating the system of apartheid. His attacks on South African apartheid in a magazine he co-founded in his youth, Voorslag, led to his exile. He spent some time in Japan and later joined the British army in 1939. He served in the Second World War. After the war, he was send on a mission by the British government's Colonial Development Corporation, which took him into the African interior. He began to write some travelogues and novels with influences of Jungian psychology. He saw racial tensions in light of the conflict between our interior battles between our primitive and civilized self, and racism as exteriorizing our interior hatred of the primitive self to what we perceive as primitive in other groups. Other themes of mysticism and interiority occur in his novels, prompting Merton's interest in them. (Source: "Van der Post, Laurens". World Authors 1950-1970. 1975. Wilson Biographies Plus. Online. H.W. Wilson. Bellarmine University Library, Louisville, KY. 18 July 2006. ‹http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com›.)
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