| Author Quoted | Sergius Bolshakoff |
| Title Quoted | Russian Mystics |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1962/12/28 |
| Imprint | [S.l.] : [s.n.]. 1976 |
| Quotation | My work with your Russian Mystics proceeds slowly as there are many other duties to be performed. I am now in the last part, where the pages are smaller and the writing is more concentrated: hence it is harder to make corrections. I am happy that the whole typescript will be gone over carefully. I am afraid that in many cases where I was trying to make the text more easily readable, I may have altered the sense. This will have to be carefully checked. Then of course someone well versed in Oriental theology will also have to correct more carefully the passages which I have left to a great extent untouched, on prayer, etc. The first half of the ms. is already in the hands of the Benedictine monks at Collegeville, who are typing it. I will send the rest along in a few weeks. Meanwhile I am giving my novices a few classes on Russian mysticism, using notes drawn from your ms. as well as from Fedotov and other sources. I think St. Seraphim is still my greatest favorite, but now I am glad to make the acquaintance of the great Startzi of Optina. I am much impressed with them, as of course I expected to be after reading The Brothers Karamazov. You should do an anthology of the writings of Optina. |
| Quotation Source | The Hidden Ground of Love: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Experience and Social Concerns.; Selected and edited by William H. Shannon. / New York : Farrar Straus Giroux. 1985, p. 102 |
| Letter to | Sergius Bolshakoff |
| Notes | |
| Link to Merton's Copy |
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