| Author Quoted | Pieter Meer de Walcheren, van der |
| Title Quoted | Rencontres: Leon Bloy, Raïssa Maritain, Christine et Pieterke |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1961/07/28 |
| Imprint | Paris : Desclee de Brouwer. 1961 |
| Quotation | It was a joy to receive your book with the very cordial dedication which you inscribed there. I am convinced that you speak the truth, because when I read your pages, a feeling sweeps over me which takes in all of your love for "our spiritual family." I feel an extraordinary affinity with that wonderful brilliance of Leon Bloy. This has been going on for twenty years, ever since the days when I took out all his books from the Columbia University Library. I noticed that Raissa Maritain and I were the only ones who read them. (One can tell this from the library cards which you have to sign: sometimes I preceded her, other times she arrived before me, but we went through all the volumes together without my ever running into her.) The part on Leon Bloy is wonderful. All "my" France comes back to me, with the mystery of my own vocation which my sojourn in France had prepared. The part about Raissa and Christine and Dom Pieterke is very moving: in the case of the latter two, it's my first acquaintance with them. There's no need to tell you that I have known you for a long time, because the Paradis Blanc is one of my favorite books"”especially the beautiful conference (in the style of Cassian) with Dom Porion. Is he well? I have not written him in a long tim"”since the "debacl" of my Carthusian leanings. But looking back, I have to say that my Father Abbot permits me, all the same, a substantial amount of solitude. |
| Quotation Source | The School of Charity: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Renewal and Spiritual Direction.; Selected and edited by Brother Patrick Hart. / New York : Farrar Straus Giroux. 1990, p. 139 |
| Letter to | Dom Pieter Van der Meer de Walcheren |
| Notes | |
| Link to Merton's Copy |
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