| Author Quoted | Erich Widder |
| Title Quoted | Glanz des Ewigen: Sakrale Kunst in Österreich |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1962/02/04 |
| Imprint | Linz : [s.n.]. 1961 |
| Quotation | I was happy to hear from you again and have very much enjoyed the beautiful book of Austrian churches, Glanz des Ewigen. Like you, I feel many pangs of nostalgia over the wonderful unappreciated grace of the civilization that is inexorably perishing all around us. Austria has been such a wonderful rich and living source of this European Christian culture. Mozart represents for me all the purest and best in the Austrian and Christian genius, and those unabashed excesses of baroque attempt to keep up with his inexhaustible imagination. They do not of course succeed, but they have their charm and their boldness. I admire especially the daring of baroque that was not afraid to risk terrible lapses of taste, and yet managed almost always to come off with some marvels of ingenuity and playfulness. In former days I found it hard to take seriously but now I think nevertheless its significance grows on me. I suppose it is terribly out of fashion. As for the older Austrian churches, especially the earliest of all, they are simply enchanting. So your gift has given me great pleasure and made me secretly homesick for the Europe I shall never see again "¦ |
| Quotation Source | Witness to Freedom: The Letters of Thomas Merton in Times of Crisis.; Selected and edited by William H. Shannon. / New York : Farrar Straus Giroux. 1994, p. 32 |
| Letter to | Elsa Englander |
| Notes | |
| Link to Merton's Copy |
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