| Date | Author | Title | Source | Quotation by Merton |
| 1939/05/02 | Aurelius Augustinus | Confessions |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 3
| Saint Augustine's problems are everybody's, except he did not have a war to worry him. The 12th chapter [in other versions chapter 18] of book VII is magnificent. Evil the deficiency of good. Everything that is, is good, by virtue of its mere existence. Corruptibility implies goodness. |
| 1939/05/02 | Marcus Tullius Cicero | De Oratore |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 3
| Cicero, De Oratore, recommends stamping your foot during your speech. At least at the beginning of the speech and at the end. Caius Gracchus [Note 1: In the first book of Cicero's De Oratore (c. 55 B.C.E.), chapter XXXIV, reference is made to Caius Gracchus, whose speeches were studied as models in the rhetorical schools of the Empire.] had a servant stand behind him with an ivory flute to play the proper note, and regulate the pitch of the orator's voice if he were getting too low or too high or too furious. A girl on a street corner stamping her feet to make the men turn around. |
| 1939/05/30 | Herodotus | Histories |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 11
| Herodotus [Note 10: Merton was reading Herodotus's Histories, the first great prose work in European literature. Herodotus (died 425 B.C.E.) was known as "the Father of History" by Cicero, among others.] used figures when he was the only fellow who knew those numbers: e.g. how far it is from Susa to the Mediterranean. He was one of the few people who had been able to find out. And here was a case where (a) it was important to have the world measured, (b) the numbers were so big they meant something over against the error he was correcting (e.g. the Lacedemonian King may have thought he could go to Susa in three days instead of three months). |
| 1939/10/14 | Aurelius Augustinus | Confessions |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 51
| About prayer... The past and the future, not real. Only the present is real. In eternity "all is present." (Saint Augustine, Confessions. XI. 11) "...my childhood, which is now no more, existeth in the time past, which now is not; but when I remember and recount it, I behold the image thereof in the present time, because that still remaineth in my memory."(XI. 18) "... it might be properly said that there are three times, a present time of things past, a present time of things present, and a present time of things future." (XI. 20) Prayer is a way of bringing man close to God. God is eternal: to him, all things are present. So, in prayer, therre is no past, properly speaking, no future. But in prayer, always present, is a present tense of things past - |
| 1940/01/14 | Aristotle | works of Aristotle / Aristotle ; transl. into English under the editorship of W.D. Ross |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 138
| I guess if I want to I can work this down to the old familiar (to me) dilemma of Plato and Aristotle-which one looks at things from the right end. This dilemma can never mean anything to me until I read both Plato and Aristotle. I have never read either-except the Poetics and De Memoria of Aristotle and parts of The Republic and the Ion! |
| 1940/05/26 | Gregorius the Great | Homiliae in Evangelia |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 222
| "It shall happen to you for a testimony" (Luke, xxi. 13) and Saint Gregory the Great makes the comment that all these tribulations merely point to the Last Judgment and the tribulations in eternity for those who never consent to love God, but willingly cut themselves off from Him. "Ultima tribulatio multis tribulationibus prevenitur; et, per crebra mala quae preveniunt, indicantur mala perpetua quae subsequentur." ["The final tribulation is preceded by many tribulations; and by the frequent evils which go before are shown the perpetual evils which are to follow."] |
| 1940/06/16 | Aurelius Augustinus | City of God |
Ltrs: RtoJ p. 8
| Meanwhile I sit in the sun and look at the trees and wear a white tennis hat and wait for it to be August. I haven't even been reading anything much except a few snatches of The City of God and the Vulgate and Lorca's poetry. But anyway, that reminds me, I did write a couple of poems this month. I send them, along with a couple of others, and along with my best regards to your whole family. |
| 1941/04/09 | Anicius Manlius Torquatus Severinus Boethius | De Consolatione Philosophiae |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 339
| The process may take days-or years. We think we possess some idea; then, by a series of accidents, through a long desert of difficulties, we come upon little scraps of intuition and dialectic with great labor, and all these are only part of the same old idea. But we never begin to understand the idea really well until this arduous and discouraging process also is under way. And in this, we are really living that idea, working it out in our lives, in the manner appropriate to our own sad contingent and temporal state where nothing is possessed but in scraps and pieces, imperfectly, successively. Yet we always long to possess truth as it is eternally in God's Divine Mind-"tota, perfecta, simul" ["complete, perfect, together"] (Boethius), and sometimes He gives us intuitions that, in a flash, resemble heavenly intuitions with a kind of image of completeness. But it is not real completeness. |
| 1941/09/30 | Aurelius Augustinus | De Beata Vita |
Jnl 1 ('39-'41) p. 417
| Where did all the rest of the time go-? I taught two classes, corrected some papers, read a few pages of [Christopher] Dawson's Progress and Religion, wrote a letter trying to sell the anthology, wrote four very stinking pages in the typewritten journal, discussed part of Saint Augustine's De Beata Vita which we are beginning to read with Fr. Philotheus-and said various prayers. This has filled up a lot of time and nothing valuable has been done. |
| 1949/08/22 | Aurelius Augustinus | Exposition on the Book of Psalms |
Jnl 2 ('41-'52) p. 359
| And I was turning over in my mind some sentences from St. Augustine's commentary on the 118th psalm. They concern the line, Bonitatem et disciplinam et scientiam doce me [Teach me goodness and discipline and knowledge (Psalms 118:66)], which he reads as Suavitatem et eruditionem et scientiam doce me [Teach me docility and delight and knowledge]. Suavitatem-the wisdom that comes from delight in virtue. Disciplina-docility-the wisdom that is born of suffering. |
| 1949/11/25 | Gregory of Nyssa | De vita Moysis |
Jnl 2 ('41-'52) p. 373
| In the refectory we are reading Exodus and I have discovered St. Gregory of Nyssa's De Vita Moysis [Life of Moses]. I will probably try to talk about it in the Mystical Theology class. Having trouble organizing material. I refuse to follow any known text.-except I will take [Etienne] Gilson on St. Bernard when I get the preliminaries out of the way. I feel much better mapping out my own approach-from Scripture and the Fathers, Mysticism and Dogma togetherblending and culminating in experience. |
| 1949/12/23 | Aurelius Augustinus | City of God |
Jnl 2 ('41-'52) p. 384
| St. Augustine, of Adam in Eden: vivebat fruens Deo, ex quo bono erat bonus [He lived in the joy of God, and by the power of this good he was good himself]. It is very quiet now in the vault where I pause in my work on the City of God. I am supposed to be doing a preface for Random House. The work feeds me, strengthens me, knits my powers together in peace and tranquility. The light of God shines to me more serenely through the wide open windows of Augustine than through any other theologian. Augustine is the calmest and clearest light. |
| 1950/01/30 | | Didachè |
Jnl 2 ('41-'52) p. 404
| "Let grace come and let the world pass away. Hosanna to the Son of David." These words are from the Didache. They come from the thanksgiving after Communion. It also says, "Permit the prophets to make thanksgiving as much as they desire." |
| 1950/03/01 | Homer | Iliad / Translated by Robert Fitzgerald |
Jnl 2 ('41-'52) p. 413
| So [Book of] Josue is my favorite epic. I like it better than The Iliad, infinitely better than Virgil or the Song of Roland. It is a clean book, full of asceticism. |
| 1950/10/09 | Louis Bouyer | Vie de saint Antoine par saint Athanase |
Ltrs: SofC p. 25
| I am extremely eager to get Fr. Bouyer's new book on monasticism, but have not yet been able to do so. I feel that our book dealer sometimes takes orders and then forgets about them"”I mean for books to come out later. I liked his Saint Antoine. Still, I wonder if he does not overdo his interest in the fact that in the early ages of the Church people were so clearly aware that the fall had put the devil in charge of material things. Fr. Danielou's Signe du Temple, in its first chapter, gives a good counterpoise to that view"”for heaven still shone through creation and God was very familiar with men in Genesis! |
| 1955/11/26 | Bruno Snell | Discovery of the mind: in Greek philosophy and literature |
Ltrs: Hammer p. 25
| The Snell book is here and I have begun it. I can see its great importance, and therefore i ask you to bear with me if I do not return it in a hurry. My time is rather sparsely protioned out and it takes time through such a book. |
| 1956/02/05 | Bruno Snell | Discovery of the mind: in Greek philosophy and literature |
Ltrs: Hammer p. 29
| I finally have a chance to write you and tell you that I am sending the Snell book back - long after I had promised to do so. It is indeed an important book, and I regret that it is so far from my present context that Iwas unable to do it full justice. It is so difficult to follow all the avenues that open out before one, and I must of necessity leave the vistas of Greek thought somewhat misty, to my regret. I have no other choice, since my limited time for reading and study is now almost all taken up with scripture and mysticism and monastic history and whatnot - things necessary for myself and the novices. So I did not master all of Snell |
| 1956/07/29 | Diadochos of Photike | Capita centum de perfectione spirituali |
Jnl 3 ('52-'60) p. 59
| Diadochos-"the abyss of faith boils if you examine it, but if you look upon it with simplicity, it becomes once again calm. For being a river of Lethe in which evils are forgotten, the depths of faith do not bear to be looked upon with indiscreet reasonings. Let us therefore call upon the waters with simplicity of thought in order to reach thus the harbor of the divine Will." (Conferences-chap. 22) "No one can genuinely love or believe unless he has within himself his own answer." (id. [Conferences] 23) |
| 1956/08/14 | Origenes | Treatise on Prayer. |
Jnl 3 ('52-'60) p. 64
| The Treatise on Prayer is the first thing of Origen's that I have really liked except perhaps the Homilies on Exodus and Numbers. It is simple and great. He really is a tremendous mind, although he often looks ordinary or even stuffy. But no, The Treatise on Prayer is great. One of the best things ever written on prayer-by its wholeness, objectivity. It is catholic and clear and close to the Gospel-Christ talks and speaks in it. |
| 1958/10/02 | Origenes | Opera Omnia |
Jnl 3 ('52-'60) p. 221
| The charm of Origen-entranced by his commentary on Numbers with its inexhaustible fertility of ideas (which only later became stereotyped in the writings of others, who were so much poorer!). |
| 1958/12/30 | Sophocles | Oedipus at Colonus |
Jnl 3 ('52-'60) p. 244
| Significant that on the 28th. in the morning I read Oedipus at Colonus and was deeply moved by it. |
| 1959/04/04 | Origenes | Opera Omnia |
Jnl 3 ('52-'60) p. 271
| Read some Origen on Josue, and Soloviev (Lectures on God Manhood)-some material on Mount Athos-Allport on prejudice. A new book by Jung has come in -The Undiscovered Self - which so far appears to be quite good. |
| 1959/12/02 | | Apophthegmata Patrum |
Jnl 3 ('52-'60) p. 350
| Solitude - witness to Christ - emptiness. Apophthegmata [Sayings of the Desert Fathers] in P[atrologia] G[raeca]. |
| 1959/12/31 | Frances M. Cornford | Principium Sapientiae: The Origins of Greek Philosophical Thought |
Jnl 3 ('52-'60) p. 364
| Interesting book by Paul Radin on Philosophy of Primitive Man. Also Merleau-Ponty and Cornford on the early Greek philosophers. |
| 1960/01/17 | Aeschylus | Prometheus Bound |
Jnl 3 ('52-'60) p. 370
| After dinner-read the Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus. Shattered by it. I do not know when I have read anything so stupendous and so completely contemporary. I felt like throwing away everything and reading nothing but Aeschylus for six months. Like discovering a mountain full of diamond mines. It is like Zen-like Dostoevsky-like existentialism-like Francis-like the New Testament. It is inconceivably rich. I consider this a great grace on the feast of St. Anthony! A great religious experience. Prometheus, archetypal representation of the suffering Christ. But we must go deep into this. Prometheus startles us by being more fully Christ than the Lord of our own cliches-I mean, he is free from all the falsifications and limitations of our hackneyed vision which has slowly emptied itself of reality. |
| 1960/03/03 | Bruno Snell | Discovery of the mind: in Greek philosophy and literature |
Jnl 3 ('52-'60) p. 377
| Walked in the snow after dinner and read a little about St. Bede. There are so many things to read! Snell on the Discovery of the Mind (in Ancient Greece) is enthralling but yet unsatisfactory. Too simplified. We have oversimplified Classical Greece. Only Cornford satisfies me as having approached its true complexity. |
| 1960/05/08 | Erich Neumann | Amor and Psyche: The Psychic Development of the Feminine: A Commentary on the Tale by Apuleius. |
Jnl 3 ('52-'60) p. 388
| Still reading Barzun. Finished Neumann on Amor and Psyche and returned it to the library. In the cell, here, Vonier's People of God and part of Initiation theologique. |
| 1960/08/10 | Jean Steinmann | Saint Jerome and His Times |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 30
| [Jean] Steinmann's book on St. Jerome [St. Jerome and His Times, New York, 1959] in the refectory is interesting and well done but I am sick of Jerome, his querulous sensitivity, his rages, his politics-and I am tired of Steinmann's anti- Origenism. It is too insistent. I am for Rufinus and St. John Chrysostom. |
| 1960/10/03 | Andre Marie Jean Festugière | Contemplation et vie contemplative selon Platon |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 55
| After night office, long quiet interval, reading [Andre Marie Jean] Festugière on Plato. And that life of Dom Martène. In a way I admire Saint-Germain-des- Pres and in a way I don't. I admire their scholarship, not their rigidity. |
| 1960/10/10 | Plato | Phaedo |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 57
| After the Night Office. The superb moral and positive beauty of the Phaedo. One does not have to agree with Plato, but one must hear him. Not to listen to such a voice is unpardonable, it is like not listening to conscience or to nature. I repent, and I love this great poem, this "music." It is a purifying music of which I have great need. |
| 1960/10/24 | Andre Marie Jean Festugière | Contemplation et vie contemplative selon Platon |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 59
| Coffee after night office and the good long silence until Prime. Deliciae meae. [My delights.] This is something wonderful, and in this silence, reading Festugière, I have finally come to admit to what extent I have always been a Platonist. My reservations about Plato have gone, since the Phaedo (understanding of course always that one is not obliged to agree with every theory!). |
| 1960/12/24 | Werner Wilhelm Jaeger | Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture / Gilbert Highet (translator) |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 78
| Snow is melting a little. Quiet afternoon of Christmas Eve. Read a book of Newman's romantic but fundamentally sound essay on St. Benedict. Finished first volume of Paideia this morning. Must read Thucydides. All I can remember of it is the general with nephritis in Sicily. The total lack of perspective with which we read Greek authors, word by word, at school. |
| 1961/04/02 | Gregory of Nyssa | In canticum canticorum |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 105
| Yesterday-reading bits of Dame Julian of Norwich and today I began Gregory of Nyssa's homilies on the Canticle. |
| 1961/07/28 | Sophocles | Antigone |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 146
| Looked over notes on Sophocles' Antigone. Must read it again and again. How great are the Greeks, how much we owe them, how foolish to set them aside in silly contrasts with the Bible. Sophocles throws light on his contemporaries Isaiah and Jeremiah. Especially the problem of true obedience - to God, and false obedience - to tyrants who confound the upper and the nether world, try to hold them apart by force of will, and declare heaven to be hell, and hell heaven. They demand obedience as justification of their pride and violence and by their logic disobedience is the greatest sin. |
| 1961/08/07 | Clement of Alexandria | Protreptikos |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 149
| Both Newman and Fenelon loved Clement of Alexandria, which is not at all surprising. To Newman he was "like music." This may look like a cliche but it is profound. For there are people one meets-in books and in life-with whom a deep resonance is at once established. For a long time I had no "resonanc" with Newman (cor ad cor loquitur [heart speaks to heart]). I was suspicious of letting him enter my heart. Clement the same. Now I want all the music of Clement, and am only with difficulty restrained from taking new books on Newman from the library while I have so many other things to read and finish. Resonances: one of the "choirs." Maritain, Van der Meer de Walcheren, Bloy, Green, Chagall, Satie-or a string sextet! Another earlier music: Blake, Eckhart, Tauler (Maritain got in here too), Coomaraswamy"¦etc. Music: the marvelous opening of the Protreptikos [of Clement of Alexandria]- the "new song"-the splendid image of the cricket flying to replace by his song the broken string in the Lyre of Eunomos at Delphi. Though he repudiates the myth he uses it splendidly. Humanity a musical instrument for God. |
| 1961/08/19 | Clement of Alexandria | Paedagogue |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 154
| Having finished the Protreptikos of Clement, began the Pedagogue. He is certainly one of the Fathers I like best, and with whom I feel the closest affinity. |
| 1961/08/19 | Clement of Alexandria | Protreptikos |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 154
| Having finished the Protreptikos of Clement, began the Pedagogue. He is certainly one of the Fathers I like best, and with whom I feel the closest affinity. |
| 1961/09/09 | | Apophthegmata Patrum |
Ltrs: HGL p. 345
| For my own part (witness The Wisdom of the Desert) I purposely edit the material in a way that seems to me to be attractive and interesting. I make it my own and do what I like with it. This is extreme left-wing activity, and one can do it with something that has been done over and over like the Apothegmata. I am fortunately in a position to do this if I want to, and the scholars can, as we say in this country, go and cry in their beer for all I care. This is shockingly independent and un-humble, I am afraid. Perhaps I will feel remorse when I examine my conscience at noon today, but I doubt this very much. Perhaps you had better send an urgent call to the Carmelites to pray for me. |
| 1961/10/27 | E.F. Osborn | Philosophy of Clement of Alexandria / and C.H. Dodd |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 174
| Calmed down to some extent this morning in the "sacred silence," reading, at peace. G. Ernest Wright on Biblical Theology. E. F. Osborn on Clement of Alexandria (dry). [Jules] Monchanin"¦ |
| 1961/11/19 | Clement of Alexandria | Stromata. French & Greek. Selections. Stromate II / Clement d'Alexandrie ; introd. et notes de Th. Camelot ; texte grec et trad. de Cl. Mondesert |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 181
| Reading Clement, the Stromateis, with comfort and consolation. I see no problem at all in his "esotericism." Obviously one cannot tell everybody everything, and there are certain truths for which the vast majority are not and never will be prepared. I cannot talk to the novices about the things which are central in my own spiritual life - or not about many of them, and about none of them directly. |
| 1962/04/01 | Frederic Meer, van der | Augustine the Bishop |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 215
| Reading the Van der Meer book on Augustine, monumental (also expensive) and vastly interesting. Yet I am no longer able to be enthusiastic about Augustine. |
| 1962/04/26 | Origenes | Contra Celsum / Translated with an introduction & notes by Henry Chadwick |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 216
| Reading Origen, Contra Celsum. |
| 1962/05/01 | Origenes | Opera Omnia |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 217
| Contra Celsum is fascinating though I am tempted to renounce it as "getting nowhere." And yet if one follows allusions (for instance into the city at the end of Ezekiel) and sees it in the light of Mircea Eliade, it is awfully rich. |
| 1962/05/07 | Bernard Piault | What Is the Trinity |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 217-18
| "If India were to hear the word of Christ and be converted, it is possible that she would be hardly capable of considering the divine mystery in the ways traditional to the Christian East and West, full of living inspiration though they are. Young in the faith and proud of her own cultural heritage, she might give us instead a Hindu theology of the Trinity." - Bernard Piault in What Is the Trinity? [New York, 1959], p 118 Especially in getting away from the Augustinian psychological treatment of the mystery. In the theology of the Trinity as we have it in the West we are under the domination of Augustine's introspective and generally non-mystical contemplation that is centered on the self as medium to that which is above the self. Meeting of the logos and the soul in the soul's concept of itself, experience of itself?? Surely not mere reflection on our own experience of ourself and hence to the Trinity by inference. It must be more than that. |
| 1962/05/12 | Tertullianus | De Oratione |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 218-19
| Glorious 4th Chapter of Tertullian's De Oratione [On Prayer]. The Latin, sharp, austere, brilliant and torrid. Underneath the words, the history, the situation: to martyrs. Ut"¦sustineamus ad mortem usque. [That"¦we may endure even unto death.] The reality of God's will as an immense power. And suffering. Saying Fiat voluntas tua, ad sufferentiam nos metipsos praemonemus [Thy will be done, we warn ourselves ahead of time that we will have to suffer]. |
| 1962/06/00 | Gregory of Nyssa | From Glory to Glory, Texts from Gregorius of Nyssa's Mystical Writings / Edited by J. Danielou/H. Musurillo |
Ltrs: WtoF p. 245
| You might find interesting leads in Bouyer's new book Seat of Wisdom. And of course there is always Berdyaev "¦ His "Sense of Creation" (if that is the English title, I read it in French) is full of wild ideas, but a few good ones also. Have you by the way read Traherne's Centuries of Meditations, published recently by Harper's? He has delightful insights on this subject. As to the Scholastics, I would say try St. Bonaventure's Collationes in Haexemeron. (In general all the Patristic treatises on the work of the six days would offer interesting material.) I am on and off reading Clement of Alexandria and will try to keep you in mind if I run across more material. Then there is Gregory of Nyssa. A new collection of texts by Danielou and Musurillo should offer a few possibilities. |
| 1962/06/05 | Tertullianus | Apologeticus adversos gentes pro christianis |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 224
| Wonderful insights in the Apologetic of Tertullian, more subtle than Hannah Arendt, and of the same kind: on the irony and inner contradiction of the forced confessions extorted from the martyrs. |
| 1962/06/07 | Cassiodorus | De Anima |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 225
| The serene, pure music of Cassiodorus's prayer at the end of his De Anima [On the Soul]! What nobility of mind. Christian and classic nobility, simplicity, harmony. And what depth of religion. |
| 1962/06/08 | Cassiodorus | De Anima |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 225
| O Cassiodorus, reading you is like coming home to everything germane to my spirit! The existential acuteness of the De Anima, which, considered superficially, might seem to be only an exercise in fantasy. |
| 1962/06/09 | Cassiodorus | Institutiones Divinarum et Saecularium Litterarum |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 225
| I never thought I would discover in myself a hunger for something like Cassiodorus' Chapters on Rhetoric, or even Grammar. And even for Donatus, to whom he refers. But everything in Cassiodorus is attractive because it is clean and clear. One can appreciate his clarity without attaching an indiscreet importance to the subjects on which he speaks clearly. But perhaps we have forgotten that grammar, rhetoric and the other liberal arts do have an importance. |
| 1962/06/10 | Cassiodorus | De Anima |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 226-27
| What more beautiful or more appropriate than these lines of Cassiodorus where he speaks of the soul as a light, in the likeness of the divine light? Then of God: Illud autem quod ineffabile veneramur arcanum Quod ubique totum et invisibiliter praesens est Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus Una essentia et indiscreta majestas Splendor supra omnes fulgores, gloria supra omne praeconium Quod mundissima anima et Deo dedita potest quidem ex aliqua parte sentire sed non idonee explicare. Nam quemadmodum fas est de illo sufficienter dici qui creaturae sensu non potest comprehendi? [But that which we reverence as unspeakable secret which is everywhere totally and invisibly present Father, Son and Holy Spirit One essence and undivided majesty Splendor above all light, glory above all honor Which the purest soul dedicated to God can experience everywhere but not explain. For what can ever be said of this being who cannot be understood by his creatures?] [n.8: Merton will later publish a more refined translation of these lines in Conjecturesof a Guilty Bystander (New York, 1966), pp 208-9] |
| 1962/06/26 | Cassiodorus | De Anima |
Ltrs: Hammer p. 159
| Now I have a little idea for something to print. It is a beatiful prayer of Cassiodorus at the end of his De Anima. Perhaps by the 7th I will have a rough translation finished for you to see. And of course I would write a little introduction. In all, it would probably be almost the same length as Hagia Sophia. In fact I am thinking of doing more work on Cassiodorus. I have been reading a lot of his worik. I wonder if Carlyn has in the library the critical edition of Cassiodorus's "Instituta" (done by R.A.B. Mynors, Oxford 1937). Or if she has anything else on him. All I have is Migne and a couple of Catholic journals that have some articles on him. |
| 1962/07/03 | Lactantius | De Opifico Dei |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 229
| Discovery of Lactantius, particularly De Opificis Dei. Because I read and like St. Augustine and St. Gregory in the novitiate, I thought of myself as one who was somewhat familiar with the Fathers. An illusion. I have not even begun. |
| 1962/07/14 | Sophocles | Antigone |
Ltrs: HGL p. 353-54
| I wonder if the best thing in the world to read in a period of night is Ruysbroeck? Personally I rather doubt it. I think that he will only make you feel worse. Have you ever tried reading Sophocles or Aeschylus at such a time? In the first place they have the immense advantage of being people you at no time have to agree with. The whole notion of one's "spiritual stat" is not called into question, and therefore they can get in under your guard, so to speak, and I find that the Antigone or Oedipus at Colonus is most helpful in a shattering sort of way. We simply have to get away from this business of weighing spiritual values in the balance against one another especially in the night when in any case it is almost impossible anyway. In the night it is intolerable to raise the question of right and wrong because we are in a sense simply wrong and in another sense out of the whole area of argument altogether. That is precisely the atmosphere of Greek religious tragedy. It is much healthier than our obsession with the fear that if we are not somehow optimistic we are lost. In the night optimism and pessimism are both meaningless. |
| 1962/07/14 | Sophocles | Oedipus at Colonus |
Ltrs: HGL p. 353-54
| I wonder if the best thing in the world to read in a period of night is Ruysbroeck? Personally I rather doubt it. I think that he will only make you feel worse. Have you ever tried reading Sophocles or Aeschylus at such a time? In the first place they have the immense advantage of being people you at no time have to agree with. The whole notion of one's "spiritual stat" is not called into question, and therefore they can get in under your guard, so to speak, and I find that the Antigone or Oedipus at Colonus is most helpful in a shattering sort of way. We simply have to get away from this business of weighing spiritual values in the balance against one another especially in the night when in any case it is almost impossible anyway. In the night it is intolerable to raise the question of right and wrong because we are in a sense simply wrong and in another sense out of the whole area of argument altogether. That is precisely the atmosphere of Greek religious tragedy. It is much healthier than our obsession with the fear that if we are not somehow optimistic we are lost. In the night optimism and pessimism are both meaningless. |
| 1962/08/11 | Cassiodorus | Introduction to Divine and Human Readings by Cassiodorus Senator / Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Jones Leslie Webber |
Ltrs: Hammer p. 162
| You have already sent me the book from Columbia. It is the edition of Cassiodorus's "Divine and Human Readings" by Jones. In fact you sent two copies, of which I returned one. I am glad to kwow of the two dissertations however, but there is no immediate need for them. I will keep them in mind. Many thanks |
| 1962/09/29 | Virgil | Georgics |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 251-52
| This morning, in John of Salisbury, ran across a quote from the Georgics which has entered into the deepest part of my being since I learned it thirty years ago at Oakham-and was moved by it then, studying I think one June morning before the Higher Cert[ificate Examination], by a brook behind Catmose House. Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas Atque metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari. [Happy is he who can have known the causes of things, and has placed under his feet all fears and inexorable fate and the rumbling of greedy Acheron.] Inexhaustible literary, spiritual, moral beauty of these lines: the classic ideal of wisdom. What a gift to have lived and to have received this, as though a sacrament, and to be in communion of light and joy with the whole of my civilization-and my Church. This is indestructible. Acheron (whose strepitus [rumbling] was never so full of ominous rumblings) has nothing to say about it. And John of S[alisbury]-glossing this with words about faith as a way to the highest truth, adds: Impossibile est ut diligat et colat vanitatem quisquis et toto corde quaerit et amplectionem veritatis. [Merton's emphasis] [It is quite impossible for someone to seek and foster vanity and wholeheartedly at the same time seek also for the embrace of truth.] |
| 1962/11/24 | Boethius | De Hebdomadibus |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 267
| From Chartres back to BBoethius: De Hebdomadibus. Magnificent meditation on being and existence! |
| 1963/01/26 | Sulpicius Severus | Dialogues |
Jnl 4 ('60-'63) p. 294
| Last day of retreat. Reading Rufinus Historia Monachorum and also Dialogues of Sulpicius Severus. Utterly ashamed and annoyed that I have never read the Hist. Monachorum before. What have I been doing? I have been under a kind of delusion that I was living as a monk all these years-and that I knew what the monastic life was and had read a great deal of the traditional source material. I haven't even scratched the surface, and my heart has not been that of a monk. The story of John of Lycopolis, the urgency of his lessons, the sweetness and simplicity of the style move me very deeply. |
| 1963/07/19 | Aurelius Augustinus | Confessions |
Ltrs: WtoF p. 166
| The following are the questions, with Merton's answers: 1. Name the last three books you have read. The Platform Scripture of Hui Neng, translated by Wing Tsit Chen The Proslogion by St. Anselm of Canterbury A Different Drummer by William Melvin Kelley 2. Name the books you are reading now. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture by John Huizinga Ratio Verae Theologiae (The Real Meaning of Theology) by Erasmus The Historian and Character by David Knowles 4. Books that have influenced you. Poetic Works of William Blake Plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas Sermons of Meister Eckhart De Doctrina Christiana, Confessions, and Sermons on Psalms of St. Augustine Rule of St. Benedict The Bhagavad-Gita The Imitation of Christ, etc. 5. Why have these books been an influence on you? These books and others like them have helped me to discover the real meaning of my life, and have made it possible for me to get out of the confusion and meaninglessness of an existence completely immersed in the needs and passivities fostered by a culture in which sales are everything. 6. Name a book everyone should read. Besides the Bible (taken for granted and not included above) and such classics as The Imitation of Christ, I would select a contemporary book which I consider to be of vital importance and which I think everyone should read at this time: The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. 7. Why this book? This is the most forceful statement about a crisis that is of immediate importance to every American, and indirectly affects the whole world today. It is something that people have to know about. The Negro has been trying to make himself heard: in this book he succeeds. |
| 1963/07/19 | Aurelius Augustinus | De Doctrina Christiana |
Ltrs: WtoF p. 166
| The following are the questions, with Merton's answers: 1. Name the last three books you have read. The Platform Scripture of Hui Neng, translated by Wing Tsit Chen The Proslogion by St. Anselm of Canterbury A Different Drummer by William Melvin Kelley 2. Name the books you are reading now. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture by John Huizinga Ratio Verae Theologiae (The Real Meaning of Theology) by Erasmus The Historian and Character by David Knowles 4. Books that have influenced you. Poetic Works of William Blake Plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas Sermons of Meister Eckhart De Doctrina Christiana, Confessions, and Sermons on Psalms of St. Augustine Rule of St. Benedict The Bhagavad-Gita The Imitation of Christ, etc. 5. Why have these books been an influence on you? These books and others like them have helped me to discover the real meaning of my life, and have made it possible for me to get out of the confusion and meaninglessness of an existence completely immersed in the needs and passivities fostered by a culture in which sales are everything. 6. Name a book everyone should read. Besides the Bible (taken for granted and not included above) and such classics as The Imitation of Christ, I would select a contemporary book which I consider to be of vital importance and which I think everyone should read at this time: The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. 7. Why this book? This is the most forceful statement about a crisis that is of immediate importance to every American, and indirectly affects the whole world today. It is something that people have to know about. The Negro has been trying to make himself heard: in this book he succeeds. |
| 1963/07/19 | Aurelius Augustinus | Exposition on the Book of Psalms |
Ltrs: WtoF p. 166
| The following are the questions, with Merton's answers: 1. Name the last three books you have read. The Platform Scripture of Hui Neng, translated by Wing Tsit Chen The Proslogion by St. Anselm of Canterbury A Different Drummer by William Melvin Kelley 2. Name the books you are reading now. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture by John Huizinga Ratio Verae Theologiae (The Real Meaning of Theology) by Erasmus The Historian and Character by David Knowles 4. Books that have influenced you. Poetic Works of William Blake Plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas Sermons of Meister Eckhart De Doctrina Christiana, Confessions, and Sermons on Psalms of St. Augustine Rule of St. Benedict The Bhagavad-Gita The Imitation of Christ, etc. 5. Why have these books been an influence on you? These books and others like them have helped me to discover the real meaning of my life, and have made it possible for me to get out of the confusion and meaninglessness of an existence completely immersed in the needs and passivities fostered by a culture in which sales are everything. 6. Name a book everyone should read. Besides the Bible (taken for granted and not included above) and such classics as The Imitation of Christ, I would select a contemporary book which I consider to be of vital importance and which I think everyone should read at this time: The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. 7. Why this book? This is the most forceful statement about a crisis that is of immediate importance to every American, and indirectly affects the whole world today. It is something that people have to know about. The Negro has been trying to make himself heard: in this book he succeeds. |
| 1963/11/11 | Quintus Horace | Odes |
Ltrs: CforT p. 81
| I am glad you have been working on [Robinson] Jeffers. I can see what would attract you in him, though I have not read him much. There is too much of him, and he is too grandiloquent for me in some ways. I have never been attracted to him much. But this is my fault and not his. Mark Van Doren likes him and I like Van Doren (one of the rare poets here I can read). Nor have I ever got into Lucretius. Personally I like Horace and Virgil, and I think Virgil is an unquestionably great one. I have always loved the Georgics, and Horace's Odes. |
| 1963/11/11 | Virgil | Georgics |
Ltrs: CforT p. 81
| I am glad you have been working on [Robinson] Jeffers. I can see what would attract you in him, though I have not read him much. There is too much of him, and he is too grandiloquent for me in some ways. I have never been attracted to him much. But this is my fault and not his. Mark Van Doren likes him and I like Van Doren (one of the rare poets here I can read). Nor have I ever got into Lucretius. Personally I like Horace and Virgil, and I think Virgil is an unquestionably great one. I have always loved the Georgics, and Horace's Odes. |
| 1963/12/05 | | Pilgrimage of Etheria / translation of Peregrinatio Aetheriae |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 43
| Another Spanish writer-fourth-century Egeria (Etheria, "Sylvia") and her amazing Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Egypt, Sinai and Mesopotamia [Peregrinatio Aetheriae (The Pilgrimage of Etheria), 1919]. I love her. Simplicity, practicality, insatiable curiosity, and tremendous endurance as long as she is riding her mule (laments a little when she has to go "straight up" the side of Sinai-any influence on St. John of the Cross?). All the holy women she meets-they must have been delighted with her and overwhelmed. This is a really marvelous book, one of the greatest monuments of fourth-century literature, and too few know it. Two English translations, the most recent being 1919. I am tempted to do it-but better not! Is she Spanish? Sounds like a Spaniard, with the simplicity, mixture of hope, humor, idealism and endurance. Or maybe some day she will turn out to have been Irish! |
| 1964/02/13 | Ammonas | Ammonii Eremitae Epistolae |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 76
| One of the great discoveries and graces of this year has been Abbot Ammonas. A magnificent primitive spirituality, the best of the ancient Egyptians (with Anthony, whom he succeeded as Abbot of Pisgar). We have him in the Patrologia Orientalis, printed in 1913-no one has done anything with it. Ammonas is not even in the dictionaries (except Dictionaire d'histoire et de geographie ecclesiastiques [Paris, 1912-]). Hausherr refers to him frequently, however. He should be translated and I might write an article on him. Grace of Lent. Thinking this morning of the meaning of covenant in my life. Ammonas on striving for the gift of the Spirit. |
| 1964/02/16 | Ammonas | Ammonii Eremitae Epistolae |
Ltrs: HGL p. 365
| Just a brief letter to thank you for the big book Crucible of Love. I have not got into it because I am swamped with books on interlibrary loan that I have to return at definite times, and at the moment I am not too keen on reading Carmelites for some reason. I have had so much of them in the past, and I am discovering new things, for instance Abbot Ammonas, the successor of St. Anthony at Pispir. He is marvelous and so far completely neglected. The best texts have been edited in the Patrologia Orientalis since before the First World War, but no one has done anything with them except Hausherr (who has been doing good stuff on Oriental spirituality) "¦ Also I am reading this great new Dutch Dominican, Schillebeeckx. (Isn't that a mouthful? But it is not as bad as it looks.) |
| 1964/02/18 | Ammonas | Ammonii Eremitae Epistolae |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 77
| "Ut apud te mens nostra tuo depiderisfuequat quae si carnis maceratione cangiat." [Merton's loose translation follows.] The desire and need to be clothed in the light of the Spirit when in fact I am clothed in shame (and yet I see the shame itself also as grace!!). The wonderful power of the Letters of Ammonas and his mystical doctrine. It is to me impressive, beyond all the others, beyond John of the Cross and [Meister] Eckhart, not to say the lesser ones. It is the pure doctrine of Christian monastic mysticism. |
| 1964/05/17 | Plato | Gorgias |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 104-05
| Yesterday, on the Vigil, a group of the Hibakusha [Note 29: Survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki] on the World Peace Mission Pilgrimage came out here... People signed and marked by the cruelty of the age, signs on their flesh because of the thoughts in the minds of other men. They are an important indication of what certain "civilized" thinking really means. When we speak of "freedom" we are also saying that others like these good, charming, sweet, innocent people will be burned, annihilated, if and when we think we are menaced. Does this make sense? Is it not an indication that our thinking is absurdly flawed? True, our thinking is logical and makes war seem right and necessary when it is fitted into a certain context, starting from certain supposed "axioms." The trouble is with the context and the axioms, and the root trouble is the whole concept of man and indeed of reality itself with which man operates. The thinking has not changed because the "axioms" have not changed. They are the axioms of sophistry and sophistry as Plato knew spells tyranny and moral anarchy. An illuminating experience, to read the last pages of Gorgias and to meet the Hibakusha on the same day. I spoke to them briefly, was not expecting an interpreter and was a bit put out-he translated and explained enthusiastically and I think we were in good rapport but there was not much discussion. |
| 1964/08/03 | Robert Ardrey | African genesis : a personal investigation into the animal origins and nature of man / Robert Ardrey ; drawings by Berdine Ardrey |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 132
| Someone has sent a book, African Genesis [by Robert Ardrey]. I had heard of discoveries of Leakey at Olduvai, prepared to accept hypothesis of Africa as the cradle of the human race. This book, however, takes scientific hypotheses and creates a myth of violence around them. Man's ancestor is the meat-eating club-carrying, sinister "killer-ap" who fought his way up from vegetarianism in order to become a cannibal and a nationalist. These, say the myth, are the facts. And when a myth says that it means, of course, the only facts. Man is by essence a, predator, a killer, a property owner, a hater, a joiner, an agitator, perhaps even a Goldwaterite. This is the scientific-mythology of proto-fascism. With all that, I am not as willing to accept Leakey, who is a different story, less "romantic"-of anthropoids that used tools and weapons?? Already man? |
| 1964/12/17 | Origenes | Contra Celsum / Translated with an introduction & notes by Henry Chadwick |
Ltrs: SofC p. 255
| In a recent book of mine I have had occasion to use a couple of quotations from Henry Chadwick's translation of the Contra Celsus, published by the Cambridge Press. I am afraid I do not have all my Chadwicks identified and properly placed, but I wonder if I am guessing correctly when I suppose that he is your husband? If he is, then it will be easy for me to make my formal request for permission to use the quotations, amounting to some fifteen or twenty lines, not more "¦ |
| 1965/01/22 | Vintila Horia | septième lettre. Le roman de Platon |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 194
| Vintila Horia sent me his novel about Plato and I find it extraordinarily beautiful, a sustained tone of wisdom, with all kinds of modern undertones. Very "actual." He says (Plato): "I saw the world rushing into stupidity with such natural self-assurance that it caused me to suffer keenly, as if I had been personally responsible for it, while the people around me saw the future as a new pleasure to be expected from a certain joy: as if by being born into the world they acquired a right to this." (p. 101) |
| 1965/02/09 | Quintus Horace | Epodes |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 202
| I must admit I am much moved by Horace-as for instance a quote from the Second Epode which I ran across by chance when leafing through the Liber Comfortatorius of Goscelin (11th century letter to a Recluse). The structure and clarity and music of Horace are great and he is not trite. There is, it seems to me, real depth there, and this is shown by the sustained purity and strength of his tone and this is I think really untranslatable. |
| 1965/04/19 | Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus | De Resurectione Carnis |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 232
| "Fiducia Christianorum resurrectio mortuorum-illam credentes hoc sumus." ["The confidence of Christians is in the resurrection of the dead-we are those who believe this to be so."] (Tertullian, De Res, 1.1) (Study of Medieval exegesis-is a way of entering into the Christian experience of that age, an experience most relevant to us, for if we neglect it we neglect part of our own totality in De Lubac, Von Balthasar, etc.). But it must not be studied from the outside. Same idea in Nishida on Japanese culture and the Japanese view of life. I have a real sense this Easter, that my own vocation demands a deepened and experiential study, from within (by connaturality) of the Medieval tradition as well as of, to some extent, Asian tradition and experiences, particularly Japanese, particularly Zen: i.e., in an awareness of a common need and aspiration with these past generations. |
| 1965/04/24 | Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus | De Resurectione Carnis |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 233
| Tertullian. Certainly I am reading in perfect circumstances (viz., chapter 12 De Resurrectione at the time of this spring dawn!!) but I have to admit that his prose is more powerful and more captivating than any other I have ever read. I know no one who has such authority, by the beauty and strength of his language, to command complete attention. Everything becomes delightful, admirable and absorbing, and there is a real excitement in the compression and charge of his syntax, the precision and personal signature of his vocabulary. You feel that here is a man who is fully and expertly working in language making prose! |
| 1965/05/10 | Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus | De Resurectione Carnis |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 251
| For Meditation-part of the morning on the Sapiential books (Vulgate) and in the evening some of the time I spend on the Apocalypse in Greek. Have a good little book on Camus for light reading, finished Volume I of De Lubac's Exegèse medievale (and enjoyed it immensely). Still haven't finished Tertullian on the Resurrection |
| 1965/08/06 | Euripides | Iphigenia in Tauris |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 277
| Returned to hermitage today after a week in St. Anthony's hospital. In a way it was trying, at least a test of patience. Had to rest, take medicine and sit in a room with machinery going outside-and with an air conditioner on day and night. At least the even noise of the air conditioner neutralized the heavy traffic on Barret Avenue and I was astounded to find myself sleeping nine hours a night!! Evidently it was something I needed, that and the diet, because my stomach calmed down. And I suppose I enjoyed it in a way-saying the new Mass (we don't have English at Gethsemani yet except for the Brothers), reading a lot. (Finished the Tom Wolfe Kandy Kolored, etc. book, a Herman Wouk novel, some Bultmann on New Testament, a book on Buddhism, Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, a couple of pages of Aeschylus, and Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris.) Got some work done-finished the galleys of Seasons of Celebration and made a few additions. |
| 1965/08/21 | Gustaf Wingren | Man and the Incarnation: A Study in the Biblical Theology of Irenaeus |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 282-83
| The Chapter yesterday was not so bad. The day was a joyful one. A lot of gladness in the community, and most people seem pleased that I am going to live in the woods-for the right reason, I think-namely that it shows an opening up to the Spirit, an awareness of new possibilities and not just the evasion that condemned everyone to uniform and rigid adherence to one set of practices for all, meaningful or not.... What is immediately perceptible is the immense relief, the burden of ambiguity is lifted, and I am without care-no anxiety about being pulled between my job and my vocation"¦I feel as if my whole being were an act of thankfulness- even the gut is relaxed and at peace after good meditation and long study of Irenaeus ( Wingren's book!) [G. Wingren, Man and the Incarnation, 1959]. The woods all around crackle with guerrilla warfare-the hunters are out for squirrel season (as if there were a squirrel left!). Even this idiot ritual does not make me impatient. In their mad way they love the woods too: but I wish their way were less destructive and less of a lie. |
| 1965/08/26 | Irenaeus of Lyon | Adversus Haereses |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 285
| Superb passage from Irenaeus (Adversus Haereses, IV XXXIX.2. col. 1110): "Si ergo opera Dei es.... etc. " ["If you are the work of God wait patiently for the hand of your artist who makes all things at an opportune tim"¦. Give to Him a pure and supple heart and watch over the form which the artist shapes in you"¦lest, in hardness, you lose the traces of his fingers. By guarding this conformity you will ascend to perfection"¦. To do this is proper to the kindness of God; to have it done is becoming to human nature. If, therefore, you hand over to Him what is yours, namely, faith in Him and submission, you will see his skill and be a perfect work of God.] |
| 1965/08/28 | Gustaf Wingren | Man and the Incarnation: A Study in the Biblical Theology of Irenaeus |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 286-87
| Today-finished Wingren's book on Irenaeus, which Brother Cuthbert had passed on to me. Some misleading theological statements in it, but the material from Irenaeus and its interpretation are in general magnificent. This is theology!! |
| 1965/10/14 | Plato | Symposium |
Jnl 5 ('63-'65) p. 303
| "When he comes toward the end he will suddenly perceive a beauty of wondrous natur"¦not fair in the likeness of face or hands or any other part of the bodily fram"¦but beauty absolute, separate, simple and everlasting"¦are you not certain that it will then be given him to become a friend of God?" Plato-Symposium. How little we think of the beauty of the Divine Light-and how drab life is in consequence. We do not let the beauty of earth remind us where we are to go. As a consequence, not even the earth is beautiful to us, or as beautiful as it might be. |
| 1967/03/09 | Athanasius | Life of Anthony |
Ltrs: HGL p. 504
| This business of saying, as you do, that the monk is in the same boat with the Manichaean but just refuses, out of a Christian instinct and good sense, to be logical about it, is I think wrong. About early monastic literature, two things have to be observed first of all: 1. There are several different traditional blocks of texts. The Syrian tend to be very negative, gnostic, Manichaean (exception made for Ephrem, who is utterly different). But note for instance the development in the ideas of Chrysostom, for example. Then there is the reaction of Basil and the Cappadocians (blending Syrian with Egyptian-Greek lines). The Greek-Egyptian hermit school, Origenist and Evagrian, less negative than the Syrians, more balanced. Here in the Life of Anthony, a classic source if ever there was one, Athanasius goes to great pains to have Anthony say that all creation is very good and nothing is to be rejected, even the devils are good insofar as they are creatures, etc. etc. |
| 1967/10/3 | James W. Douglas | Non-Violent Cross: A Theology of Revolution and Peace |
Ltrs: HGL p. 166
| I am doubly sorry for having delayed about your chapter"”the last one ["Christians and the Stat"] ... This last chapter is one of the best and makes some splendid points. You have stated better than anyone recently the whole point of the "render under Caesar" business and I think your final sentence caps it perfectly. It is a very good chapter, but I do have one complaint about it. It seems to me that there is one very thin patch, around p. 21, when you slide over the Constantinian transition with the greatest of ease. A thousand and two thousand years of history are it seems to me dismissed with little hint of their enormous complexity. I don't say "dismissed" fairly, of course, because you cannot be expected to go into all that. Yet it is central to your argument. At the same time, do we really yet know what really went on, what kind of a shift really took place in the thinking of the Church, when "Christendom" went into business? I think it yet remains to be studied. And then too there are so many subtleties about the Dark Ages, about the "truce of God" in the tenth century, about the First Crusade as a means of peace, by uniting warring Westerners not in an attack on Jerusalem but in defense of Byzantium (thus helping reunite the two Churches then breaking apart). And all that. I think your treatment needs to at least hint at all these complexities which make the thing more mysterious and more real at the same time. |
| 1968/01/04 | Homer | Iliad / Translated by Robert Fitzgerald |
Jnl 7 ('67-'68) p. 32
| You shall not die in the bluegrass land of A"¦. rather the gods intend you for Elysion with golden Rhadamanthos at the world's end. (Fitzgerald's Homer) |
| 1968/11/11 | Publius Ovidius Naso | Metamorphoses |
Jnl 7 ('67-'68) p. 271
| "Exemploque pari furit omnis turba, suoque Marte cadunt subiti per mutua vulner a fraters." "The same madness raged through them all, and those who had been brothers an hour before perished by wounds they gave each other." (Ovid, Metamorphoses III) |