The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University

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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If the person in correspondence with Merton has full text records in the Merton Center Digital Collections, there will be a numeric link to them below.
   

Series List

This Record Sub-Group is not divided into Series and is arranged chronologically.

Container List

SeriesDateTypeTo/FromFirst LinesPubFull TextNotes
 1959/09/18 TL[x]from MertonFirst of all I would like to tell you how interested and how moved I have been by the books of yours   
 1959/10/22 TLSto MertonYour letter of September 18 was waiting for me on my return to London a few days ago and I feel   
 1960/01/21 TLSto MertonIt is terrible how quickly time goes and I look with horror at the date on your last letter, October   
 1960/03/25 TLSto MertonWhat an extraordinary thing time is in life. Here I was a few days ago thinking about you a great   
 1960/11/04 TLSto MertonI have been so much on my travels that I have not yet had time to reply to your letter of June 30th   
 1961/04/07 TLSto MertonI was extremely moved a few days ago to get your beautiful "The Behavior of Titans" and its   
 1989/09/27 TLSto Cooper, DavidThank you very much for your letter of 13th September, and it is good news that the work  [copy from Cooper file / original kept here and copy in file] whereabouts of letters from Merton
        

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