Merton’s 1948 confessional masterpiece, The Seven-Storey Mountain, immediately conveyed his preoccupation through the rest of his life with how his divided inner nature reflected a world alienated from God:
“Free by nature, in the image of God, I was nevertheless the prisoner of my own violence and my own selfishness, in the image of the world into which I was born. That world was the picture of Hell, full of men like myself, loving God and yet hating Him; born to love Him, living instead in fear and hopeless self-contradictory hungers.”
Throughout my four years at Columbia University, I was dimly aware that one of the most celebrated Catholics of the 20th century had graduated from there several decades before.
But I had no real idea of the nature of his life’s work—and, more important, had never read any of his books –until several years ago, when I came across the following quote from his autobiography in a review in The Washington Monthly:
“October is a fine and dangerous season in America. It is dry and cool and the land is wild with red and gold and crimson, and all the lassitudes of August have seeped out of your blood, and you are full of ambition. It is a wonderful time to begin anything at all. You go to college, and every course in the catalogue looks wonderful. The names of the subjects all seem to lay open the way to a new world. Your arms are full of new, clean notebooks, waiting to be filled. You pass through the doors of the library, and the smell of thousands of well-kept books makes your head swim with a clean and subtle pleasure. You have a new hat, a new sweater perhaps, or a whole new suit. Even the nickels and the quarters in your pocket feel new, and the buildings shine in the glorious sun.”
Reading that passage, I was immediately struck by the urge to buy the book, and I did so.
It’s easy to gauge from the first couple of sentences the extraordinary visual legacy that Merton’s father, a painter, left his son.
Throughout my four years at Columbia University, I was dimly aware that one of the most celebrated Catholics of the 20th century had graduated from there several decades before.
But I had no real idea of the nature of his life’s work—and, more important, had never read any of his books –until several years ago, when I came across the following quote from his autobiography in a review in The Washington Monthly:
“October is a fine and dangerous season in America. It is dry and cool and the land is wild with red and gold and crimson, and all the lassitudes of August have seeped out of your blood, and you are full of ambition. It is a wonderful time to begin anything at all. You go to college, and every course in the catalogue looks wonderful. The names of the subjects all seem to lay open the way to a new world. Your arms are full of new, clean notebooks, waiting to be filled. You pass through the doors of the library, and the smell of thousands of well-kept books makes your head swim with a clean and subtle pleasure. You have a new hat, a new sweater perhaps, or a whole new suit. Even the nickels and the quarters in your pocket feel new, and the buildings shine in the glorious sun.”
Reading that passage, I was immediately struck by the urge to buy the book, and I did so.
It’s easy to gauge from the first couple of sentences the extraordinary visual legacy that Merton’s father, a painter, left his son.
Later, the cadences might remind you of simple, concrete Biblical verses, or even the classics of 18th-century English literature he studied under famed Columbia professor Mark Van Doren.
Merton’s description of his first encounter with the campus on Morningside Heights is not as beautiful, but just as vivid in its way:
“All around the campus were piles of dirty snow, and I smelled the wet, faintly exhilarating air of Morningside Heights in the winter time. The big, ugly buildings faced the world with a kind of unpretentious purposefulness, and people hurried in and out the glass doors with none of the fancy garments of the Cambridge undergraduate—no multicolored ties and blazers and scarfs, no tweeds and riding breeches, no affectations of any kind, but only the plain, drab overcoats of city masses. You got the impression that these people were at once more earnest and more humble, poorer, smarter perhaps, certainly more diligent than those I had known at Cambridge.”
Almost as secular then as now, Columbia nevertheless left an enormous impression on Merton, just as it has on me – a fact I was reminded of most forcefully last year, at my 25th reunion, as well as, more subtly, whenever I pick up a classic and am reminded in some way of a course I took at the school.
Merton’s description of his first encounter with the campus on Morningside Heights is not as beautiful, but just as vivid in its way:
“All around the campus were piles of dirty snow, and I smelled the wet, faintly exhilarating air of Morningside Heights in the winter time. The big, ugly buildings faced the world with a kind of unpretentious purposefulness, and people hurried in and out the glass doors with none of the fancy garments of the Cambridge undergraduate—no multicolored ties and blazers and scarfs, no tweeds and riding breeches, no affectations of any kind, but only the plain, drab overcoats of city masses. You got the impression that these people were at once more earnest and more humble, poorer, smarter perhaps, certainly more diligent than those I had known at Cambridge.”
Almost as secular then as now, Columbia nevertheless left an enormous impression on Merton, just as it has on me – a fact I was reminded of most forcefully last year, at my 25th reunion, as well as, more subtly, whenever I pick up a classic and am reminded in some way of a course I took at the school.
It left its brand on me as surely as twelve years of St. Cecilia Elementary and High School did – and that’s saying something.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I began perusing my copy of Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father and turned to the section on his time at Columbia. In contrast to Merton’s tactile, lengthy discussion of the university, Obama’s was oddly abstract and perfunctory.
Obama graduated only one year behind me, and as an African-American came from a background even more alien to the Morningside Heights campus than mine or Merton’s.
I’ll undoubtedly return to the book, not only because I want to know more about this man who stands such a great chance of securing the Democratic nomination for President now, but because, from everything I’ve heard so far, his memoir is uncommonly reflective and evocative for one written by a politician. But I’m still puzzled as to why the university left such an evidently small imprint on Obama’s life.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I began perusing my copy of Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father and turned to the section on his time at Columbia. In contrast to Merton’s tactile, lengthy discussion of the university, Obama’s was oddly abstract and perfunctory.
Obama graduated only one year behind me, and as an African-American came from a background even more alien to the Morningside Heights campus than mine or Merton’s.
I’ll undoubtedly return to the book, not only because I want to know more about this man who stands such a great chance of securing the Democratic nomination for President now, but because, from everything I’ve heard so far, his memoir is uncommonly reflective and evocative for one written by a politician. But I’m still puzzled as to why the university left such an evidently small imprint on Obama’s life.
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