Raids on the Unspeakable (New Directions Paperbook) - Softcover

Thomas Merton

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811201015 ISBN 13: 9780811201018

Publisher: New Directions, 1966

Synopsis

This collection of his prose writings reveals the extent to which Thomas Merton moved from the other-worldly devotion of his earlier work to a direct, deeply engaged, often militant concern with the critical situation of man in the world.

Here this concern finds expression in poetic irony and in meditations intentionally dour.

In these brief, challenging pieces, Father Merton does not offer consolation or easy remedies. He looks candidly and without illusions at the world of his time. Though he sees dark horizons, his ultimate answer is one of Christian hope. To vary the perspective, he writes in many forms, using parable and myth, the essay and the meditation, satire and manifesto, prose poetry and even adaptations from a medieval Arab mystic (Ibn Abbad) to humanize and dramatic his philosophical themes.

The themes of Raids on the Unspeakable are as old as the myths of Prometheus and Atlas, and as timely as the human evils of today. They range from the "Message" written for an international congress of poets to the beautiful yet disturbing Christmas meditation, "The Time of the End Is the Time of No Room." And there are essays inspired by the world of three significant contemporary writers: Flannery O'Connor, the French novelist Julien Green, and the playwright Eugene Ionesco. A number of Father Merton's own drawings are also included in the book―not as "illustrations," but as "signatures" or :"abstract writings," which stand in their own right as another personal statement.

About this title

Review

This small collection of Merton's essays presents the Trappist monk at his most bracing. Among other things, it sheds great light on that phenomenon we call the 1960s, which is when this book was first published. Even while writing about topics as diverse as Adolf Eichmann, Flannery O'Conner, and Prometheus, the essays engage the complicated history of those days head on, even while they explore the underlying spiritual issues. Above all, the essays celebrate the vigorous energy of life itself, uncontrolled, spontaneous, and natural--what Merton here calls the festival of rain: "all that speech pouring down, selling nothing, judging nobody, drenching the thick mulch of dead leaves, soaking the trees." Idiosyncratic, full of humor and poetic energy, these raids, as Merton himself says, "are not so much concerned with ethical principles and traditional answers ... but in difficult insights at a moment of human crisis." --Doug Thorpe

From the Back Cover

This paperbook collection of his prose writings reveals the extent to which Thomas Merton moved from the other-worldly devotion of his earlier work to a direct, deeply engaged, often militant concern with the critical situation of man in the world.

Edition details

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 1966
• ISBN 10: 0811201015
• ISBN 13: 9780811201018
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 182