Silent Lamp

Silent Lamp is written with a remarkable combination of clarity and assurance. Its author, who is also the general editor of Thomas Merton’s letters, has made the material his own in a masterly way. This book will be recognized as an authoritative, if not definitive, study of Merton’s life and work. It is a biography–but of a rather special kind. Each period of merton’s life is presented to us in two ways. First, a section of chronology sets out the major events in that life in parallel with significant events in the contemporary poitical and literary world. Then follows the biographical chapters that contitute the substance of the book. Here Merton’s life is seen in terms of the principal themes that he developed as a writer and teacher. These themes are of a great and intriguing variety, varying from the possibilities of monasitc renewal to the poetry of Latin America, from the demands of interracial justice to the teachings of the Sufi masters. Thus we are given not just an account of Merton’s life but the story of that life, its unfolding pattern and meaning. We see the story in relation to the time in which he lived, and we find him in an unexpected way to have been a representative figure of the midtwentieth century.