This very remarkable autobiography has, under the title of The Seven Storey Mountain, enjoyed prodigious success in the U.S.A. The present text has been renamed and very slightly abridged in order to adapt it to European tastes. Nothing has been cut out except certain passages which seemed to be of purely local interest. It remains essentially American. Despite a cosmopolitan childhood, “Thomas Merton” — Father Louis, as he is now named — is typical of what is newest and best in his country. Columbia not Cambridge formed his literary style. His spirituality, though French in discipline, is the flower of the Catholic life of the New World. Americans are no longer expatriates in their quest for full cultural development. They are learning to draw away from what is distracting in their own civilization while remaining in their own borders.
Here, in fresh, colloquial American is the record of a soul experiencing, first, disgust with the modern world, then Faith, then a clear vocation to the way in which Faith may be applied to the modern world. The word “prodigious” is used with full intent. It is a prodigy of the new spirit of the New World that this book should have been read by hundreds of thousands. For several generations American Catholics have abounded in works of corporate charity such as still flourish everywhere, and in recent years have produced such typically contemporary enterprises as Friendship House in Harlem and the House of Hospitality in Mott Street. The contemplative life has until very lately drawn few in proportion to the numbers. Now Carmelite Convents can barely cope with the press of postulants, and the Trappists are opening new houses in the deep South and the hills of Utah. But the life of these communities is by nature unostentatious, and The Seven Storey Mountain came as a startling revelation to most non-Catholic Americans[,] who were quite unaware of the existence in their midst of institutions which seemed a denial of the American “way of life”. The book suddenly made remote people conscious of warmth silently generated in these furnaces of devotion. To one observer at least it seems probable that the U.S.A. will shortly be the scene of a great monastic revival. There is an ascetic tradition deep in the American heart which has sometimes taken odd and unlovable forms. Here in the historic Rules of the Church lies its proper fulfilment.
In the natural order the modern world is rapidly being made uninhabitable by the scientists and politicians. We are back in the age of Gregory, Augustine and Boniface, and in compensation the Devil is being disarmed of many of his former enchantments. Power is all he can offer now; the temptations of elegance and wealth no longer assail us. As in the Dark Ages the cloister offers the sanest and most civilized way of life.
And in the supernatural order the times require more than a tepid and dutiful piety. Prayer must become heroic. That is the theme of this book[,] which should take its place among the classic records of spiritual experience.
January 1949