xt71ns0kwm3x https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt71ns0kwm3x/data/mets.xml  Thomas Merton 1951-03-06 This letter is from collection 75m28 Thomas Merton papers. archival material 75m28 English  Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Thomas Merton correspondence Letter from Thomas Merton to Dr. Lawrence Thompson, March 6, 1951 text Letter from Thomas Merton to Dr. Lawrence Thompson, March 6, 1951 1951 1951-03-06 2023 true xt71ns0kwm3x section xt71ns0kwm3x OUR LADY OF GETHSEMANI

Trappist—Cistercian Abbey
I‘RAPPIST. KENTUCKY

Ihrc.h 6th 1951

Dear Mr Thempson—

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hangr t -anhs 10 or your kind loan of the books. I am
hugely enjoi ng Ma yor Garner, also Bluegrass and Rho»
dodendron. 1 w 111 get around to James Lane Allen later.
I also glance d through your Kentucky Poets and was
happy with k1e two bits of Jesse Stuart with111hom I
feel a certai.n kinshipn- especially in Wis attitude
toward ”The C ty". I think there are a lot of people
who feel t at Nay in Kentucky and that is probably one
of the reasons Why the Commonwealth feels like home!
What is Jesse Stuart doing these days?

Yo" say you have never visited Gethsemanil You must
do so by all means. Faiher Abbot extends his cordial
invitation to come doan and see our library at any time.
Big feast days of the Church or Sundays are not too con~
venient for us, but any ordinary week day is perfect.
It happens that the place assigned to me for my work happens
to be the rare book vault. I ass urey you it is a very insw
piring little room. Your mention of the Fathers of the
Church, and the bibliography of Isidore tells us that
our libraries have some-thing in common. No doubt we can
help one another we are beginning to enter more seri_ously
into Patr:?stic studies here than has been done in tie past
Fo tunately we have lfligne, at leasi the Latin.

Here are a few more scraps of notes and mss. You will h
be pleased, perhaps, to see that I was able to dig up a
little gragment of the Seven Store y Mountain after all. The
zemarks in penc11 are observations of the censor. You will
be amused. There is also a sketch for an illustration for
a forthcoming book , Bread in the Wilde1ness, and some

ejected pages from another forthcoming boolh the Ascent to

Truth. Finally I include some rung} notes of the Ori_enta~
tion lectures of which the mimeographed copy has reached
you by now.

Why doesn't the U. of Kentucky start something as
ambitious as the Sewanee Review or the Southern neview?
Or the Virginia Quarterly? Perhaps you have, s:ince my re-
tirement to Gethsemani. In any case, this will be another
assurance of our interest and mutluzl good Nishes. Please
let ‘5 know in advance if you are couing down.

 

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