xt7qbz618v30 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7qbz618v30/data/mets.xml  Victor Hammer  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 Victor Hammer to Thomas Merton, undated text Letter from Victor Hammer to Thomas Merton, undated   2023 true xt7qbz618v30 section xt7qbz618v30 Dear Tom; Thank you for your kind letter of Sept. 15th. We were very soory to hear about your
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sufferings but were relieved to know you4ingood hands at the hospitaln I hope this letter reaches
you as a convalescent in the monastery, All good wishes for your recovery.
d. 0 (Ii/‘51,

The neWS about our agent in New York who endeavors to kee vou out of difficulties b cutting on
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Wfifi very good news indeed

the demands which are constantly made upon you, such as blurbs and similar things? I am glad to

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hear this happened. You need not apologize to me for I made 3 mllar demnds. I realize now that
the text of my book a which you so kindly and seriously reviewed ~will be the appropriate text to
accompany a supposed book of reproductions from my pictures.
I admit that my proposal was rather naive, thoughtless perhaps. I fancied a layman faced by these
pictures, definitely out of fashion now, and telling what they mean to him, But the layman is
not what he once was and how I wish him to be, In theee bygone days the layman was after the

:iet because he needed his work. The priests of the religious orders defined exactly what they
wanted and needed as painted stories on the walls of their churches, in order to teach the belieVm
are who could not read but were able to see0 Though the wishes of the clerics (laymen too regard»
ing the srts)were set down exactly in writing and contracts with the artists made , no patron, as
the Church was, would have expected the artists to "express themselves"o Yet the artists were
free to strive after artistic truth as they saw it fit.
This kind of layman no longer exists, and Church art became as poor as it is. The Churchnen do
not know what they mm: and actually they don't want anything specific); the:; wait for what the
artist offers and meekly accept it, or after a while reject it for the wrong reasonse As the
Abbot of Scheyern, when I asked him when the frescoes on the barre 1 vault of their Romanesque
church were painted, said: Oh, that was when we had too much moneys
You will understand that in this sense you are not, and cannot be a laymen, for you are a child of
our age just as I am mysel?. Therefore it was thoughtless of me to ask you. It has become a sort
of excuse to admit one is a layman, But the laymen who built the cathedrals thought of themselves

as patrons rho hired the craftsmen and took the credit for their work, The Sistine chapel is

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the creation of Pope Giulio fifiII (Y) and he knew why he hired Michelangelo to execute it,

Colpa min to ask a man who knows how to write (a craftsman of the pen or of the words} to add

words to the reproduction of paintings. Bed world in which we live and involuntarily take part
of the spirit that reigns in itS ‘
Dear Ton you are of course free to quote anything from my book, and thank you for

the good words

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you had let 1kg - -- - u

 

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3t. John had reoortod what he saw and what he heard — an eye and ear witness of Christ's

acts and words, and also a proof of the authenticity of the gospel and the personal
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existence of Christ -- for I want to imagine the human who would have been able to make

Christ'g gestur in answer to the tem‘ting questions of the Pharisees. Of the writing
with Him finger on the ground I have heard Adolf Von Harneck say: we do not know what
He wrote. The son of God did what no human ever could have done. We see Him in this
gesture, He has revealed Himself to all of us who can see.

Father Bruckberger, the French Dominican, tells us thet he has spent his whole (adult)
life among theologians and says that he knowa how they reason -3 by deduction and from

authority. He quotes St.Thomes who says that: " . . . we must believe the authority of

those to whom the revelation has been made".

But Christ has revealed Himself to all of us, directly, for we recognize Him .n His

divine mercy ~ as Father Louis, the Trappist monk said.

 

 For more than forty years I felt a gentle, but constant urge to give definite visual form
to a conceptual idea that is behind the story of the woman taken in adultery, so succintly
told by at. John in his gospel. In the course of these years I have painted two complete

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versions or his story, besides a great number of trial paintings, unfinished and abandoned
attempts to reach the final form. I have now finished a third panel and with it I went as
far as I was able to go with my brush. Tet I have not uttered one word, I only used my
brush for making a drawing, a design, a graph, a gramma,-~ things which ought to be seen
and cannot be heard.
Feycnd its decorative value the painting contains a message, just as Christ's gesture of
silently steeping down meant a message to be understood by the Pharisees, The painting
_ rpetuates this message. Christ reacts to the tempting questions of the Pharisees
gesture that is not understood, then, lifting himself up, He raises Iis voice
in words. He does not dismiss the Pharisees, He asks . an indirect question
could answer only in one mood ~~ by turning away.
report in the gospel and painted the attitude of he woman,the Pharisees

and Chrisi's gesture. Christ speaks first with a gesture, silently; then He writes and then

He raises His voice and after that repeats his gesture, But the messes

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e is never delivered
directly, the message which says in words: do not accuse mm forgive. St. John reported
what he saw and hearde

I it so difficult to see what Christ meant with His gesture, are we blind, must we take

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recourse to words, to hear what He want us to see? AddreSSInp

the eye again with the
diagram which underlies the painting, those who can see are seeing five separate vertical
lines and one undivided round line: the circle. Christ gestures first by stooping down,
then with His finger He wfiies on the ground, and finally He lifts Himself up and raises

His voice. And again He stoopes down and wriBeSon the groundnand with all of that H
communicates.

thether intentionally or not, Ortega y Gasset does not mention this story in the note to the

"Commentary on the Symposium of Plato", postumously(sic) published under the title of:

The Difficulty of Reading. (Diogenes magazine . . . . ).