The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton, Vol. 587 Book

This is vintage Merton whose writing is always smooth & thought-provoking. I found it difficult, though, to follow because of my unfamiliarity with some of the authors & many of the books he reviewed. It was a delight, however, to revisit Boris Pasternak in "The Pasternak Affair", including "Pasternak's Letters to Georgian Friends", & "Dr. Zhivago", one of my favorite novels from seminary days of the '60's....and the movie!

Regarding Russia's insistence that Pasternak not accept the Nobel Peace Prize in the fall of 1958, Merton writes: "The whole fault of the book [Dr. Zhivago}, from the Soviet point of view, is something 'which neither the editors nor the author can alter by cuts or revision...the spirit of the novel, its general tenor, the author's view of life.'" Merton goes on: "The view of life...is that the individual is more important than the collectivity. His spirit, his freedom, his ability to love, raise him above the state. The state exists for man, not man for the state...Man has no right to alienate his own liberty to become a cog in a machine. Man is of no use to man if he ceases to be a person and lets himself be reduced to the status of a 'thing'...The great tragedy of the revolution, for Pasternak, wqas the fact that the best men in Russia submitted to mass insanity and yielded up their own judgment to the authority of Juggernaut."