| Author Quoted | Matsuo Basho |
| Title Quoted | Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches / translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1966/05/08 |
| Imprint | [S.l.] : Penguin. 1967 |
| Quotation | Thanks for the books which came in yesterday. Have already begun the Bash which is just what I have been wanting after so much tired stuff, this is the greatest the most alive and you are right perfect monasticism. Thanks for the intuition that it is what I would need. Maybe when I read it carefully I will know a lot more about the question. And there is no question that the great issue is freedom. From Urizens goddam hammers. I go where I am Los (turned loose) so far the one place where I can be the sunlight is up here on this hill where all the angels shine around me in each leaf and no one can prevent them. I have been on the road before and there were fewer and sometimes none. I think I have only one way to travel and it is straight up. Or straight down into the root. |
| Quotation Source | The Courage for Truth: Letters of Thomas Merton to Writers.; Selected and edited by Christine M. Bochen. / New York : Farrar Straus Giroux. 1993, p. 262 |
| Letter to | Clayton Eshleman |
| Notes | |
| Link to Merton's Copy |
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