In The Discipline of the Mountain Daniel Berrigan offers ""ways of
imagining our plight"" through the poetic vision of Dante's Purgatorio.
There can be found ""a faithful vision, an alternative, a truthful image
of God, of ourselves, of history."" Berrigan employs free, poetic
adaptation of the original--its themes, moods, discourses,
encounters--with a prose commentary relating the text to political-moral
issues of the present day. With its themes of lust and hatred, religious
strife and ecclesiastical corruption, military power and oppression, the
Purgatorio is an apt allegory of modern society. Thirteenth-century
kings and princes shade into twentieth-century colonels and shahs and
juntas. The Discipline of the Mountain is evocatively illustrated by
Robert F. McGovern. ""What is God saying to us, what would he have us
do, as a seemingly irreversible course leads humanity, like a
blindfolded beast, towards the abattoir? Might there be ways of coping,
ways which might properly be named spiritual, surpassing whatever the
politics of the Left or Right might offer?"" --from the Introduction
""Let us hope that our country will become wise. But until it
does---indeed, in order that it should---we as its citizens must act on
the wisdom of our own conscience. That, to me, is the ultimate meaning
of what Father Daniel Berrigan, in prose and poetry, says and leaves
unsaid."" -- Howard Zinn ""Daniel Berrigan is a poet and prophet for
these times."" --Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners magazine Daniel
Berrigan is an internationally known voice for peace and disarmament. A
Jesuit priest, award-winning poet, and the author of over fifty books,
he has spoken for peace, justice, and nuclear disarmament for nearly
fifty years. He spent several years in prison for his part in the 1968
Catonsville Nine antiwar action and later acted with the Plowshares
Eight. Nominated many times for the Nobel Peace Prize, he lives and
works in New York City. Robert F. McGovern, whose woodcuts appear in The
Discipline of the Mountain, is Professor Emeritus at Philadelphia
College of Art and lives in Narbeth, Pennsylvania. In addition to
illustrating several books, his work has appeared in New Covenant
Magazine and the Catholic Worker.
