Читать книгу Thomas Merton's Poetics of Self-Dissolution онлайн

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I shall begin with an ineffable and moving poem entitled “Macarius the Younger,” included in the book Emblems of a Season of Fury (1963). In a legendary manner, this composition is inspired by the lives of the Desert Fathers, those hermits and monks from the fourth and fifth centuries who, with great religious fervour, followed the Biblical maxim: “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven” (Matthew 19:21-22) and for whom Merton always felt great admiration. These holy men got rid of all their possessions, left behind their houses, their father and their mother, and their children, and went to live in solitude in the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, Arabia and Persia in order to devote themselves to contemplation, prayer, (quies or sweet rest) and to a complete abandonment to the love of God and to the service of their brothers in charity and compassion.²

This poem is based on Rubinus’ Historia Monachorum and it reads as follows: