Читать книгу Thomas Merton's Poetics of Self-Dissolution онлайн
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Are still alive, and which are dead.’”8
Merton’s contempt for metropolitan life grew bigger and bigger. Faithful to the commands of his own destiny, the monk deemed it urgent to begin a journey from the unreal city (London, New York) to the paradisiacal city (the Trappist community).9 Therefore, at the beginning of the forties, he entered the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani (Kentucky). On joining the monastery in 1941, he wrote a poem entitled “A Letter to My Friends.” It is addressed to his university friends Robert Lax and Edward Rice, with whom he shared many good moments of study and discussion during their time as students at Columbia. They enjoyed a lasting intimate friendship and a close intellectual collaboration witnessed to in their contributions to The Columbia Jester magazine. In the summer of 1939, they spent a few months together at a small cottage situated in the west side of New York State, writing novels, and reading books, amongst which was Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce.10