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

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Paradox is, therefore, presented as an essentially intrinsic element of the spiritual journey: the lyrical voice is living in darkness – “unlock our dark,” he implores — but it is a darkness which is already light, the light radiating in and from Christ. This is the darkness which precedes dawn, a darkness present in the Christian mystical tradition since Dionysius the Areopagite and so beautifully sung of by Saint John of the Cross, whom Merton read widely and to whom he owes some of his most penetrating images such as that of the “flight.” This, in its turn, is the flight towards the freedom attained through the joy which pervades you when you no longer desire anything, when you no longer withhold anything, when you let go of yourself, in sum, when you cease existing, as it were. We all have some experience, or at least some hints, of how this sometimes happens. The following poem offers a foretaste of it.

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O sweet escape! O smiling flight!

O what bright secret breaks our jails of flesh?