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

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There in the clamor of the Christless avenues:

And try to ransom some one prisoner

Out of those walls of traffic, out of the wheels of that unhappiness!¹⁹

Eventually, Merton began to realize that contemplative life within his community could degenerate into a ritualistic and, sometimes, superficial religiosity. By the end of the fifties this awareness led him to experience an intense vocational crisis, “a war in my own gut” as he himself describes it in “The Sting of Conscience.” This thrilling, complex, sharp, and subtle reflection was censored because it was considered “neurotic,” so in the beginning it was not published, despite being – according to Merton — one of his best creations. It was written as a response to the biting attack that the British writer Graham Greene launched in The Quiet American against non-action in the midst of a world full of injustice. A close reading of it reveals Merton’s innermost wish to transcend the attitude of mere bystander and to get involved more actively in the problems of the world.²⁰