| Author Quoted | Charles Baudelaire |
| Title Quoted | Fleurs du mal |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1941/11/09 |
| Imprint | [S.l.] : [s.n.]. 1857 |
| Quotation | In all evil, there is something holy perverted. The dialectic between the good that underlies evil and the evil into which this good is perverted is frightful. In every evil act of Baudelaire's life, God was present to remind him of exactly what he was doing, who he was crucifying. That is the greatness and the terror of the Fleurs du mal, and it is proved by the fact that Baudelaire finally admitted it, and gave in to God [whom] he had killed all his life. And anybody who can't see the intimate connection between Baudelaire's love of evil and his return to the love of God, had best leave him strictly alone. What terror is in that book! God, save me! |
| Quotation Source | Run to the mountain: The Story of a Vocation. The journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 1, 1939-1941.; Edited by Patrick Hart, O.C.S.O. / San Francisco : Harper Collins. 1995, p. 476 |
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| Link to Merton's Copy |
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