| Author Quoted | Albert Camus |
| Title Quoted | chute, recit |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1960/05/06 |
| Imprint | [Paris] : Gallimard. c1956 |
| Quotation | At the same time I enjoy and respect Camus, and think I understand him. What you said about La Chute struck me very forcibly when I read it: it is a fine piece of Manichaean theology and very applicable to this Trappist kind of life. In fact I was able to use it to good effect, perhaps cruelly, in the spiritual direction of a narcissistic novice. But the thing of Camus that really "sends" me is the marvelous short story about the missionary who ends up as a prisoner in the city of salt. There, in a few words, you have a superb ricanement, in theology! And a very salutary piece for Trappists to read, because for generations we have been doing just that kind of thing. I was deeply saddened by his death. In politics I think I am very much inclined to his way of looking at things, and there is in him an honesty and a compassion which belies the toughness of his writing. |
| Quotation Source | The Courage for Truth: Letters of Thomas Merton to Writers.; Selected and edited by Christine M. Bochen. / New York : Farrar Straus Giroux. 1993, p. 66 |
| Letter to | Czeslaw Milosz |
| Notes | |
| Link to Merton's Copy |
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