| Author Quoted | Maurice Merleau-Ponty |
| Title Quoted | Sens et non-sens |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1964/02/02 |
| Imprint | Paris : Nagel. [1963, c1948] |
| Quotation | One of the worst things I have ever done-the absurd enterprise of writing that text for the Vatican Pavilion. Nothing whatever to do with a movie. I must learn to refuse these baits. Yet how marvelous to really and competently do a movie! Merleau-Ponty's essay on the films-have important implications for the new liturgy. Liturgy on "comportement" [behavior]! Translating language of movies into Liturgy. "(La liturgie) s'addresse à notre pouvoir de dechiffrer tacitement le monde ou les hommes et de coexister avec eux." ["Liturgy addresses itself to our power to decipher tacitly the world or men and coexist with them," Sens et non sens, p. 103.] This is either so right or so utterly wrong as to be blasphemous. But in that cas"¦? Liturgy is to be experienced, and it is a film. Not past thought or willed. Experienced by the presentation of conducts. "Non pas"¦chaque conscience et les autres, mais la conscience jetee dans le monde, soumise au regard des autres et apprenant d'eux ce qu'elle est" ["Not"¦each conscience and the other consciences, but the conscience thrown into the world, submitted to the view of others and learning from others what it is"] (Sens et non sens, pp. 104-105). This needs interpretation (danger of the Fascist application, or the Soviet application of it!) but in the right sense it is "liturgy." Or is it? "Engagement de la conscience dans un corps." ["The engagement of a conscience in a body."] |
| Quotation Source | Dancing in the Water of Life: Seeking Peace in the Hermitage. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 5, 1963-1965.; Edited by Robert E. Daggy. / San Francisco : Harper Collins. 1997, p. 69-70 |
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| Notes | |
| Link to Merton's Copy |
52167
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