Volume 24, Number 3 · March 3, 1977
The Life and Death of Simone Weil
By J.M. Cameron
Simone Weil: A Life
by Simone Pétrement, translated by Raymond Rosenthal
Pantheon, 577 pp., $15.00
On September 3, 1943, the following headline appeared in a local English newspaper, The Kent Messenger: DEATH FROM STARVATION: FRENCH PROFESSOR'S CURIOUS SACRIFICE. The reference was to the death of Simone Weil, then attached to the Free French forces, on August 24, in an Ashford nursing home. The verdict of the Coroner's Court was 'that the deceased did kill and slay herself by refusing to eat whilst the balance of her mind was disturbed.' As her friend and biographer is able to show, the truth is more complicated than that; indeed, everything connected with Simone Weil, her life of study and teaching and political agitation, her beliefs in religion, philosophy, and politics, her mysticism, and the claim made, not unreasonably, by many for her sanctity, is enormously complicated and often hard to put together in a consistent way. In death as in life her personality is enigmatic. We are not ignorant of what she thought: the abundance of her writings and of her reported sayings and actions provides rich material for study; but at the end we are left with many questions difficult to answer.
Review, 4353 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |