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Simone Weil - Portrait of a Self-exiled Jew (Paperback)
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Simone Weil - Portrait of a Self-exiled Jew (Paperback)
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Over fifty years after her death, Simone Weil (1909-1943) remains
one of the most searching religious inquirers and political
thinkers of the twentieth century. Albert Camus said she had a
"madness for truth." She rejected her Jewishness and developed a
strong interest in Catholicism, although she never joined the
Catholic church. Both an activist and a scholar, she constantly
spoke out against injustice and aligned herself with workers, with
the colonial poor in France, and with the opressed everywhere. She
came to believe that suffering itself could be a way to unity with
God, and her death at thirty-four has been recorded as suicide by
starvation.
This extraordinary study is primarily a topography of Weil's mind,
but Thomas Nevin is persuaded that her thought is inextricably
bound to her life and dramatic times. Thus, he not only addresses
her thoughts and her prejudices but examines her reasons for
entertaining them and gives them a historical focus. He claims that
to Weil's generation the Spanish War, the Popular Front, the
ascendance of Hitlerism, and the Vichy years were not mere
backdrops but definitive events.
Nevin explores in detail not only matters of continuing interest,
such as Weil's leftist politics and her attempt to embrace
Christianity, but also hitherto unexamined aspects of her life and
work which permit a deeper understanding of her: her writings on
science, her work as a poet and dramatist, and her selective
friendships. The thread uniting these topics is her struggle to
maintain her independence as a free thinker while resisting
community such as Judaism could have offered her. Her intellectual
struggles eloquently reveal the desperate isolation of Jews torn
between the lure of assimilation and the tormented dignity of their
communal history.
Nevin's massive research draws on the full range of essays,
notebooks, and fragments from the Simone Weil archives in Paris,
many of which have never been translated or published.
Originally published in 1991.
A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the
latest in digital technology to make available again books from our
distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These
editions are published unaltered from the original, and are
presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both
historical and cultural value.
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