Refiner’s Fire: Simone Weil: Futile Heroics

A significant amount of attention has been given this year to the publication of Simone Pétrement’s biography Simone Weil, A Life in an English translation (Pantheon). This publicity is a further illustration of English and American interest in the life-pattern, as well as the religious and philosophical thought, of the French mystic who died at thirty-four in 1943 in a heroically futile gesture. (Suffering from tuberculosis and in despair because she was not permitted to leave England and return to occupied France, she refused to eat more than the workers in France and died of starvation.)

This is a lengthy and detailed chronology, written by one of Weil’s closest friends with the approval of the Weil family. I do not consider it a literary biography because the over-riding contradictions and the mythic and metaphoric patterns of Weil’s remarkable but flawed life do not stand out for the reader to see readily. Pétrement does indeed offer us interpretation and clarification of detail because of her extensive research, but the reader is often weighed down by the wealth of quoted materials, particularly the militant articles written for various union periodicals and papers in the early 1930’s. Further, the translation is sometimes marred by awkwardness and literalness. American readers without some knowledge of French culture may have difficulty in retaining interest in chapters one through twelve. (Here Pétrement clarifies Weil’s roots within the chaos between the two world wars, the influence of her teacher Alain upon her, the details of her militant leftist and union activities, and her movement away from pacifism.) The war years constitute a compelling story as Weil’s personal destiny becomes a reflection of the tragedy of Europe as she knew it.

Weil always had a sense of vocation that led her to identify with the oppressed and brought her a certain notoriety in pre-war France. As a philosophy professor she participated in workers’ demonstrations during the depression; she took a leave of absence from teaching to work in various factories. By 1939, however, she had rejected Marxist doctrine, the concept of the political party, and modern bureaucratic organization. Her vision turned from the future to the past as she used Greek culture in particular as a springboard for much of her social commentary. Despite her agnostic background, she had come to a mystical experience of the love and presence of Christ. She saw the crucified Christ as the embodiment of the complete identification of God with the afflicted and oppressed.

Despite Weil’s agnostic background, she had experienced the love and presence of Christ. She saw the crucified Christ as identifying with the afflicted and oppressed.

Interpreters tend to categorize Simone Weil according to their particular biases: social and political theorist and activist, theist with Platonic and Gnostic roots, Christian mystic and female Christ-figure, brilliant thinker given to extravagant and heroic follies, or neurotic given over to a desire for self-immolation once France was occupied. The strength of the completeness of Pétrement’s work is that she lets the reader glimpse all these facets of Weil’s life. The reader is left to grapple with her complexity. If Simone Weil thought that “it is only heroes of real purity, the saints and geniuses, who can help the afflicted” (The Simone Weil Reader, David McKay), it is clear that she felt called as one of that group. Weil’s parents seem to have spent a lot of time in rescuing their daughter from her self-imposed sufferings, but Pétrement testifies that her friend was extraordinary; the luminosity of her presence lifted those who knew her beyond themselves.

The bulk of Weil’s writings that have made her reputation date from the end of her life, the years 1940–1943. In London she apparently wrote with the inspiration of one who senses the impending call of death. George Panichas has edited a useful anthology, based on material that has already appeared in translation. Some of these essays have been difficult to obtain, so that this collection is most welcome. Panichas has written appropriate explanatory material to accompany Weil’s works, emphasizing that she was a prophetic social critic, able to perceive the evil of the existing social order only because of her metaphysical vision. He calls her “the great Christian Hellenist of modern times” but notes the heterodoxy of her thought. In choosing to emphasize the spiritual force of Weil’s thought, Panichas does not suggest the full nature of her evolution as a thinker; his generalizations do not permit him to analyze the rich nuances of her thought.

For readers encountering Weil for the first time, I would recommend these sections in Panichas’s anthology: “Spiritual Autobiography,” “Sketch of Contemporary Social Life,” “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God,” “Factory Work,” “Last Thoughts,” “Analysis of Oppression,” “The Iliad, Poem of Might,” “Up-rootedness and Nationhood,” “The Power of Words,” “The Responsibility of Writers,” “Human Personality,” “Love,” “Metaxu,” “Beauty,” “The Love of God and Affliction,” and “Concerning the Our Father.”

Simone Weil was pessimistic about the centralization of power in an increasingly bureaucratic and technological society that destroys regionalism and kills the worker’s freedom and dignity. In this she was prophetic. She was theistic in her postulation of the source of good (God) outside the world and in her theory of creation as a process of de-creation as God withdrew from the world, which was in him, allowing it to function by the rigorous law of necessity. She was Christian in acknowledging the sacred, impersonal impulse toward good within the individual that is converted into love as Christ seizes the spirit of the person who focuses his full attention on God and waits for grace. Grace counteracts the gravity of necessity. Weil’s social and religious thought offers material for an interesting comparison with our more orthodox contemporary, Jacques Ellul.

Patricia Ward is associate professor of French and comparative literature, the Pennsylvania State University, University Park.

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