Simone Weil (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Thomas R. Nevin
- First Published: 1992
- Type of Work: Philosophy
- Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, Biography
- Subjects: Exile or expatriates, Science or scientists, Spiritualism, Judaism, Religious life, Tyrants or tyranny
Simone Weil remains one of the most complicated and enigmatic figures of the twentieth century. Her short life has inspired hagiographic reverence from writers as varied as T. S. Eliot and Leslie Fiedler, Albert Camus, and Czeslaw Milosz. Behind this reverence is a respect for an individual resistant to the forms of tyranny that gripped the mid-twentieth century—both communism and fascism. Even more important was her resistance to spiritual apathy; Weil refused to give in to the facile nihilism of the age. Self-denying, ascetic, constantly striving to define her own relationship to...
[The entire page is 2130 words long]
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