A Life in Letters

Now in the pantheon of great thinkers, Simone Weil (1909–1943) lived largely in the shadows, searching for her spiritual home while bearing witness to the violence that devastated Europe twice in her brief lifetime. The letters she wrote to her parents and brother from childhood onward chart her intellectual range as well as her itinerancy and ever-shifting preoccupations, revealing the singular personality at the heart of her brilliant essays. >The first complete collection of Weil’s missives to her family, A Life in Letters offers new insight into her personal relationships and experiences. The letters abound with vivid illustrations of a life marked by wisdom as much as seeking. The daughter of a bourgeois Parisian Jewish family, Weil was a troublemaking idealist who preferred the company of miners and Russian exiles to that of her peers. An extraordinary scholar of history and politics, she ultimately found a home in Christian mysticism. Weil paired teaching with poetry and even dabbled in mathematics, as evidenced by her correspondence with her brother, André, who won the Kyoto Prize in 1994 for the famed Weil Conjectures. A Life in Letters depicts Simone Weil’s thought taking shape amid political turmoil, as she describes her participation in the Spanish struggle against fascism and in the transatlantic resistance to the Nazis. An introduction and notes by Robert Chenavier contextualize the letters historically and intellectually, relating Weil’s letters to her general body of writing. This book is an ideal entryway into Weil’s philosophical insights, one for both neophytes and acolytes to treasure. Contents Note on Sources Editor’s Introduction FIRST LETTERS Letters to “Aunt Gabrielle,” 1916–1918 Letters to “Pime,” 1917 LETTERS TO SELMA AND BERNARD WEIL Student Letters, 1926–1931 Letters from Le Puy-en-Velay, October 1931–April 1932 Letters from Germany, Summer 1932 Letters from Roanne, October 1933–July 1934 Letters from Bourges, October 1935–July 1936 Letters from Spain, August and December 1936 Letters from Montana, March–April 1937 Letters from Italy, April–June 1937 and May–June 1938 Letters from Saint-Marcel-d’Ardèche and Saint-Julien-de-Peyrolas, August–October 1941 Lettersfrom New York, July–October 1942 Letters from London, December 1942–August 1943 LETTERS TO ANDRÉ WEIL Letter to André Weil in India, 1932 Letters to André Weil in Finland, October–December 1939 Letters to André Weil in Prison, February–March 1940 Three Drafts of Replies, Late March–Early April 1940 Letters from France to André Weil in the United States, March 1941–Spring 1942 Letters from New York to André Weil in Bethlehem, September–Early November 1942 Letters from London, Late March–April 1943 Notes Selected Bibliography Editor’s Acknowledgments Index