Red Virgin: A Poem of Simone Weil

by Stephanie Strickland

Classmate of Simone de Beauvoir, acquaintance of Trotsky, Spanish Civil War revolutionary, fighter in de Gaulle’s French Resistance,  Simone Weil (1909–1943) has also been called the greatest woman philosopher in the Western tradition.
    In this fiftieth anniversary year of her death, Simone Weil’s life still raises questions. Early in this century three brilliant contemporaries in Paris—Weil, de Beauvoir, and Gertrude Stein—reinvented the female intellect.  Of the three, only Weil chose to base her thought on the trauma that war, rape, slavery, and bias inflict.
    Weil was never deceived by the glamor of power, committing herself to resisting force in whatever guise.  More prophet than saint, more wise woman than either, she bore a particular perception of the body, throwing hers against the same issues women battle hunger, violence, exclusion, betrayal of the body, inability to be heard, and self hate.  Simone Weil belongs to a world culture, still to be formed, where the voices of multiple classes, castes, races, genders, ethnicities, nationalities, and religions can be respected.

Genres: Poetry

75 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993