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Simone Weil's The Iliad or the Poem of Force: A Critical Edition
Simone Weil est née à Paris en 1909 et meurt à Ashford, où elle a rejoint les services de la France Libre, en 1943. Figure sans équivalent dans la pensée française, elle a laissé une œuvre où à un engagement radical du côté du monde ouvrier (elle travaillera en usine en 1934-1935, participera à différentes publications dont La Critique sociale de Souvarine) se mêle une réflexion mystique tout aussi radicale. Ses Œuvres complètes sont en cours de publication aux Éditions Gallimard.
130 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1940
About the author
Simone Weil
374 books2,094 followersSimone Weil was a French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist. Weil was born in Paris to Alsatian agnostic Jewish parents who fled the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany. Her brilliance, ascetic lifestyle, introversion, and eccentricity limited her ability to mix with others, but not to teach and participate in political movements of her time. She wrote extensively with both insight and breadth about political movements of which she was a part and later about spiritual mysticism. Weil biographer Gabriella Fiori writes that Weil was "a moral genius in the orbit of ethics, a genius of immense revolutionary range".
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 154 reviews
August 8, 2021
Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is, nobody really possesses it.
April 25, 2026
"Capii allora che per cambiare il mondo bisognava esserci" (Tina Anselmi)
L'uso della forza- indiscriminato o meno- trasforma l'uomo in cosa, materia se movente, ma priva di anima.
E non c'è differenza tra le vittime e i carnefici: la guerra disumanizza tutti. Chi è violentato e ucciso, non è più; il violentatore e l'assassino forse rimangono vivi, ma reificati in un eìdolon che ha solo le sembianze umane, guscio vuoto di uno spirito dissolto nel massacro perpetrato.
Questo vale nell' 'Iliade', dove l'inevitabile Τύχη mischia le carte e rende a turno perdenti i vincenti e viceversa; ma è un principio eterno, che si avvalora ad ogni umano eccidio, in ogni guerra portata avanti da uomini (o da droni).
A ricordarci della bellezza e della sacralità della vita rimangono nel poema omerico epifanie di luce e descrizioni di gesti generosi, che travalicano i confini delle appartenenze etniche, per estendersi all'altro, riconosciuto come 'uomo tra gli uomini'.
E poi, naturalmente, c'è la memoria, la conservazione e il costante rinverdimento della quale è un potente antidoto contro la barbarie e l'involuzione; in questo senso, mi sembra 'bisogna esserci', per agire e per rimanere saldi nella difesa dei valori imprescindibili. Per tutti.
Buon 25 aprile.
L'uso della forza- indiscriminato o meno- trasforma l'uomo in cosa, materia se movente, ma priva di anima.
E non c'è differenza tra le vittime e i carnefici: la guerra disumanizza tutti. Chi è violentato e ucciso, non è più; il violentatore e l'assassino forse rimangono vivi, ma reificati in un eìdolon che ha solo le sembianze umane, guscio vuoto di uno spirito dissolto nel massacro perpetrato.
Questo vale nell' 'Iliade', dove l'inevitabile Τύχη mischia le carte e rende a turno perdenti i vincenti e viceversa; ma è un principio eterno, che si avvalora ad ogni umano eccidio, in ogni guerra portata avanti da uomini (o da droni).
A ricordarci della bellezza e della sacralità della vita rimangono nel poema omerico epifanie di luce e descrizioni di gesti generosi, che travalicano i confini delle appartenenze etniche, per estendersi all'altro, riconosciuto come 'uomo tra gli uomini'.
E poi, naturalmente, c'è la memoria, la conservazione e il costante rinverdimento della quale è un potente antidoto contro la barbarie e l'involuzione; in questo senso, mi sembra 'bisogna esserci', per agire e per rimanere saldi nella difesa dei valori imprescindibili. Per tutti.
Buon 25 aprile.
November 15, 2024
I feel like I'm too stupid to properly get what Weil was communicating? I didn't get everything she was saying but here are some things I wanna look into after having read her essay:
– the dehumanising effect force has on the people who wield it and those who are subjected to it
– "there are no winners" when it comes to war
– the idea of "karma" in the poem (victors become vanquished)
– the concept of "mercy" in the poem (in reference to Book 24 and Achilles giving Priam Hector's body)
– the Greeks and the Trojans being equally innocent (not sure if I agree with that take, the question of Free Will and how much is determined by the Gods and Fate comes into play here as well; in my book, the Greeks are the aggressors)
– the relation between fate and chance
– the indifference (!) of those wielding force towards those they subject to it (in reference to how Achilles treats Hector's body with no respect after he slaughtered him)
– the futility of struggle (as the movie puts it: "You'd let Troy burn for that woman?" And for what? At the end of the day, Troy perishes but so will the Greek empire one day)
– Homer's honest portrayal of force (brutality/violence/etc.); not sugar-coating it but also not glorifying it, just telling it how it is
"The true hero, the true subject, the centre of the Iliad, is force. Force employed by man, force that enslaves man, force before which man's flesh shrinks away. In this work, at all times, the human spirit is shown as modified by its relations with force, as swept away, blinded, by the very force it imagined it could handle, as deformed by the weight of the force it submits to."
I definitely appreciate the essay for determining the core of the Iliad: force. Force is that which turns anyone subjected to it into a thing. Force is dangerous not just to the victim, but to whoever controls it, as it intoxicates, partly by numbing the senses of reason and pity. Force thus can turn even its possessor into a thing – an unthinking automaton driven by rage or lust, senselessly hacking away at one's "enemies".
The essay relates how the Iliad suggests that no one truly controls force; as everyone in the poem, even the mighty Achilles and Agamemnon, suffer at least briefly when the force of events turns against them. Weil says only by using force in moderation can one escape its ill effects, but that the restraint to do this is very rarely found, and is only a means of temporary escape from force's inevitable heft.
Simone Petrement, a friend of Weil, wrote that the essay showed a new light in which the Iliad could be viewed. Whereas previously the Iliad had often been regarded as a stirring tale of heroic deeds, after the essay it could be seen as an accurate and compassionate depiction of how both victors and victims are harmed by the use of force.
Simone Weil's essay is regarded as one of the most iconic and important ones on Homer's Iliad, which is why I picked it up. I don't regret doing so because it's a rather short read and raises many great points but I'm not sure if I get all the "hype".
– the dehumanising effect force has on the people who wield it and those who are subjected to it
– "there are no winners" when it comes to war
– the idea of "karma" in the poem (victors become vanquished)
– the concept of "mercy" in the poem (in reference to Book 24 and Achilles giving Priam Hector's body)
– the Greeks and the Trojans being equally innocent (not sure if I agree with that take, the question of Free Will and how much is determined by the Gods and Fate comes into play here as well; in my book, the Greeks are the aggressors)
– the relation between fate and chance
– the indifference (!) of those wielding force towards those they subject to it (in reference to how Achilles treats Hector's body with no respect after he slaughtered him)
– the futility of struggle (as the movie puts it: "You'd let Troy burn for that woman?" And for what? At the end of the day, Troy perishes but so will the Greek empire one day)
– Homer's honest portrayal of force (brutality/violence/etc.); not sugar-coating it but also not glorifying it, just telling it how it is
"The true hero, the true subject, the centre of the Iliad, is force. Force employed by man, force that enslaves man, force before which man's flesh shrinks away. In this work, at all times, the human spirit is shown as modified by its relations with force, as swept away, blinded, by the very force it imagined it could handle, as deformed by the weight of the force it submits to."
I definitely appreciate the essay for determining the core of the Iliad: force. Force is that which turns anyone subjected to it into a thing. Force is dangerous not just to the victim, but to whoever controls it, as it intoxicates, partly by numbing the senses of reason and pity. Force thus can turn even its possessor into a thing – an unthinking automaton driven by rage or lust, senselessly hacking away at one's "enemies".
The essay relates how the Iliad suggests that no one truly controls force; as everyone in the poem, even the mighty Achilles and Agamemnon, suffer at least briefly when the force of events turns against them. Weil says only by using force in moderation can one escape its ill effects, but that the restraint to do this is very rarely found, and is only a means of temporary escape from force's inevitable heft.
Simone Petrement, a friend of Weil, wrote that the essay showed a new light in which the Iliad could be viewed. Whereas previously the Iliad had often been regarded as a stirring tale of heroic deeds, after the essay it could be seen as an accurate and compassionate depiction of how both victors and victims are harmed by the use of force.
Simone Weil's essay is regarded as one of the most iconic and important ones on Homer's Iliad, which is why I picked it up. I don't regret doing so because it's a rather short read and raises many great points but I'm not sure if I get all the "hype".
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May 30, 2026Simone Weil interpretiert die Ilias als ein Werk, das die Gewalt und das Elend des menschlichen Zustandes wahr beschreibt. Ergebnis: etwas unklar. Wenn ich den Übersetzer in seinem doch etwas langen Nachwort richtig verstanden habe, befand sich Weil, während sie diesen Essay geschrieben hat, in einer Umdenkphase von radikaler Pazifistin zu yoah... was auch immer. Auf jeden Fall nicht mehr Pazifistin.
Sie hat den Essay wohl als stramme Pazifisten begonnen und während des Schreibens immer mehr Zweifel an der Plausibilität dieser Position bekommen. Insofern ist dieser Text natürlich sau spannend, weil nicht ganz klar ist, wo es eigentlich hingeht - ganz davon abgesehen, dass er extrem gut geschrieben ist.
Schade fand ich, dass der Übersetzer in seinem Nachwort die späte, nicht pazifististische Weil sehr für ihre neugewonnene Wirklichkeitszugewandtheit lobt und die frühe, pazifistische Weil wenig ernstzunehmen scheint. Das fand ich ein sehr starkes Framing und einen zu starken Eingriff in diesen doch recht offenen Text. Die Übersetzung selbst fand ich aber gelungen.
Warme Empfehlung.
Sie hat den Essay wohl als stramme Pazifisten begonnen und während des Schreibens immer mehr Zweifel an der Plausibilität dieser Position bekommen. Insofern ist dieser Text natürlich sau spannend, weil nicht ganz klar ist, wo es eigentlich hingeht - ganz davon abgesehen, dass er extrem gut geschrieben ist.
Schade fand ich, dass der Übersetzer in seinem Nachwort die späte, nicht pazifististische Weil sehr für ihre neugewonnene Wirklichkeitszugewandtheit lobt und die frühe, pazifistische Weil wenig ernstzunehmen scheint. Das fand ich ein sehr starkes Framing und einen zu starken Eingriff in diesen doch recht offenen Text. Die Übersetzung selbst fand ich aber gelungen.
Warme Empfehlung.
February 6, 2017
If you want to preserve romantic notions of The Iliad as work exalting Homeric-sized heroes, do not read Weil's book. In a nutshell, Weil argues that the "force" of war turns combatants into "stone." And she backs up that claim, to devastating effect, with a detailed and compelling close reading of The Iliad itself, focusing on patterns of figurative language presenting Achilles, Ajax, et al as everything but human. And though it is very much an "academic" book, Weil writes (at least in this translation)gracefully, even poetically at times.
Having read multiple versions of The Iliad at different stages of my life, starting with abridged prose editions as a schoolboy, on up through translations by Chapman, Lattimore, Fagles, and Logue (well, Logue's is an "account," not a full translation), I've experienced a variety of reactions, from the naively romantic to the wearily cynical, but throughout I've always maintained a degree of worship for the grand "Homeric hymn" to figures who, to quote Shakespeare, "doth bestride the narrow world like a colossus." Weil makes it damn near impossible to maintain that view after reading her insightful analysis. Though I still my miss my romantic views of the poem (and indulge nostalgic return trips now and then when rereading favorite passages, such as Achilles' horse weeping for Patroclus), I'm grateful to Weil for having opened my eyes to the true meaning of this work. Theodore Adorno once said that "to write poetry after Auschwitz is a barbarism." I wouldn't quite accuse Homer of the ancient equivalent of that literary sin, but Weil's work has made me question the true legacy of this classic epic: "Whatever is not war, whatever war destroys or threatens, the Iliad wraps in poetry, the realities of war, never."
As an added bonus, this particular edition is bi-lingual, including the French, and has a very fine accompanying critical commentary by Holoska.
Having read multiple versions of The Iliad at different stages of my life, starting with abridged prose editions as a schoolboy, on up through translations by Chapman, Lattimore, Fagles, and Logue (well, Logue's is an "account," not a full translation), I've experienced a variety of reactions, from the naively romantic to the wearily cynical, but throughout I've always maintained a degree of worship for the grand "Homeric hymn" to figures who, to quote Shakespeare, "doth bestride the narrow world like a colossus." Weil makes it damn near impossible to maintain that view after reading her insightful analysis. Though I still my miss my romantic views of the poem (and indulge nostalgic return trips now and then when rereading favorite passages, such as Achilles' horse weeping for Patroclus), I'm grateful to Weil for having opened my eyes to the true meaning of this work. Theodore Adorno once said that "to write poetry after Auschwitz is a barbarism." I wouldn't quite accuse Homer of the ancient equivalent of that literary sin, but Weil's work has made me question the true legacy of this classic epic: "Whatever is not war, whatever war destroys or threatens, the Iliad wraps in poetry, the realities of war, never."
As an added bonus, this particular edition is bi-lingual, including the French, and has a very fine accompanying critical commentary by Holoska.
February 1, 2018
This is a stunning work: lucid, passionate, and provocative. One can hold aloof from Weil's concluding generalizations about culture and literary greatness (though I do agree that the Iliad is a miracle) and still be deeply engaged by her insightful and impassioned interpretation of the poem. I read it first in English, and then in French, and discovered that it loses a great deal in translation... at least in the old Pendle Hill translation I read; perhaps the new NYRB edition is better. Still: it makes a beautiful argument for the Iliad's famous balance of compassion, and a compelling one that it portrays the use of force as an inevitably warping influence on both parties in the relationship. It's particularly moving, of course, because of the context Weil wrote it in, in which abuses of power, and indifference to those abuses, were both all too apparent, a deadening influence on the soul and on society.
December 14, 2021
Σε αυτο το δοκίμιο η Weil παρατηρεί οτι η Ιλιάδα, είναι πάνω απ'όλα ένα ποίημα για την βία. Ουτε ο Αχιλλέας, ούτε οι θεοί, ούτε κανένας χαρακτήρας δεν υπάρχει σε τέτοια διάσταση σε ολόκληρο το κείμενο. Υπάρχει παντού στο έπος με τον Ομηρο αλλοτε να την εξυμνεί για την πυγμή της και άλλοτε να την αντιμετωπίζει με θλίψη για τα δεινά που προκαλεί. Νοιώθουμε πραγματικά πως ο Ομηρος δεν μπορεί να λάβει μια σαφής στάση απέναντι της.
August 15, 2021
In principio era la forza
In questo breve e compatto saggio, la Weil argomenta in modo molto convincente come il concetto di forza, di supremazia fisica sia il centro dell'Iliade - forza come elemento ampio che soggioga sia il vinto (rendendolo una cosa) che il vincitore (allontanandolo dall'umanità) e il cui potere è quindi quello di trasformare gli uomini in oggetti. In altre parole, il fatto ineluttabile che l'anima umana è subordinata alla materia e al destino.
Strettamente collegato è il concetto dell'abuso della forza (la hybris) di cui gli uomini si macchiano quando tentano di superare i limiti imposti dagli dei: così Ettore soccombe perchè non si è riparato a Troia, così Achille deve morire per gli eccessi della sua ira funesta, così Achei e Troiani sono condannati ad una guerra orribile, accomunati nella miseria di un destino che il vuole carnefici e vittime al tempo stesso (mai come nell'Iliade un massacratore diviene velocemente un massacrato).
La Weil, invece, è meno convincente dove tenta di stabilire una connessione tra questo spirito greco della miseria umana davanti alla Forza con lo spirito evangelico, soprattutto nel passo dove stigmatizza Romani e Ebrei come sottratti alla comune miseria umana (qui si sente l'effetto della volontà apologetica cristiana dell'autrice).
In ogni caso, lettura necessaria e fondamentale per comprendere l'unicità del capolavoro omerico.
In questo breve e compatto saggio, la Weil argomenta in modo molto convincente come il concetto di forza, di supremazia fisica sia il centro dell'Iliade - forza come elemento ampio che soggioga sia il vinto (rendendolo una cosa) che il vincitore (allontanandolo dall'umanità) e il cui potere è quindi quello di trasformare gli uomini in oggetti. In altre parole, il fatto ineluttabile che l'anima umana è subordinata alla materia e al destino.
Strettamente collegato è il concetto dell'abuso della forza (la hybris) di cui gli uomini si macchiano quando tentano di superare i limiti imposti dagli dei: così Ettore soccombe perchè non si è riparato a Troia, così Achille deve morire per gli eccessi della sua ira funesta, così Achei e Troiani sono condannati ad una guerra orribile, accomunati nella miseria di un destino che il vuole carnefici e vittime al tempo stesso (mai come nell'Iliade un massacratore diviene velocemente un massacrato).
La Weil, invece, è meno convincente dove tenta di stabilire una connessione tra questo spirito greco della miseria umana davanti alla Forza con lo spirito evangelico, soprattutto nel passo dove stigmatizza Romani e Ebrei come sottratti alla comune miseria umana (qui si sente l'effetto della volontà apologetica cristiana dell'autrice).
In ogni caso, lettura necessaria e fondamentale per comprendere l'unicità del capolavoro omerico.
December 29, 2019
"In any case, this poem is a miracle. Its bitterness is the only justifiable bitterness, for it springs from the subjections of the human spirit to force, that is, in the last analysis, to matter. This subjection is the common lot, although each spirit will bear it differently, in proportion to its own virtue. NO one in the Iliad is spared by it, as no one on Earth is. NO one who succumbs to it is by virtue of this fact regarded with contempt. Whoever, within his own soul and in human relations, escapes the dominion of force is loved but loved sorrowfully because of the threat of destruction that constantly hangs over him."
September 3, 2023
A great analysis of power, not as something that the individual human being is capable of utilizing for his own advantage, but rather as a force beyond human manipulation, an entity whose fate is blind to man, a potency that crushes both what we percieve to be the weak and the strong.
May 31, 2026
En tan pocas palabras y una fuerza terrible que barre como una teoría sólida el texto: vivimos a merced de la fuerza ¿Cómo hacernos cargo de esa afirmación? Weil utiliza la Iliada para encontrar los resquicios éticos que nos permiten huir de la crueldad y de la sumisión a través de una política de la violencia muy débil pero certera.
“No desear que lo que se ama sea inmortal. Aquellos a los que vas a matar son mortales. Ante alguien muerto, sea el que fuere, no desear que sea inmortal ni que esté muerto.”
“No desear que lo que se ama sea inmortal. Aquellos a los que vas a matar son mortales. Ante alguien muerto, sea el que fuere, no desear que sea inmortal ni que esté muerto.”
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January 9, 2026based
April 13, 2024
Phamplet da leggere assolutamente.
La Weil ci dice che sulla terra siamo tutti miseri uomini, in guerra siamo tutti misere cose.
La Weil ci dice che sulla terra siamo tutti miseri uomini, in guerra siamo tutti misere cose.
October 9, 2025
a masterpiece, a miracle
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December 20, 2024Really beautiful essay. One day I’ll read the actual Iliad in full.. I promise..
March 25, 2026
Aún no termino de entender como cada vez que leo a Simon Weil se siente como una experiencia mística.
October 5, 2021
This volume provides an excellent foreword, translation, and commentary on Weil's justly-celebrated essay 'The Illiad, Or the Poem of Force'. As someone working on Weil's works in an academic capacity, it always surprises me how, in this work, Weil reconciles both her ardent humanism (her unbearable suffering on behalf of the afflicted) with her bizarre antihumanism, inherited directly from Spinoza (on this see her journals). The content of this antihumanism is best summarised when she comments that the only force operative in the universe is force itself. It is not wielded by us; we, our bodies and minds, are its dire armaments.
It was disappointing for me to see that the commentary included little critical appraisal of Weil's views, although the editor's specialisation is clearly in classics and not in philosophy which might explain this. There is certainly quite a bit that Weil gets wrong. If we cannot control force, why not give up? What grounds for hope are there in a better future? Yet Weil does distinguish a fleeting glimmer of hope in the possibility of the birth of saint-like figures, like Patroclus in the Iliad, but also Jesus of Nazareth. The hope here, placing Weil in the company of the post-1968 French political theorists, is that of the roll of the dice: it is the hope of chance, or of the aleatory.
It also stuck out to me that the 'great' authors whom Weil names, and who for her have succeeded in maintaining the spirit of Attic tragedy are all white men: Villon, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Moliere, and Racine. This issue is complicated when we look at her later The Need for Roots, where she describes the need to exagarate education in schools of the 'greats'. It would be wrong to hold Weil to account for not having anticipated insights which only arose 40-50 years after her death, but Linda Nochlin's 'Why are there no great woman artists?' seems a relevant piece of literature to consider when reading Weil's comments. I believe the problem Weil is describing is not with the abandonment of the truly great authors (i.e. those who follow Homer), but with the idea of artistic greatness itself.
It was disappointing for me to see that the commentary included little critical appraisal of Weil's views, although the editor's specialisation is clearly in classics and not in philosophy which might explain this. There is certainly quite a bit that Weil gets wrong. If we cannot control force, why not give up? What grounds for hope are there in a better future? Yet Weil does distinguish a fleeting glimmer of hope in the possibility of the birth of saint-like figures, like Patroclus in the Iliad, but also Jesus of Nazareth. The hope here, placing Weil in the company of the post-1968 French political theorists, is that of the roll of the dice: it is the hope of chance, or of the aleatory.
It also stuck out to me that the 'great' authors whom Weil names, and who for her have succeeded in maintaining the spirit of Attic tragedy are all white men: Villon, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Moliere, and Racine. This issue is complicated when we look at her later The Need for Roots, where she describes the need to exagarate education in schools of the 'greats'. It would be wrong to hold Weil to account for not having anticipated insights which only arose 40-50 years after her death, but Linda Nochlin's 'Why are there no great woman artists?' seems a relevant piece of literature to consider when reading Weil's comments. I believe the problem Weil is describing is not with the abandonment of the truly great authors (i.e. those who follow Homer), but with the idea of artistic greatness itself.
August 9, 2025
This is a great critical interpretation of The Iliad, but more significantly it is a fantastic condensed presentation of Weil’s philosophy as a whole. I would absolutely recommend this as a primer for her longer and more complex works and as a great follow up and insight for those who have read more from her. The application of her ideas on spiritual gravity and the possibilities of grace to a more familiar and tangible piece of writing provide a strong access point into her broader and more abstract thought.
June 28, 2016
For me, Weil's essay is deeply moving and has what I can only call a moral urgency.
February 13, 2017
Reading these essays at the same time as I've begun reading the Iliad. Extremely well written. Weil is a brilliant writer, Bespaloff as well. It's a shame they both died so young.
January 1, 2026
"Wo das Denken keinen Platz findet, haben weder Gerechtigkeit noch Vorsicht den ihren."
January 26, 2024
Perfectly ordered in its overall aims, though a bit sloppy in the details, this remarkable essay by Simone Weil essentially pronounces--with many compelling arguments--Homer's "The Illiad" as the greatest western epic of all time to denounce the horror of war. She does not call it 'war,' focusing instead on its more profound entity, that of "force." Though she alludes to the forces of nature as well, her interest here is in the use of force between men, and here most especially in times of war. In her 74-page essay, quoting widely from The Illiad, she cites the numerous examples of battle, death, and the nature of humans when confronted with the chance to spare lives, punish, and terrorize. Probably intentionally, she all but leaves out the names of the characters who are speaking, though within the context of the dialogues we do hear the names crop up of Achilles, Priam, Hector and Agamemnon. This is surely to indicate that 'who' the characters are ( whether Greek or Trojan) little matters, in who the speaker is exactly who refuses to spare the life of his enemy.
As she points out Homer waxes poetic in the few references to places where peace still exists, but pulls no punches when describing the physical wounding and method of dying of the vanquished. Weil focuses also on the continuous back and forth on which forces are in power, at one moment the Greeks, at other the Trojans, in a continual see-saw of temporary wins and incomparable losses.
What sets apart The Iliad from all other epics before or since, for Weil is the tone of voice. Neither Trojans nor Greeks are held up as heroes; in fact there are no heroic beings, the only hero being Force. There is no triumph in this endless push-pull of murderous energy, just death and dying, pleas and enmity. Though she provides brief examples of love within families and between spouses, there is only once exception to the lack of nobleness and reasoning that might raise man above himself and his condition. And about this state of affairs, gruelingly depicted, Homer shows his great sorrow and bitterness, and a vast pity for the idiocy of men on both sides. As Weil explains, the attacker and the attacked--both victims of their blood lust and false pride--are of course being manhandled by the ever capricious and mean-spirited Gods. Today we would call those Gods our inherited reptilian mind, and Darwinian survival run amok.
Weil concludes that The Illiad has no equal. The Odyssey, also by Homer, is a pale imitation, in her eyes. The Aeneid she calls "brilliant, cold, and judgemental." She berates Roman and Hebrew writing as too much in the service of self-importance, unable to address the suffering of man.
In Weil's opinion, only Athenian tragedy operates on the same register as the Illiad, and there is nothing more like it until the New Testament, with the appearance of Jesus Christ and his message of love and forgiveness, empathy for all mankind, and redemption through grace. Yet as she points out, the meaning of Christ's self-sacrifice is lost historically in the centuries of the Christian church's forced and violent conversions. Leap forward a number of centuries and Weil similarly dismisses the French Medieval chansons de geste for doing the usual: taking sides.
As to later writing, there is a sprinkling that addresses the destructive power of force, and the anguish of mankind, but the suffering allowed for tends to be in romantic contexts rather than political!
To conclude it is fair to say, in our modern words, that for Weil "The Illiad" is the greatest anti-war masterpiece ever written, the first and the last of its kind.
As she points out Homer waxes poetic in the few references to places where peace still exists, but pulls no punches when describing the physical wounding and method of dying of the vanquished. Weil focuses also on the continuous back and forth on which forces are in power, at one moment the Greeks, at other the Trojans, in a continual see-saw of temporary wins and incomparable losses.
What sets apart The Iliad from all other epics before or since, for Weil is the tone of voice. Neither Trojans nor Greeks are held up as heroes; in fact there are no heroic beings, the only hero being Force. There is no triumph in this endless push-pull of murderous energy, just death and dying, pleas and enmity. Though she provides brief examples of love within families and between spouses, there is only once exception to the lack of nobleness and reasoning that might raise man above himself and his condition. And about this state of affairs, gruelingly depicted, Homer shows his great sorrow and bitterness, and a vast pity for the idiocy of men on both sides. As Weil explains, the attacker and the attacked--both victims of their blood lust and false pride--are of course being manhandled by the ever capricious and mean-spirited Gods. Today we would call those Gods our inherited reptilian mind, and Darwinian survival run amok.
Weil concludes that The Illiad has no equal. The Odyssey, also by Homer, is a pale imitation, in her eyes. The Aeneid she calls "brilliant, cold, and judgemental." She berates Roman and Hebrew writing as too much in the service of self-importance, unable to address the suffering of man.
In Weil's opinion, only Athenian tragedy operates on the same register as the Illiad, and there is nothing more like it until the New Testament, with the appearance of Jesus Christ and his message of love and forgiveness, empathy for all mankind, and redemption through grace. Yet as she points out, the meaning of Christ's self-sacrifice is lost historically in the centuries of the Christian church's forced and violent conversions. Leap forward a number of centuries and Weil similarly dismisses the French Medieval chansons de geste for doing the usual: taking sides.
As to later writing, there is a sprinkling that addresses the destructive power of force, and the anguish of mankind, but the suffering allowed for tends to be in romantic contexts rather than political!
To conclude it is fair to say, in our modern words, that for Weil "The Illiad" is the greatest anti-war masterpiece ever written, the first and the last of its kind.
June 19, 2026
Nicht so einfach; am Anfang hat es mich an den typischen Soziolog:innen-Sprech erinnert, Sätze mit einer einfachen Aussage möglichst kompliziert und verschachtelt zu formulieren, damit der Intellekt gewahrt bleibt. Größtenteils war es letztendlich verständlich und hatte einige schöne Ideen wie:
Der Mensch, der sich überall als der Schwächste sieht, ist im Herzen der Städte so allein, ja noch mehr als sogar der Mensch, der sich in der Wüste verirrt.
oder
So gnadenlos die Gewalt vernichtet, so gnadenlos berauscht sie den, der sie besitzt oder zu besitzen glaubt.
oder
Wer die Gewalt besitzt, bewegt sich in einem widerstandslosen Umkreis, ohne dass irgendetwas in der menschlichen Materie um ihn herum fähig wäre, zwischen Impuls und Handlung jenen kurzen Abstand zu schaffen, wo das Denken seinen Ort hat. Wo das Denken keinen Platz findet, haben weder Gerechtigkeit noch Vorsicht den ihren.
Allerdings hat mir eine klare Richtung gefehlt, oder ich habe sie nicht verstanden. Der Essay untermauert die eigenen Aussagen mit Zitaten aus der Illias - und nu? Wissen wir, dass die Illias von Gewalt handelt? Ok.
Gefallen hat mir der anschließende Text des Übersetzers Wolfang Matz, der einige von Weils Ideen historisch kontextualisiert und kritisch beleuchtet hat.
Der Mensch, der sich überall als der Schwächste sieht, ist im Herzen der Städte so allein, ja noch mehr als sogar der Mensch, der sich in der Wüste verirrt.
oder
So gnadenlos die Gewalt vernichtet, so gnadenlos berauscht sie den, der sie besitzt oder zu besitzen glaubt.
oder
Wer die Gewalt besitzt, bewegt sich in einem widerstandslosen Umkreis, ohne dass irgendetwas in der menschlichen Materie um ihn herum fähig wäre, zwischen Impuls und Handlung jenen kurzen Abstand zu schaffen, wo das Denken seinen Ort hat. Wo das Denken keinen Platz findet, haben weder Gerechtigkeit noch Vorsicht den ihren.
Allerdings hat mir eine klare Richtung gefehlt, oder ich habe sie nicht verstanden. Der Essay untermauert die eigenen Aussagen mit Zitaten aus der Illias - und nu? Wissen wir, dass die Illias von Gewalt handelt? Ok.
Gefallen hat mir der anschließende Text des Übersetzers Wolfang Matz, der einige von Weils Ideen historisch kontextualisiert und kritisch beleuchtet hat.
Read
November 17, 2024bellissimo
April 20, 2025
Fantástico, sagaz y profundo - de los mejores textos que he podido leer
January 6, 2017
I am in the middle of reading The Iliad itself (Cowper's translation), but I dived into reading this because I love Simone Weil's writings and wanted some "live commentary" of a sort on what is kind of a boring book (boring, probably, because of the translation I chose to read). Weil's little book is essentially a book review of the Iliad, but it is one that deserves its own place in the literary canon, so beautifully is it written. She wrote it during WWII, when the use of force was terrifying the world, again. It is hard not to think of Fascists and Nazis (particularly the ones carrying out the murder of Jews, including women and children) when Weil describes how the perpetrator of violence is no longer a person, but a thing, no more human than the weapon he wields: "the conquering soldier is like a scourge of nature. Possessed by war, he, like the slave, becomes a thing, though his manner of doing so is different - over him too, words are as powerless as over matter itself. And both, at the touch of force, experience its inevitable effects: they become dead and dumb". We must examine force and reject it in the realization of what it does to our souls: "only he who has measured the domination of force, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love and justice". See it for what it is, and *not* to respect it, she says. The Iliad helps us to see it for what it is, helps us to be like Patroclus, "who 'knew how to be sweet to everybody,' and who throughout the Iliad commits no cruel or brutal act". Patroclus respects life, not "force", unlike the other warriors in Homer's epic poem, who commit brutal acts described in gory, Hollywood-style detail. But where some readers see in the Iliad only the glorification of violence - a celebration of force from a primitive time in Western history - Weil sees a purposefully clean distinction between Homer's depictions of warriors at battle versus those same warriors as fathers, husbands and sons, at home in peace with their wives, children and parents, or grieved by them in death. Of this distinction, Weil says "Whatever is not war, whatever war destroys or threatens, the Iliad wraps in poetry; the realities of war, never." The Iliad is indeed full of such happy moments, among my favorites is when Hector, in full war regalia, reaches to pick up his baby son, who then screams and cowers back into his nurse's arms. Hector and his wife laugh, and he takes off his plumed helmet and tries again, this time kissing him and playing "coochy-coo". After this he prays to the Gods to let his son become a great warrior like him! For the most part, The Iliad is not easy reading, but Weil's review is encouraging me to finish it. Her concluding opinion of the Iliad as a whole is a little surprising and would by itself serve nicely as a book-jacket endorsement for Homer's epic poem: "...nothing the peoples of Europe have produced is worth the first known poem that appears among them. Perhaps they will yet rediscover the epic genius, when they learn that there is no refuge from fate, learn not to admire force, not to hate the enemy, nor to scorn the unfortunate".
August 19, 2026
Weil’s reflections on how force affects its abuser (the user almost always being an abuser) and its victim just left me super impressed. Her observations are surgical but not heartless & poetic but not pretentious
p. 4 “No comforting fiction intervenes; no consoling prospect of immortality; and on the hero's head no washed-out halo of patriotism descends.”
p 11 “Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is, nobody really possesses it. The human race is not divided up, in the Iliad, into conquered persons, slaves, suppliants, on the one hand, and conquerors and chiefs on the other. In this poem there is not a single man who does not at one time or another have to bow his neck to force.”
p 13 “Victory is less a matter of valor than of blind destiny, which is symbolized in the poem by Zeus's golden scales:
Then Zeus the father took his golden scales,
In them he put the two fates of death that cuts down all men,
One for the Trojans, tamers of horses, one for the
bronze-sheathed Greeks.
He seized the scales by the middle; it was the fatal day of
Greece that sank.
By its very blindness, destiny establishes a kind of justice."
p 13-14, on how the excitement kindled by force kills our capacity for reflection: “The man who is the possessor of force seems to walk through a non-resistant element; in the human substance that surrounds him nothing has the power to interpose, between the impulse and the act, the tiny interval that is reflection. Where there is no room for reflection, there is none either for justice or prudence. Hence we see men in arms behaving harshly and madly…Achilles rejoices over the sight of the Greeks fleeing in misery and confusion. What could possibly suggest to him that this rout, which will last exactly as long as he wants it to and end when his mood indicates it, that this very rout will be the cause of his friend's death, and, for that matter, of his own? Thus it happens that those who have force on loan from fate count on it too much and are destroyed.”
p 15, on how what goes around comes around: “retribution, which has a geometrical rigor, which operates **automatically** to penalize the abuse of force, was the main subject of Greek thought. It is the soul of the epic. Under the name of Nemesis, it functions as the mainspring of Aeschylus's tragedies. To the Pythagoreans, to Socrates and Plato, it was the jumping-off point of speculation upon the nature of man and the universe. Wherever Hellenism has penetrated, we find the idea of it familiar. In Oriental countries which are steeped in Buddhism, it is perhaps this Greek idea that bas lived on under the name of Kharma. The Occident, however, has lost it, and no longer even has a word to express it in any of its languages: conceptions of limit, measure, equilibrium, which ought to determine the conduct of life are, in the West, restricted to a servile function in the vocabulary of technics. We are only geometricians of matter; the Greeks were, first of all, geometricians in their apprenticeship to virtue.”
p 19, on how the fruits of force are quick to rot: “But the auditors of the Iliad knew that the death of Hector would be but a brief joy to Achilles, and the death of Achilles but a brief joy to the Trojans, and the destruction of Troy but a brief joy to the Achaeans.”
p 25, on Achilles’ ruthlessness towards Lycaon: “To respect life in somebody else when you have had to castrate yourself of all yearning for it demands a truly heartbreaking exertion of the powers of generosity”
p 26 “It is not the planning man, the man of strategy, the man acting on the resolution taken, who wins or loses a battle; battles are fought and decided by men deprived of these faculties, men who have undergone a transformation, who have dropped either to the level of inert matter, which is pure passivity, or to the level of blind force, which is pure momentum.”
p 31 “Whatever is not war, whatever war destroys or threatens, the Iliad wraps in poetry; the realities of war, never.”
p 37 “Perhaps they [Europeans] will yet rediscover the epic genius [of the Iliad], when they learn that there is no refuge from fate, learn not to admire force, not to hate the enemy, nor to scorn the unfortunate. How soon this will happen is another question.”
———————————————
Even though they're in fragments and I read it through Mary McCarthy’s lens, Weil’s translation of the Iliad might be my favorite:
But whenever he came upon a commoner shouting out,
He struck him with his scepter and spoke sharply:
"Good for nothing! Be still and listen to your betters,
You are weak and cowardly and unwarlike,
You count for nothing, neither in battle nor in council."
... the horses
Rattled the empty chariots through the files of battle,
Longing for their noble drivers. But they on the ground
Lay, dearer to the vultures than to their wives.
His soul, fleeing his limbs, passed to Hades,
Mourning its fate, forsaking its youth and its vigor.
... But Achilles
Wept, dreaming of the beloved comrade; sleep, all-
prevailing,
Would not take him; he turned over again and again.
p. 4 “No comforting fiction intervenes; no consoling prospect of immortality; and on the hero's head no washed-out halo of patriotism descends.”
p 11 “Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is, nobody really possesses it. The human race is not divided up, in the Iliad, into conquered persons, slaves, suppliants, on the one hand, and conquerors and chiefs on the other. In this poem there is not a single man who does not at one time or another have to bow his neck to force.”
p 13 “Victory is less a matter of valor than of blind destiny, which is symbolized in the poem by Zeus's golden scales:
Then Zeus the father took his golden scales,
In them he put the two fates of death that cuts down all men,
One for the Trojans, tamers of horses, one for the
bronze-sheathed Greeks.
He seized the scales by the middle; it was the fatal day of
Greece that sank.
By its very blindness, destiny establishes a kind of justice."
p 13-14, on how the excitement kindled by force kills our capacity for reflection: “The man who is the possessor of force seems to walk through a non-resistant element; in the human substance that surrounds him nothing has the power to interpose, between the impulse and the act, the tiny interval that is reflection. Where there is no room for reflection, there is none either for justice or prudence. Hence we see men in arms behaving harshly and madly…Achilles rejoices over the sight of the Greeks fleeing in misery and confusion. What could possibly suggest to him that this rout, which will last exactly as long as he wants it to and end when his mood indicates it, that this very rout will be the cause of his friend's death, and, for that matter, of his own? Thus it happens that those who have force on loan from fate count on it too much and are destroyed.”
p 15, on how what goes around comes around: “retribution, which has a geometrical rigor, which operates **automatically** to penalize the abuse of force, was the main subject of Greek thought. It is the soul of the epic. Under the name of Nemesis, it functions as the mainspring of Aeschylus's tragedies. To the Pythagoreans, to Socrates and Plato, it was the jumping-off point of speculation upon the nature of man and the universe. Wherever Hellenism has penetrated, we find the idea of it familiar. In Oriental countries which are steeped in Buddhism, it is perhaps this Greek idea that bas lived on under the name of Kharma. The Occident, however, has lost it, and no longer even has a word to express it in any of its languages: conceptions of limit, measure, equilibrium, which ought to determine the conduct of life are, in the West, restricted to a servile function in the vocabulary of technics. We are only geometricians of matter; the Greeks were, first of all, geometricians in their apprenticeship to virtue.”
p 19, on how the fruits of force are quick to rot: “But the auditors of the Iliad knew that the death of Hector would be but a brief joy to Achilles, and the death of Achilles but a brief joy to the Trojans, and the destruction of Troy but a brief joy to the Achaeans.”
p 25, on Achilles’ ruthlessness towards Lycaon: “To respect life in somebody else when you have had to castrate yourself of all yearning for it demands a truly heartbreaking exertion of the powers of generosity”
p 26 “It is not the planning man, the man of strategy, the man acting on the resolution taken, who wins or loses a battle; battles are fought and decided by men deprived of these faculties, men who have undergone a transformation, who have dropped either to the level of inert matter, which is pure passivity, or to the level of blind force, which is pure momentum.”
p 31 “Whatever is not war, whatever war destroys or threatens, the Iliad wraps in poetry; the realities of war, never.”
p 37 “Perhaps they [Europeans] will yet rediscover the epic genius [of the Iliad], when they learn that there is no refuge from fate, learn not to admire force, not to hate the enemy, nor to scorn the unfortunate. How soon this will happen is another question.”
———————————————
Even though they're in fragments and I read it through Mary McCarthy’s lens, Weil’s translation of the Iliad might be my favorite:
But whenever he came upon a commoner shouting out,
He struck him with his scepter and spoke sharply:
"Good for nothing! Be still and listen to your betters,
You are weak and cowardly and unwarlike,
You count for nothing, neither in battle nor in council."
... the horses
Rattled the empty chariots through the files of battle,
Longing for their noble drivers. But they on the ground
Lay, dearer to the vultures than to their wives.
His soul, fleeing his limbs, passed to Hades,
Mourning its fate, forsaking its youth and its vigor.
... But Achilles
Wept, dreaming of the beloved comrade; sleep, all-
prevailing,
Would not take him; he turned over again and again.
May 5, 2023
«η ψυχή υποφέρει από τη βία καθημερινά. κάθε πρωινό η ψυχή ακρωτηριάζει τις φιλοδοξίες της, γιατί η σκέψη αδυνατεί να ταξιδέψει στο χρόνο χωρίς στη διαδρομή να σκοντάψει στην ιδέα του θανάτου.»
January 13, 2026
Turns out that using the Iliad as a framing device to argue for the timeless costs of violence in the middle of WWII is pretty compelling
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