Mirror of Obedience: The Poems and Selected Prose of Simone Weil

by Simone Weil, Silvia Panizza (Translator, editor), Philip Wilson (Translator, editor)

Simone Weil (1909-1943) was one of the foremost French philosophers of the 20th century; a mystic, activist, and writer whose profound work continues to intrigue and inspire today.

Mirror of Obedience collects together Weil's poetry and autobiographical writings translated into English for the first time. It offers a rare glimpse into a more personal and introspective Weil than we usually encounter. She was writing and re-working her poems until the end of her life and in a letter from London to her parents, dated 22 January 1943, she expressed the wish for her verses to appear together in print in chronological order, a wish which this volume honours.

Weil was a thinker who wrote with discipline and spareness and cherished the poetic form for its power to compress language and distill meaning. In these poems and literary writings, we see her own efforts to craft poems as essential expressions of thought, bringing into view another aspect of Weil's quest for beauty and truth.

Genres: Poetry

200 pages, Paperback

Published August 10, 2023

About the author

Simone 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".

Reviews

[Mattea Gernentz · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Une clarté sous un toit comble l'âme. / Le pain mûrit comme un fruit dans la flamme. / Qu'il vous aima, pour faire un don si beau!" (Prometheus, 102).

Took a break from Weil to read other Weil, as one does. I spotted this cover in the window of a closed bookshop and gasped, transfixed, like something in a movie. Patiently, longingly, I waited until they reopened after a long festive break. I traded in five old books for this one—a bargain, really.

Somehow, in all my reading, I hadn't before come across evidence that Weil wrote poetry, but so much of her philosophy and her essence makes even more sense now. She's one of us. Very fitting that her first Christian mystic experience arrived through a poem: George Herbert's "Love (III)."

What a pleasure to read her French verse aloud! There are two essays at the start that are serviceable in linking Weil's life and historical context to her poetry and to literature at large. I enjoyed the comparison therein of Weil to an Old Testament prophet rather than a saint, living on the margins.

Whenever I read Weil, I end up wishing she was alive and in charge of the world today. Her desire for justice and balance, fierce devotion to God and goodness, wisdom, acceptance of contradiction and mystery, and abounding love are unmatched. As Camus called her, "the only great spirit of our time."

[Truls Ljungström · Rating 3 out of 5]

dikterna har ofta kraftfulla teman... den som fortfarande känns mest imponerande är skönhetens död i "till en rik flicka". Jag kan inte låta bli att mentalt koppla till Fallström som skriver liknande om vinterns konsekvenser i olika samhällsklasser. Samma tema: naturen och världen är svår och otrevlig, men vi kan ibland tillåta oss glädje. Glömmer vi att detta är ett privilegium, och tar det för given, är världen snar att svara.

[Majestativa]

Intoxicated, a sage
[…]
You seem to hear God’s message
in silence full of lightning.

~

Shudders sting
your so delicate flesh.

[Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Weil but this isnt necessary good.