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

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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 Weils quest for beauty and truth.

Author Bio

Simone Weil was a philosopher, a mystic, and an activist. Silvia Caprioglio Panizza is Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at the Centre for Ethics, University of Pardubice, Czech Republic, and is a member of PEriTiA, Centre for Ethics in Public Life, University College Dublin, Ireland. With Philip Wilson, she translated and edited Simone Weils verse tragedy Venice Saved (Bloomsbury, 2019). Philip Wilson teaches philosophy of religion, philosophy of literature and translation studies at the University of East Anglia, UK. With Silvia Caprioglio Panizza, he translated and edited Simone Weils verse tragedy Venice Saved (Bloomsbury, 2019).