Recommended

The Intimacy and Resilience of Invisible Friendship: Marie-Magdeleine Davy and Simone Weil

Brenna Moore read

The title comes from chapter 4 of Brenna Moore’s new book, Kindred Spirits: Friendship and Resistance at the Edges of Modern Catholicism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press (2021) pp. 145-171. In it, Moore focuses on the bond between French medievalist Marie Magdeleine Davy (1903-1998) and Simone Weil. Davy and Weil were acquaintances, but after Weil’s death, Davy dedicated significant scholarly attention to Weil’s thought and life. She authored one of the first books on Weil in 1951, lifting her up as a model for a new kind of sanctity in the modern world. In the late 1950s and ’60s, Davy’s projects were animated by what Moore calls an “invisible friendship” with Weil. Spurred on by memories of Weil, in 1962 Davy created an experimental utopian community for international students in rural France, the Maison Simone Weil, in her friend’s honor. As Moore puts it, “Simone Weil, more than anyone else, was Marie-Magdeleine Davy’s invisible friend, her inner guide, and her saint.” The story uncovers one of the many fascinating afterlives of Simone Weil, one that has not yet been told to English-speaking readers.

Simone Weil Timeline

Ronald KL Collins read

Much of the timeline is excerpted from David McLellan’s Utopian Pessimist: The Life and Thought of Simone Weil (New York: Poseidon Press, 1990), pp. 297-300, reprinted and expanded with permission secured on 10-27-20. The McLellan timeline was supplemented by dates and facts contained in, among other places, the chronologies appearing in J.P. Little’s Simone Weil: Waiting on Truth (Oxford: Berg,1988), pp. 157-160, and Robert Coles’ Simone Weil: A Modern Pilgrimage (New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1987), pp. xxi-xxiv. Finally, beyond my own numerous additions, I have added links in various places.

“Simone Weil’s Concept of Decreation”

J.P. Little

in Richard H. Bell, ed., Simone Weil’s Philosophy of Culture: Readings Toward Divine Humanity, New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 25-51