Comin da, bia pb oka) iat get coin dat ae pena we f TE een dae me deme ne ees vn Gg Teagan seks tise, tpt ne Be « da ‘dome det te as one sla Eas int mane oT Pade TE aw at hperenite tw we endian fe ae ye tes da wa poe He t moun, vane dave te tea wale te wt Tt me Gh tle He Bak Von aged por mein gus So ome Ta tke ba vl Ghobaadlager de x Zt wy ork dara fo mama ye sna THE NOTEBOOKS OF SIMONE WEIL TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY ARTHUR WILLS Volume One G. P, PUTNAM’S SONS NEW YORKPrinted in Great THE NOTEBOOKS . x > > iene are certain things o by themselves, but make us s 3 Of a state of things which, \ makes us suffer, being too abstract by > the digas mabe us ue Bo } Thus the defeat (cf. G soldier in uniform. Thus the identicy card If chere are many such signs Other things are by then suffering in this case, Humilis Others again both by theme! are the most painful. Problem: the defeat, not fle as a pain at certain fal day, beautiful landscap. ments (beauti- ot a cause of suifering ities, maliary arta 1 having’ taken a German soldier has only to appear inthe lndsape and suering is eeate of the link (fom sign to thing signified) between wo ik. And this pain is fle by the ? Acsthetic sensatioa, fetes. . 2 cctng aside entirely only a question of ht simply as 2Reason of value? [Pi dfniton ofp values centred around che His idea of an abs evoked by each fra, be silence—Music st and duration. Why pure sounds? Produced at will. sophy (not co-ordinated with the rest): ds (pure, c universe of sot sent of music. This abs s from silence and goes back to it... creation ‘Mehl: to conceive time itis necessary to conceive creation. That is true, but alo unlimited duration. An opposite of God (or of good— Theaetetus) is required. The analogue of silence for the pl (and the analogue of sound, movemen The arts render sensible ‘Time and Space. Time and Spa Sensible in a certain way. What way? Feeling of realty. Describe the difference between 2 beautiful thing (work of art) c rest, setting aside beauty altogether. One would thus light nething instructive, by physical pain—by symbolism ig up of momen, the flow of dura Breaking up of time, the greatest Beauty is the is possible 0 apply to all men. Otherwise there being . . . The conditions of a full life are equivalent for all men, bbuc under forms which are, of course, different. Beauty—rootedness—pact between oneself and one’s own con- ditions of existence—ciecle of time. ‘Make it so that time isa circle and not a line, Sin: diversion—intoxication—licence. Sin can also show itself in terms of Intoxication: state of suspension (passive) with regard to fatare, undefined desire, Danaids. and woe. (Socrates recognize id even the Stoics [preferabl (cf. page 3) good. Connection between sin and others’ woe. Essential or accidental? Do wrong, suffer wrong, jend who secks to turn all ted, the sub- jective (co-ordinate t acteristics in relation to time). Se ‘and an existence outside ourselves, the 3rd dimension. Respect. aco don’t we k That is to say, pe che other? Don’t they reprodu ‘Ambiguousness ofthe word slave already in che case of the Greeks, A man loses half bi jin resemble woe? sin, but not woe. ‘woe; we don’t aspire to escape from soul che desire for salvation; this would be the j a certain degree of woe is seached, do we aspire to escape from it? Besides, that presupposes an evident, not accidental, link between sin and punishment in woe? Slavery, prison. Tn what case nent death, known as such (risk of death, certain death) sn affliction? ‘Malheur: admirable word, without its equivalent in other lan- guages. We haven't got all we could out of it. Phidre: ambiguousness between woe ani to extricate himself ftom woe? This power can thus be deprived of question can deprive him of killing, __ What power has a is necessarily pl is to know wl‘And over that which tums certain joy? IFT believe that man upon others inconsideratcly. If U believe myself personally things, che former consegu two beliefs Jead to the sa a contr Teisnot in that evil alone is contradictory. Virtue mi logical than sin, nsible things into signs of ¢ at che mercy of circumstances, I act contradictory side, well be, perhaps Even, morcover, if T only consider myself... Stoics and ‘préfé- tables’, With bars they blur the goodly sun, They mar the gracious ri ntradictions are legitimate, and what are not? Quite a ical pains. Some of them make they last: e.g. dentist. Others constitute a conta sheaves fall of thorns in one's ar , from worl There are also two ‘lose’ the world, whi ch the world: Criterion: feeling of reality Two kinds of hunger. Two kinds of obedience. Two kinds of death. Exc. HASDRUBAL Object of art: make space and time sensible to us. usa human space and time, made by man, wh time itself, space ite Verses. They don’t ‘get across the footlights’ unless they can ereate anew sor of ime forthe reader. And ain the ese of music (Valéry), a poem 8 to silence. Geel aioe Etc. Render space and sense, finite. Or group the indefinite around the finite, atue in che surrounding space, Elements of the poct and an end, To what does that correspond? Then the flavour of the words: 4 that each word have a maximum favour. Which implies an accord Bemveen the mcaning we give ic and all is other meanings, en ‘ord or an opposition with the sound of its syllables, accor accord of an opposition wid fies yl mited by a feame: ic is necessary the cord, a certain oppo i.e. having a beginning and an end, amples of perfect po Examples of perfect ps nage of eternity. There ate few of them. and a duration which is an ‘That of Sappho: Nétpor dtdvar* Ad fauce Bde, dena, Otyov* The 2 strophes (or only « oft “Epus dviware pdyav? ‘Love’ of Herbert, Marlowe p Come live with me and be "Shakespeare's ditties: ‘Come away, come away, 1d above all, ‘Take, O take those lips away . . ” In French, nothing, I Nor in German either. Nor in Italian either, as far a8 I know. Valery: ‘. . *... But the opus will ha chance combinations; no doubt chance composition, but particular point in a re-exists chance The notion of work lies at the root of physics and governs it entirely, Why isn’t there a book—a book of physi of philo- sophy—on ‘work in the different branches of physics’? Why not wughter of Ze not with grief and anguis Tame my heart Seppho, Hy Apo. Rend ® Bros unconquerable in ba a Sophocles, Antigone, 78. 5logue of experiment in the periodicals). There are also phe: center: e.g. diffraction—spectn be useful, a he propagation of heat? (purely al represents a certain rel work restored al patt of our pace w: of the world exchanged e and led work, the most elementary, of work. : ‘an mind alway, the soul and the body, but ships. ‘ Twant a match to be here and the piano, I clody, a (my fingers have seruck the keys wi relationship from among these I move it, In front of same time I hear it even knowing it). The second sort of action demands an appre firs Science has only retained the frst. : In all veritable act & mixture of these ewo forms, led operations in and of the world, isn’ that perhaps A peas harmony with the and who thinks of the universe on Chinese thought? Clas science (xh, vu and dhree-quarers of che xrxth econstruction of the world on the model of che action by which I shifta pencil Such a reconstruction h srineh 6 a world man would not live. Moreover, certain categor Te is a need of che mind. The mind conceives etc. finite and infinite, homogeneous Europe, on all planes (theoretical, -quently Europe in cris. People first ofall ruct the world on the model ofthe simple machines (Descartes), Then they limited themselves co observing that in every phenomenon the relationship between the energy intcoduced and the energy restored isthe same asin the case ofa simple machine. Algebraical formula the possibility of reconstruct- ing phenomena wit many ways 2s one ae ved. Hlencey what do algebraical f seructing they don't consti ‘he model of the algebs , they adjast themselves to any reality whatsoover (c.g. matrices). The model of one algebraical formula whose variations would. ould be discovered empirically, by induction it doesn’ supply a direction, Science at present non-orientat ‘it must have ot [PI. "Avuméberost; necessarily a gap between the frst principle and tp and walking i Ie is this nec takes as che object of i always the same c body being matter) obey the idiot. Moreover, in Beauty is absent from the representation of the world supplied by science, and yer the savant seeks it (e.g. analogies). 1 Nonhypothtcal (Plato, Republi). 7In Greece, there was a bot what did that bond co1 between beauty and science; Good and evil. Reality. That which gives more reality to beings and things is good, that which takes ie away from them is evil. ‘The Romans accomplished evil by robbing the Greek towns of their statues, because the towns, the temples and che life of the Greeks had less reality without the statues, and because the statues could not have as much reality in Rome as in Greece, Desperate, humble supplications of the Greeks in order to con= serve a few statues. Supplication: a despe own notion of values pa there is nothing base abot Duty to understand and ‘with one’s own, on the same balance The non-hierarchical represe the hierarchical r che painters. Fras 0. St. Francis, the fisher, the bishop, the gardener exist on precisely the same grounds in space, That is the significance of space in painting (which Giotto more often than not places in the centre, procedute of extraordinary power) has itself just as much existence, and, from yet a third poine of view, more existence. But, from another point of view ... Whence the need for composition on several planes (which is perhaps the key to all the arts). Music. Poetry (meas [In poetry, if verses devoid of feeling have as much existence I-who am the whol ‘As much, "r more, nor less. Mathematics is an art (An¢ no part. Not space—nor composi a different matter even for a work in prose. (2) Mathematical are can only render sensible unity and diversity, the one and the n By: With the Greeks—Pythagoras, Endoxus, and again Archimedes— it must have been something else. Ie conjured up the world. Greek science seems to have been abi -. Pythagoras—Plato—Epinomis ). Archimedes: leve plays Balance of Archimedes (balance rather than lever—cf. Egypt). Equalicy. Number. Generalize r. Notion of equilibrium in foating bodies. Relationship Seafaring p Fluid stone. Equilibrium between Aig rot ost 7 yuilibrium and symmetry. Equ ‘Aiebre rie an error concerning the human pir One is only able to reflect on the particular (Descart the object of rf iy, the universal. We do not know how the Grecks resolved this difficulty. The Moderns have resolved ie by signs repres ich is common to several chings. My solution, ha «analogy. parabola—balance— that one can eliminate chance, appeat—which itself, however, does not exist without this san ares. Superiority of the et recognition of 2 prol which contain the vos" and body. The body necessarily preponderate in the pr but the vois embraces time. So pilot and boat, tead_ of crystallizing in one sign that which is common to render analogy inti culus and resistance of materials—problem of the chord. 2—4—8a—Ve—3) of floating bodies: a fluid mass equilib vided into a by the mind—is: By taking away what is identical from either side, wha is of equal weight. mi Beginning of the great enterprise whicl late the whole universe 0 a combi ne afalerum (Archimedes) cer over the workman: handling of. A problem: a finite number of data a state of abal 2 Giv 9(He had sought for a fluid balance for the tyrants crown). Olba, dyabe Kaddircders, és dv Bosoyrass dIAE ormp The whole of the Republic but how about xaAdv ‘n With regard to ¢ to serve as proof, 1) wudis YP dul... dnoxrevet Br Kadéy naiyabby Bera. there to set forth mornpds div? Ye ra? Ther ssuming che possbilicy of such a choice, at of our life are we able to choose (except in certain ceases a8 far as degrees of prudence are conce: stances and character at a particular mom. g ensures the maximum preservation which the pr life . An existence ly for exc n, sport. Ieis not by chance that doctrines possessing a mystical content are iented toward death. C: ri. T. E. Lawrence, the destiny of the limited beings liation. ‘They have made me see death.” ryr0d méduxas.* But death is also che annihila- tion of the limied beings a Testament. of war—Pina*_Why? the ‘Spanish Test and serenity (12 hous’ respit?). (autobiography: lack of characte). Notes on Koestler’s Sp Un Being bad, 2 Being ‘ine nd good” 4 Thow ar of moral 5 Pina village in Arg