Simone Weil died 80 years ago today. She was the most beautiful and the truest saint of her century, dying from self-starvation, from horror and heartbreak; horror at the miasma of World War II surrounding her in Europe, heartbreak because the Free French would not let her parachute into France from London to fight the Nazis and those siding with them. This lovely, slender, terribly clumsy, always sick young woman (she died at 34) wanting to parachute into France! while refusing to eat because of all those dying from starvation across the world. . .
She always refused to think in terms of "rights," thinking only of "obligations." And to think of her from where we all now stand is to feel nothing but shame, guilt, and darkness.
The great John Berger reads from her poem "Chance."
