Attention

Many terms have been used to describe Simone Weil—philosopher, activist, teacher, spiritual leader, Jew, Christian, mystic, prophet—yet in each instance the name circumscribes as much as it reveals the essence of her existence.

Weil (pronounced veigh) was born in Paris in February,1909. Her father was a successful doctor; her mother, cultured and ambitious, was from a family of wealthy merchants. Her parents were Jewish but, in the manner of progressives throughout Europe, strictly secular. Their faith was not in God but in education. Simone and her older brother André were raised in a home without toys or other distractions. Intellectual pursuits were the chief form of pleasure. André, who grew up to become one of Europe's most brilliant mathematicians, was doing advanced geometry at the age of nine. Simone could read Greek at twelve, and taught herself Sanskrit a few years later. Both siblings were prodigies in school, but her older brother's obvious genius instilled feelings of inferiority in Simone which she carried all her life.

She was, to say the least, a sensitive child, yet her sensitivity was not that of a spoiled schoolgirl but of a compassionate conscience. In 1919, though just ten years old, she was appalled by the punitive humiliation the Treaty of Versailles inflicted on Germany at the end of World War I—a prescient objection, since the humiliating conditions gave rise to Hitler a decade later. That same year, she turned up missing in the house and was found on the boulevard marching in a labor demonstration and singing the Internationale.

Acute awareness of suffering and injustice were a defining element of her life. Though highly educated—she finished first in the entrance exams for France's highest grande ecolé—she worked in factories, vineyards, and on farms to share with workers the hardship of manual labor. Throughout her life, she gave most of her earnings to humanitarian causes and the poor. She fought on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War, but was so inept in the setting she ended up burning herself with hot cooking oil and being evacuated to a field hospital. It was one of many instances of excruciating pain and bad health she endured, including lifelong eating disorders and migraine headaches.

Through frail health and the upheavals of social activism, Simone continued to develop her personal philosophy of compassion and unfailing devotion to truth. She filled a great many notebooks with her thought, nearly all published after her death. She quickly moved away from the agnosticism of her parents toward a relationship with God that was radically spiritual and highly personal. "We do not pledge ourselves to love God," she wrote, "we give our consent to the engagement which has been formed within us in spite of ourselves."

The nature of this engagement, its meaning and practice, Weil described as attention. Attention, whole-hearted, selfless commitment to an external reality, be it picking grapes or studying Plato or alleviating suffering, was to Simone a form of prayer. Indeed, to her it amounted to our principle form of communion with God and humanity:

Twenty minutes of concentrated, untired attention is infinitely better than three hours of the kind of frowning application that leads us to say with a sense of duty done: "I have worked well!" . . . But in spite of all appearances, it is also far more difficult. Something in our soul has a far more violent repugnance for true attention than the flesh has for bodily fatigue. . . .


Not only does the love of God have attention for its substance; the love of our neighbor, which we know to be the same love, is made of this same substance. Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention. The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle, it is a miracle. . . . The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him: "What are you going through?"

It was this profound ethical stance that first drew Julia Haslett to Simone Weil. "Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity," Weil wrote. Inspired, and to some extent goaded, by the quotation's insistence, Haslett embarked on a six-year journey investigating the author of the idea and how one might apply it amid the myriad and endless sufferings of the 21st-century. The result is Haslett's extraordinary new film, An Encounter with Simone Weil, which is part bio-pic and part personal essay on the meaning of compassion, activism, care, and attention. Haslett's film engages courageously with the densities of existence, its quandaries, suffering, lack of clear solutions. It confronts what Weil called "the sacramental concept of the good," exploring questions of "moral and spiritual responsibility."

An Encounter with Simone Weil achieves this without a moment's preaching or evangelizing, through the sustained act of attending. Like Weil herself, Haslett's central motive is a quest for synthesis of the personal and eternal. The film suggests a more vital description of its subject and heroine. Weil, beyond the inventory of descriptions at the top of the post, was above all a spirit on fire. She died in exile in England at the end of World War II, just thirty-four years old. Her soul continues to cast light.





 

Film Screening: An Encounter with Simone Weil

The following is a press release for the Center's upcoming screening of Julia Haslett's exquisite documentary An Encounter with Simone Weil. For more about Simone Weil and Julia Haslett, see my post here.

Quest for a compassionate life is subject of film to be screened
at Opalka Gallery October 16

Dialogue with director Julia Haslett follows exclusive presentation of her 

acclaimed documentary An Encounter with Simone Weil

Acclaimed director Julia Haslett will lead a discussion following the screening of her new documentary An Encounter with Simone Weil on Sunday, October 16 at 4 p.m. at the Opalka Gallery at the Sage College of Albany. The exclusive Capital Region screening and discussion is organized by the Center for Documentary Arts at The Sage Colleges and the Opalka Gallery. The event is opened to the public.

An Encounter with Simone Weil is a moving portrait of French philosopher, educator, and activist Simone Weil (1909-1943), who spent most of her too-short life advocating for the socially and politically disadvantaged. Using Weil’s writings and teachings, Haslett tells the dramatic story of an extraordinary young woman whose decision to act on her convictions led her into hardship and spiritual revelation. In her quest to understand Weil (pronounced “veigh”), filmmaker Julia Haslett confronts profound personal questions about her own moral responsibility toward society at large and her family.

Haslett begins with Weil’s belief that, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” With this quotation as the film’s moral center, Weil’s extraordinary biography is revealed through archival film shot during her lifetime, previously unseen family photos, and modern footage of places she lived and worked, as well as interviews with key people connected to Weil. Haslett then uses Weil’s experience as a framework for her own life, including intimate vérité footage of the filmmaker’s family and personal hardships. Drawing on current news and observational footage, Haslett’s narration draws provocative comparisons between Weil’s insight and the world today. The result: a deeply moving and unique film that questions what it means to bear witness to suffering, and plumbs the quest to live a compassionate life.

Filmmaker Michael Moore chose An Encounter with Simone Weil for a Special Founders Prize at the 2011 Traverse City Film Festival. The documentary was also an official selection at the prestigious Full Frame Documentary Festival earlier this year.

In her brief life, Simone Weil (1909-1943) fought in the Spanish Civil War, worked as a machine operator and farm laborer, debated Trotsky, and was part of the French Resistance. The daughter of affluent Jewish parents, she spent her life advocating for the poor and disenfranchised in France and for colonized people around the world, bravely organizing and writing on their behalf. A consummate outsider, who distrusted ideologies of any kind, Weil left behind a body of work that fills fifteen volumes and established her as a brilliant political, social, and spiritual thinker.

In her writings, she analyzed power and its dehumanizing effects, outlined a doctrine of empathy for human suffering, and critiqued Stalinism long before most of the French left-wing. She believed intellectual work should be combined with physical work, and that theories should evolve from close observation and direct experience. And, after three Christian mystical experiences, she began grappling with religious faith, its role in human history, and the shortcomings of organized religion. Her ideas have influenced countless people, including Susan Sontag, Graham Greene, and T.S. Eliot. The New York Times described her as “one of the most brilliant and original minds of twentieth-century France.” But by far her biggest advocate was the existentialist philosopher Albert Camus, who played a major role in getting her work published after her death.

“I made this film for personal and political reasons,” says director Haslett. “The questions it poses are fundamental and the stakes it raises are quite literally life or death. The film can take a while to sink in, but my idealistic hope is that once it does, it will bring a little more compassion into the world.”

Haslett will discuss the making of the film, and answer audience questions, immediately following the screening. The one-time-only showing will be in the theater of the Opalka Gallery on the campus of the Sage College of Albany, 140 New Scotland Road. Parking is free on campus. Admission is $5, free for Sage students with a valid ID.


The screening and discussion are a presentation of the Opalka Gallery and the Center for Documentary Arts, as part of the 2011 MoHu Festival of Arts. The event inaugurates the Center’s ongoing series of film screenings, readings, and artist appearances featuring narratives of hope, dignity, and compassion that can transform individual lives and impact collective experience.

“I am extremely pleased to host Julia Haslett,” said Timothy Cahill, director of the Center for Documentary Arts. “Simone Weil, and Julia’s film about her, embody the values of ethical engagement and artistic excellence the Center for Documentary Arts stands for.”

The Center for Documentary Arts, hosted by The Sage Colleges, is a not-for-profit cultural organization founded in 2009 to raise humanitarian awareness and foster compassion. Last year, the Center mounted the photography exhibit Battlesight: Dispatches from Iraq and Afghanistan by International Photographers at the Arts Center of the Capital Region.