![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() On the other hand, the epithet of “madness” has constantly trailed her, mostly coming from those who could not fathom her, including Charles de Gaulle, who came to know of her through the papers on resistance that she wrote in London in the last year of her life.Īnd yet it is central to Weil’s unique form of genius that she knew how to identify the threat of incipient madness for the citizens of a world turning insane. “Joy” is perhaps not a word most readily associated with Weil. “For some years,” she wrote to the young medical student Jean Posternak on her return to Paris in 1938, “I have held the theory that joy is an indispensable ingredient in human life, for the health of the mind.” Absence of joy, she suggested, is the “equivalent of madness.” Shortly before her trip, which began at Lake Maggiore and took in the cultural treasures of Milan, Florence, and Rome, she had been admitted to the hospital for headaches that sometimes struck with such intensity that she wanted to die. The French philosopher Simone Weil’s two visits to Italy in 19 were among the happiest experiences of her life. ![]()
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