![]() ![]() Job is a kind of proof-text for Weil’s central category of malheur, unhappily translated to English as “affliction.” Affliction is more than suffering: it is the destruction of the soul through the body. In her Notebooks it often appears as the first part of a twofer: “Job. ![]() Job is one of the few parts of the Hebrew scriptures Weil can abide, and it gets top billing in her surveys of works of genius, along with Hesiod’s Prometheus, Racine’s Phèdre, King Lear and the Iliad. ![]() The Book of Job is another common interest. Indeed, evil is perhaps the only way to talk compellingly about good - but it is not a very good one. The true subject matter of the discourse of evil is the good. Weil was not one of the figures I engaged in the manuscript, but the argument had something in common with her often-tortured thought. Imaginary good is boring real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating. Imaginary evil is romantic and varied real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. The manuscript is called “The Problem of Good” and the quotation from Weil goes: An aphorism by Simone Weil sits atop a manuscript I’ve never been able to finish. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |