Written work
The Iliad, or the Poem of Force
L'Iliade ou le poème de la force
It reads the Iliad as the poem of force, the force that turns a human being into a thing —a corpse or a slave— and that intoxicates those who wield it as surely as it destroys those who suffer it. Homer, unlike almost all later literature, takes no side: he shows the affliction of victors and vanquished with the same just bitterness. Written as France was falling, it is one of the century's great essays on war.
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Authorship note
Written in 1939–1940 and published in her lifetime, under the anagram Émile Novis, in Cahiers du Sud (December 1940 – January 1941). Collected in La Source grecque (1953).
Editions and translations
Editions in your language first, without hiding the others. Each with its cover and its store.
English
War and the Iliad
New York Review Books, 2005
Translation: Mary McCarthy
ISBN 9781590171455
Con el ensayo de Rachel Bespaloff.
The Iliad or the Poem of Force
Pendle Hill Publications, 1985
Translation: Mary McCarthy
ISBN 9780875740911
Français
L'Iliade ou le poème de la force
Rivages (Petite Bibliothèque), 2021
ISBN 9782743653217
Español
La Ilíada o el poema de la fuerza
Trotta, 2023
ISBN 9788413641065
Other works by Simone Weil
- Gravity and Grace · 1947
- The Need for Roots · 1949
- Waiting for God · 1950
- Notebooks · 1951
- First and Last Notebooks (Supernatural Knowledge) · 1950
- Reflections concerning the Causes of Liberty and Social Oppression · 1934
- Oppression and Liberty · 1955
- The Worker's Condition (La Condition ouvrière) · 1951
- Factory Journal · 1935
- The Greek Source · 1953
- Intimations of Christianity among the Ancient Greeks · 1951
- Letter to a Priest · 1951
- London Writings and Last Letters · 1957
- Human Personality (The Person and the Sacred) · 1943
- On the Abolition of All Political Parties · 1943
- Draft for a Statement of Human Obligations · 1943
- Project for a Formation of Front-Line Nurses · 1940
- Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God · 1942
- The Love of God and Affliction · 1942
- Forms of the Implicit Love of God · 1942
- Spiritual Autobiography · 1942
- Unordered Thoughts on the Love of God · 1962
- Lectures on Philosophy · 1959
- Science and Perception in Descartes · 1930
- On Science · 1966
- Historical and Political Writings · 1960
- Letter to Georges Bernanos · 1938
- Let Us Not Start the Trojan War Again · 1937
- Venice Saved · 1955
- Poems · 1968
- Correspondence · 1982
- Complete Works · 1988
Sources
- Weil, Simone [Émile Novis]. «L'Iliade ou le poème de la force». Cahiers du Sud, n.º 230–231, diciembre de 1940 – enero de 1941; recogido en La Source grecque, Gallimard, 1953. Texto en Wikisource.
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