Título: A Life in Letters
Autor: Simone Weil
Sinopse: The inspiring letters of philosopher, mystic, and freedom fighter Simone Weil to her family, presented for the first time in English.
Now in the pantheon of great thinkers, Simone Weil (1909–1943) lived largely in the shadows, searching for her spiritual home while bearing witness to the violence that devastated Europe twice in her brief lifetime. The letters she wrote to her parents and brother from childhood onward chart her intellectual range as well as her itinerancy and ever-shifting preoccupations, revealing the singular personality at the heart of her brilliant essays.
The first complete collection of Weil’s missives to her family, A Life in Letters offers new insight into her personal relationships and experiences. The letters abound with vivid illustrations of a life marked by wisdom as much as seeking. The daughter of a bourgeois Parisian Jewish family, Weil was a troublemaking idealist who preferred the company of miners and Russian exiles to that of her peers. An extraordinary scholar of history and politics, she ultimately found a home in Christian mysticism. Weil paired teaching with poetry and even dabbled in mathematics, as evidenced by her correspondence with her brother, André, who won the Kyoto Prize in 1994 for the famed Weil Conjectures.
A Life in Letters depicts Simone Weil’s thought taking shape amid political turmoil, as she describes her participation in the Spanish struggle against fascism and in the transatlantic resistance to the Nazis. An introduction and notes by Robert Chenavier contextualize the letters historically and intellectually, relating Weil’s letters to her general body of writing. This book is an ideal entryway into Weil’s philosophical insights, one for both neophytes and acolytes to treasure.
Contexto da obra
Como livro em inglês, esta obra costuma ganhar também uma camada própria de interesse editorial e linguístico. “A Life in Letters”, de Simone Weil, publicado pela editora Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press, em 2024 e com 384 páginas, integra a categoria Livros em Inglês. Por isso, o interesse da obra tende a se ampliar quando o leitor considera também a relação com a língua em que ela circula.
Editora: Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press
Páginas: 384
Ano: 2024-08-27
Edição:
Linguagem: en
ISBN: 0674292375
ISBN13: 9780674292376
Sobre a editora
Os livros da editora Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press trazem obras que exploram temas históricos, econômicos e culturais com profundidade analítica e rigor acadêmico. A experiência de leitura costuma envolver narrativas densas, que combinam relatos detalhados com reflexões críticas, muitas vezes abordando conflitos políticos, sociais ou econômicos em contextos amplos, como guerras mundiais, dinâmicas raciais ou transformações financeiras globais. O tom varia entre o didático e o ensaístico, com ritmo que privilegia a clareza e a argumentação fundamentada, sem apelos simplistas. O catálogo revela também uma atenção especial a personagens históricos complexos e a processos de mudança social, com obras que dialogam com públicos interessados em história, política e ciências sociais.
