Research Catalog

The Beauty that saves : essays on aesthetics and language in Simone Weil

Title: The Beauty that saves : essays on aesthetics and language in Simone Weil / John M. Dunaway and Eric O. Springsted, editors ; [with a foreword by Vladimir Volkoff].
Publication: Macon, Ga. : Mercer University Press, 1996.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Request in advance	B2430.W474 B43 1996	Off-site

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Description

xvi, 229 pages; 24 cm

Summary

The Beauty That Saves, a collection of essays by many of the most prominent American and European scholars on Weil, begins with a foreword by well-known writer Vladimir Volkoff who discusses, in a very moving manner, "What Simone Weil Means to Me." An introductory essay by Eric O. Springsted highlights the general character of Weil's thought and introduces the specific problematic of this collection.
The first section addresses the subject of Weil on language. A key to understanding Weil's aesthetic is grasping how she understood language and its various usages. From within that understanding is contained a point d'appui of her philosophical thought as a whole. Her universe of meaning, its hierarchies, its subjection to necessity, its mystical intimacies, is not something she simply wrote about, it is contained in the way she wrote.
With Weil's language established, the second section deals with Weil's explicit reflections on aesthetics, including essays on her sacramental imagery, morality and literature, music, and her classical reading of tragedy. As these essays point out, her aesthetic demands a moral and religious reading of the universe.
The third section presents a number of specific Weilan readings of art, where what has been discussed in previous essays receives concrete application and illustration through essays on Weil and Wallace Stevens, music, and Georges Bernanos.

Subjects

Bibliography (note)

Contents

Foreword / Vladimir Volkoff -- Introduction / Eric O. Springsted -- 1. Contradiction, Mystery and the Use of Words in Simone Weil / Eric O. Springsted -- 2. The Language of the Marketplace and the Language of the Nuptial Chamber: The Theological Significance of a Distinction in the Philosophy of Language / Heinz Robert Schlette -- 3. Simone Weil and the Limits of Language / J. P. Little -- 4. The Nature of Narrative in Simone Weil's Vision of History: The Need for New Historical Roots / Christine Ann Evans -- 5. Tresor eparpille: The Treasure of Scattered Texts in Works by Rene Char and Simone Weil / Joan Dargan -- 6. Sacramental Tension: Divine Transcendence and Finite Images in Simone Weil's Literary Imagination / Thomas Werge -- 7. Simone Weil on Morality and Literature / John M. Dunaway -- 8. The Tragic Poetics of Simone Weil / Katherine T. Brueck -- 9. Simone Weil and Music / Michel Sourisse --
10. Simone Weil and Wallace Stevens: The Notion of Decreation as Subtext in "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven" / James R. Lindroth -- 11. The Character of Don Giovanni in Mozart's Opera / Diogenes Allen -- 12. The Love of God and Man's Suffering: Simone Weil and Georges Bernanos / William S. Bush -- 13. Simone Weil and Shakespeare's Fools / Martin Andic.

ISBN

0865545006

LCCN

96012021

OCLC

ocm34410578

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries