Editing Simone Weil (section)

=== ''The Iliad, or The Poem of Force'' ===
{{main|The Iliad or the Poem of Force}}

Weil wrote ''The Iliad, or The Poem of Force'' ({{langx|fr|L'Iliade ou le poème de la force}}), a 24-page essay, in 1939 in Marseilles.<ref name = "NYB">{{cite web|url= http://www.nybooks.com/books/imprints/classics/war-and-the-iliad/|title= War and the Iliad|publisher=The New York Review of books |access-date=29 September 2009}}</ref><ref name = "SWanth">{{cite book | last = Weil| first = Simone| title = An Anthology| year = 2005 | pages = 182, 215| isbn = 0-14-118819-7|publisher = Penguin Books}}</ref>{{r|Zaretsky|p=28}} First published in 1940 in ''[[Les Cahiers du Sud]]'', the only significant literary magazine available in the [[Zone libre|French free zone]].<ref name="SWanth" /> It is still commonly used in university courses on the [[Classics]].<ref name = "Christological ">{{cite book
  | last = Meaney
  | first = Marie 
  | title = Simone Weil's Apologetic Use of Literature: Her Christological Interpretation of Ancient Greek Texts
  | year = 2007
  | pages = 3
  | isbn = 978-0-19-921245-3 
  |publisher = Clarendon Press}}</ref>

The essay focuses on the theme that Weil calls 'Force' in the ''[[Iliad]]'', which she defines as "that ''x'' which turns anyone subjected to it into a ''thing''."<ref name="Iliad Chicago">{{cite journal|last=Weil| first=Simone| year=1965| title=The ''Iliad'', or ''The Poem of Force''| journal=Chicago Review| volume=18| number=2| pages=5–30| doi=10.2307/25294008| jstor=25294008| translator=Mary McCarthy| url=http://biblio3.url.edu.gt/SinParedes/08/Weil-Poem-LM.pdf| access-date=10 April 2023}}</ref> In the opening sentences of the essay, she sets out her view of the role of Force in the poem:

<blockquote>
The true hero, the true subject, the centre of the ''Iliad'', is force. Force employed by man, force that enslaves man, force before which man's flesh shrinks away. In this work, at all times, the human spirit is shown as modified by its relations with force, as swept away, blinded, by the very force it imagined it could handle, as deformed by the weight of the force it submits to.{{R|Iliad Chicago|p=5}}
</blockquote>

''[[The New York Review of Books]]'' has described the essay as one of Weil's most celebrated works,<ref name = "SWanth"/> while it has also been described as among "the twentieth century's most beloved, tortured, and profound responses to the world's greatest and most disturbing poem."<ref>{{cite web
|url= https://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200511u/books2005/6
|title= Books in Brief
|publisher= The Atlantic Monthly
|access-date= 29 September 2009
|archive-date= 15 May 2008
|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080515211413/http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200511u/books2005/6
|url-status= dead
}}</ref>

Simone Pétrement, a friend of Weil's, wrote that the essay portrayed the ''Iliad'' as an accurate and compassionate depiction of how both victors and victims are harmed by the use of force.<ref name="Petrement">{{cite book
  | last = Pétrement
  | first = Simone
  | title = Simone Weil: A Life
  | orig-year = 1976 |year=1988 |edition=English |translator-first=Raymond |translator-last=Rosenthal
  | pages = 361–363
  | isbn = 0-8052-0862-3
  |publisher = Random House}}</ref>

The essay contains several extracts from the epic which Weil translated herself from the original Greek; Pétrement records how Weil took over half an hour per line.<ref name="Petrement"/>