August 23, 2002, will be the fifty-ninth anniversary of the death of Simone Weil, a French Jew revered by many Christians as an uncanonized saint. Exegetes of diverse faiths (and none) have written at length about her mystical meditations. André Gide declared her “the most spiritual writer of this [twentieth] century.” Albert Camus called her “the only great spirit of our time.”

While she lived she published very little: a few articles on political and social questions mostly in trade union papers; a few essays on literary themes, including one on The Iliad in the Marseilles journal Cahiers du Sud in the winter of 1940–41. The bulk of her work, the religious writing, was left in the form of manuscripts, notes on a theme—often in the form of aperçu rather than argument—and letters. The theologian Gustave Thibon collected and published some of these after the Second World War, thus bringing her to the notice of intellectuals throughout the European world and launching her international reputation. Numerous collections are now available, in many languages, and volumes on her life and work proliferate. First they trickled and then they poured from the university presses of Europe and America. The Reader’s Catalog from The New York Review of Bookscurrently lists eighty-nine titles under “Simone Weil.” Amazon.com has forty-three books for sale, by her or about her, published since 1987, of which about one-third have appeared in the last year or are about to