SIMONE WEIL'S CAHIERS IN BRAZIL:

A PRESENCE YET TO COME

Abstract

Philosopher, mystical, militant, poet, playwright, translator, professor, workwoman, rural worker — Simone Weil (1909-1943) is irreducible to her oeuvre “contents”. We may also consider certain irreducibility in its form: in equilibrium by a quasi-holy trinity (philosophy – thought –, writing – creation – and life – experience), Weil dedicates herself (in everything but in her articles published in academic and labor union journals) to a cumulative, discontinuous, and intendedly unfinished writing. Her Cahiers, microcosm of a constellated oeuvre, are a privileged example of this double irreducibility: aphorism drafts, ideas for chapters to come, outlined poems, passages of commented translation, “essays attempts” that cross pre-Socratic philosophy, the Upanixades, Christian mystique, Buddhist lessons, French poetry, science theories and also, to some extent, certain writing about herself. During the 1950s and the 1960s, authors such as Camus, Bataille, T.S. Eliot, Susan Sontag and Ingeborg Bachmann focus on her posthumous works; from the 2000s, with the publishing of her Oeuvres complètes, Alfonso Berardinelli, Agamben and numerous researchers from Spain, Italy,

the US and from France itself return to Weil’s writings. Among us, Weil’s presence is relatively sparse. Despite the academic attention from the 1990s and the admiration by renowned promoters (such as José Paulo Paes), Weil scarcely circulate on Brazilian translations, and ends up confined in some sporadic and more “finished” works. In this context, we intend to continue our reflections about the edition-translation of so-called “unfinished” works.