A Christian Mystic Reads Homer: Simone Weil on ‘The Iliad’

In this First Friday Lecture, we discussed how when Hitler menaced France in the autumn of 1939 Simone Weil (1909-1943) penned one of the century’s most powerful readings of Western literature’s first epic poem. The Iliad or the Poem of Force constitutes a terse and urgent meditation on violence and existential vulnerability in a time of crisis. This lecture, led by a Basic Program Instructor Simon Friedland, will trace out Weil’s understanding of force as the epic’s true protagonist and the surprising connection she draws between The Iliad and the Gospels