Venice Saved

Simone Weil has long been admired for her reading of The Iliad in which she identified the true hero and subject as force. In Venice Saved, her own attempt at dramaturgy, force once again takes center stage in the form of a conspiracy amongst a band of exiles to topple a city in the service of empire and personal glory. What, if anything, can withstand such force? Beauty? Friendship? Pity? Redemptive suffering? Venice Saved provides new insights to Weil’s moral and political philosophy. -- Lucian Stone, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of North Dakota, USA
This highly readable translation of Simone Weil’s unfinished and only play, Venise Sauvée, highlights universal themes such as violence, power, friendship, beauty, and affliction. But Weil’s tragedy, written at a time when her native France was being overtaken by Hitler’s Germany, is particularly resonant for the 21st century, as we confront new forms of brutality, the politics of fear, and ever-growing social divisiveness. -- A. Rebecca Rozelle-Stone, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of North Dakota, USA
The genealogy of Venice Saved in Weil’s lifework is laid out here with sensitivity and accuracy, exposing her key themes: force, affliction, attention, love, kenosis, void, and the cross. Weil contemplated suffering and redemption at the core of existence, and in Venice Saved she sought to distill their quintessence. -- Lissa McCullough, California State University Dominguez Hills, author of The Religious Philosophy of Simone Weil