DOI 10.

1007/s12138-009-0117-3

Marie Cabaud Meaney, Simone Weil’s Apologetic Use of Literature: Her Christo-
logical Interpretations of Ancient Greek Texts, ser. Oxford Modern Languages and
Literature Monographs (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,
2007), XVII + 245 pp.

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Of Simone Weil’s essays on ancient Greek texts, “The Iliad or the Poem of
Force” (“L’Iliade ou le poème de la force”) is justifiably the best known and
most influential among classicists and the general public alike. But in the
course of a tragically short life—she died at the age of thirty-four while work-
ing for the French Resistance—Weil wrote on other Greek texts as well, prin-
cipally Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound and Sophocles’ Electra and Antigone.
Meaney argues that all of these writings exemplify a single overarching pur-
pose: to re-baptize European civilization, ravaged as it was by the evil of Fas-
cism, in the Christian spirit, a spirit whose earliest expression Weil finds in
the Greek classics. According to Meaney, Weil employs a “mystical hermeneu-
tics” (101) that identifies Christian themes and motifs—the need for mercy,
the suffering of the Passion, and the mystery of redemption—in pre-Christian
literature.
Meaney finds antecedents for Weil’s hermeneutic method in the writings
of certain Church Fathers who find aspects of Christian thought foreshad-
owed in pagan Greek texts—an apologetic practice known as praeparatio evan-
gelica (named after Eusebius’ fourth-century text). But Weil disagrees with the
assertion, made by Eusebius and other Christian apologists, that the pagan
Greeks derived their pre-Christian intuitions from the ancient Hebrews, citing
other ancient sources—notably Egyptian—instead (44-49).
Meaney’s book represents an important contribution to our study of the
reception of classical texts. In collecting and analyzing Weil’s scattered and
often fragmentary writings on Greek literature for the first time, Meaney pro-
vides a valuable service for scholars and students of the classics, French liter-
ature, and comparative and religious studies. Her first three chapters set forth
Weil’s “apologetic” aim in interpreting the Greek classics; four subsequent
chapters discuss Weil’s interpretations of Sophocles’ Antigone, Homer’s Iliad,
Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound, and Sophocles’ Electra. An appendix compiles
references to ancient Greek texts found in Weil’s collected works. Quotations
International Journal of the Classical Tradition, Vol. 16, No. 2, June 2009, pp. 302-305.
Book Reviews 303

from these works appear in the original French and in English translation;
only select words and phrases from the Greek texts are supplied (classicists
would have liked to see at least those passages that Weil treats in depth, like
the recognition scene in Sophocles’ Electra, quoted in Greek).
Meaney offers a sympathetic but not uncritical reading of Weil. She ac-
knowledges that Weil distorts, overinterprets, and even mistranslates the an-
cient Greek texts, but argues that she does so in the service of her Christian
apologetics. Attempting to take Weil on her own terms, Meaney finds her to
be a “strong reader” whose very distortions can be provocative and cast fresh
light on canonical Greek texts (28). For example, Weil “point[s] to the reflec-
tions of the supernatural as present in the heroic courage of Antigone, . . . in
the redemptive Passion of Prometheus, and in the mystical hope of Electra”
(212).
The book’s balanced approach allows us to evaluate Weil’s contribution
to the secondary literature on the classics and place it in the overall context of
her life, work, and times. She amassed an impressive body of work as a reli-
gious and philosophical thinker, literary critic, creative writer, and political
activist. Meaney’s book enriches our understanding of the genesis of Weil’s
thought, interweaving accounts of her intellectual development, political en-
gagement, and spiritual life in an engaging narrative.
The first few pages of Meaney’s book perhaps reveal an apologetic
intention of her own: she would like not only Weil’s essay on the Iliad but also
her other major writings on the Greek classics to be recognized as important
contributions to the field. Meaney’s apologetic program does not cause her to
ignore the limitations of Weil’s, however. For example, she argues that Weil’s
praise for Antigone’s purity and innocence fails to take her temper and cru-
elty to her sister into account. In focusing on the pathos of Antigone’s tragedy,
Weil overlooks the pathos of Creon’s demise. The dichotomy drawn by Weil
(and by Hegel before her) between Antigone’s single-minded devotion to the
gods and Creon’s to the state overlooks the difficulty of his position and the
complexity of his character. As Meaney points out, Creon is attempting not
only to hold together a polis devastated by Oedipus’ downfall but also to pro-
tect the gods of the city (89).
But Meaney occasionally misses opportunities to critique the sweeping
nature of Weil’s anachronistic interpretations. Weil’s mistranslation of “God”
for “gods” in Antigone’s pivotal defense of “the unwritten laws of the gods”
(85) evinces her conviction that Greek literature and culture contain “[i]nti-
mations of Christianity” (to borrow a phrase from one of her book titles).1 Ig-
noring the gulf between Greek polytheism and Christian monotheism, Weil
projects a Judeo-Christian sense of morality and divinity onto pagan texts.
Weil reveals a similar reductive tendency in her famous essay on the Iliad.
On her reading, Homer’s epic, far from extolling martial glory, illustrates the
tragic cost of war and of the warriors’ arrogance. Although Weil considers the
world of the poem to be devoid of the possibility of divine redemption, she
finds in such scenes as Achilles’ climactic meeting with Priam the archetypal
expression of the Christian moral “not to hate the enemy nor to scorn the un-

1. Intimations of Christianity among the Ancient Greeks (London: Routledge, 1998).

304 International Journal of the Classical Tradition / June 2009

fortunate.”2 But, as Meaney acknowledges, Homer treats martial glory much

more positively than Weil implies. After all, it is only by fighting in the front
lines that the Iliadic hero attains godlike status during his lifetime and im-
mortal glory if he dies bravely in battle.
Although Meaney overstates the case in claiming that Weil’s essay “gives
the key to the whole” of the Iliad (129), she highlights well the poignancy of
its portrayal of the dehumanizing impact of war. Weil’s essay is the most in-
fluential of her critical writings on ancient Greek literature for two interre-
lated reasons, I would argue: it is not only the most grounded in the Greek text
but also the least overtly “Christological.”
Indeed, the ending of Weil’s essay, in which she draws explicitly Chris-
tian morals from Homer, reveals the limitations of her wider apologetic pro-
ject. Her determination to trace the Gospels’ spirit of compassion directly back
to the Iliad blinds her to the empathy expressed for the suffering of the “Other”
in both Hebrew and Roman literature. She ignores entirely the contribution
made by the Hebrew Prophets, with their emphasis on social justice, to the
message of the Gospels; her dismissal of the Aeneid as a work “marred by
frigidity, ostentation, and poor taste” (Holoka, 66) likewise overlooks the
expressions of compassion that pervade Virgil’s poem. Weil’s writings are
themselves marred by her tendency to let preconceived ideas dictate her in-
terpretations of both entire literary traditions and individual texts.
Although Meaney does voice appropriate skepticism about this tendency,
she could do more to point out the deficiencies of Weil’s methodology and its
underlying critical assumptions. Chief among these is the fact that Weil claims,
explicitly or implicitly, to be an objective interpreter of these canonical texts,
an interpreter who has privileged access to their transcendent meaning. Her
vague concepts of “reading” (lecture, 193), “non-reading” (non-lecture, 103),
and “a unity in the reading” (une unité de lecture, 125) fail to provide a theo-
retical framework that would support the tendentious arguments she makes.
That the conclusions Weil reaches often seem predetermined and subjective
subverts her claim to be letting the texts speak for themselves.
In a forceful conclusion, Meaney argues that the ulterior motive of Weil’s
critical writings is “to lead her readers via the classics toward Christianity,”
and that in attempting to do so she becomes an “apologist of the supernatu-
ral” (212). Meaney’s judgment strikes a resonant chord: by revealing the eso-
teric meaning of Greek poetry, Weil hopes to lead readers to experience a
mystic revelation such as she herself experienced when reading a poem by
George Herbert.
This conclusion highlights an unresolved tension in Weil’s apologetic pro-
gram. On the one hand, her interpretations of the Greek classics specifically
privilege Christian theology and ethics; but, on the other hand, her statement
that other religions may also truly embody the spirit of the divine (37) di-
minishes the force of her Christological interpretations. For instance, Weil
reads the recognition scene between Orestes and Electra in Sophocles’ play as
an allegory of Christ’s union with the soul of the believer (194-95). But even
if one accepts her far-fetched interpretation of the scene as portraying a form

2 J. P. Holoka, ed. and trans., Simone Weil’s The Iliad or the Poem of Force (New York:
Peter Lang, 2003), p. 69.
Book Reviews 305

of divine communion, what evidence is there for identifying this communion

as specifically Christian? The “Christian” morals that Weil finds expressed in
Homer’s epic might likewise be drawn from the ethical teachings of many
other world religions (and even of secular humanism). Yet Weil’s provocative
reading of the Iliad as an anti-war poem speaks to our own historical moment
as eloquently as it did to her own, as Meaney’s chapter on the essay makes
clear.
Although Meaney may not convince classicists to include Weil’s other
major writings on Greek literature on their recommended reading lists, she
provides a crucial insight into the goals Weil wanted these writings to ac-
complish. In interpreting the Greek classics, canonical texts that serve as the
life-affirming roots of a now-decadent European civilization, Weil aimed not
only to revitalize that civilization but also to initiate readers into their own in-
effable experience of the divine.

Gary S. Meltzer
Villanova University
Department of Classical Studies