to be confronted with things
Departure looms. Returning everything to the library, including Simone Weil her Notebooks, that I’ve had out for a year or so. Regretted removing my post-its, but suppose I'’ll turn to these anew, soon enough, and that it’s better thus.
Something similar happened a year or two ago, when I returned a couple of volumes of the translations of Valéry’s Notebooks/Cahiers that I'’d had for a while. In that instance, I xeroxed the bookmarked pages before pulling the post-its. (Weil ruminated a lot on Valéry, by the way.)
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To be confronted by with things is a liberation of the mind.
Simone Weil (1909-1943), First and last notebooks. translated by Richard Rees. 1970 : 40
(To be confronted by people was another matter entirely.)
Also, in two volumes, The notebooks of Simone Weil (Arthur Wills, trans., 1956). Much, much better than the Gravity and Grace selection. Happy to see that Routledge has reissued the Notebooks in one volume; hope the same is done for the First and Last Notebooks.
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notations on the post-its (in no particular order) —
water. image of plant. attentiveness
water metals
mud
idea of necessity has been lost
machine
humility attention
connects with necessity, objects p7 26 40
Leopardi 1655 doubt and truth
...and that not only does doubt serve to uncover the truth (according to Descartes’s principles...) but that truth essentially consists in doubt, and whoever doubts knows, and knows as much as one can know. (8 Sept. 1821).
Giacomo Leopardi. Zibaldone : The Notebooks of (2013)
*
blind man’s stick
order of words. but in poetry?
things — to be confronted by with things is a liberation of the mind.
beauty — presents us with something to be understood
beauty blank wall / opposite page “that is why miracles are needed”
pictures passage to silence
tags:
departure; detachment; post-its; things
Paul Valéry; Giacomo Leopardi; Simone Weil