Simone Weil: the Martian

Simone Weil was a 20th century French philosopher and mystic who died at age 34, in 1943, of tuberculosis. Her father was a doctor, her mother an heiress to a business fortune. Both parents overindulged their precocious child. She loved to learn and could speak ancient Greek, delighted in the study of mathematics and physics, memorized long prose passages, and taught herself Sanskrit after reading the Bhagavad Gita. But her parents were somewhat neurotic and passed on to her unhelpful habits and fears regarding health and diet. This upbringing made her transition into adulthood awkward and paved the way for clumsy social interactions. When Simone studied for what would be comparable to a master’s degree in philosophy, one of her classmates, upon getting to know her, called her “the Martian.” She graduated first in her class but was ignored by her peers.

As a young adult, despite her privileged upbringing, she was an advocate for the working class and expounded on syndicalism – the movement for transferring ownership of the factories to the workers. She had the courage of her principles, making the unusual decision to work as a drill press operator, a meat packer, and then as a machinist. That year permanently compromised her health. After her health had improved somewhat, Simone made the bold but imprudent decision to enlist in a radical brigade in the Spanish Civil War. Again her health faltered, and her parents brought her back home to France. It was during this “radical” period of her life that something happened, which she would never have anticipated given her background.

Brought up without any religious instruction, she unpredictably encountered God in three mystical experiences that changed the direction of her life. The three mystical contacts occurred in a Portuguese fishing village, in Assisi, Italy, and in a Benedictine abbey in Solesmes, France. These experiences were a revelation; she had never believed a personal encounter with God was even possible. Through them, she converted to Catholicism. She was never baptized, however. She believed with confidence that her particular vocation from God was to witness to the Church as an outsider – “at the gate,” as it were – for all those, she said, who were estranged or had lost their way.

After her mystical experiences at age 26, she continued to write. One area of focus in her writings was the idea of attentiveness, a receptive waiting. She wrote: “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Attention or attentiveness was, Weil believed, the beginning of any thoughtful human engagement or interaction. She thought attentiveness countered the human default setting – selfishness and self-regard. Attentiveness was essential in order to help the suffering “other.”

She would have been dismayed by the current Western fixation on digital technology: iPad, iPhone, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and Netflix. Her writings strongly suggest that she would say the heavy use of these technologies ensures that people don’t pay the slightest attention to the other, even to one’s neighbor, but instead looked constantly at glowing screens. People, she would lament, are focused on reading text messages, listening to iTunes, scrolling down their newsfeeds, taking a selfie for Snapchat or streaming a movie. Technology holds people in its sway. It is so much easier to avert one’s gaze than to engage face-to-face.

Simone Weil never meant for her writing to be published. But her few friends, including Gustave Thibon, a Catholic theologian and philosopher, and a Dominican priest and her spiritual director, Father Jean-Marie Perrin, realized the depth, beauty, and perceptivity of her writing – essays, journals, letters. They had some of her papers published posthumously in a book titled Gravity and Grace. Other anthologies followed, including Waiting for God. Her books have been translated into several languages.

Thousands of readers have treasured her incredible spiritual insights. She wrote with clarity and conviction on various topics such as God, man, suffering, sin, the Church, materialism, grace, prayer, her role as an outsider, alienation, love, and attentiveness. Through her writing, she influenced people ranging from agnostics to the devout. Albert Camus, T. S. Eliot, Thomas Merton, and Pope Paul VI – to name but a few – considered her spiritual writings luminous and persuasive.  

Sometimes God calls the outsider, the accidental mystic, the socially awkward, the clown, or the “Martian.” Was Simone Weil a saint? She certainly seemed a blessed fool; she had occasions of profound insight coupled with eccentric and erratic behavior. Maybe that is as God intended. He calls all to him – the lost, the pious, the estranged, the strange, and the broken. Blessed are the exasperating, for they will make God laugh.   

Tocqueville Foretold the Poet, Walt Whitman

Alexis de Tocqueville was a French aristocrat, political philosopher, and accomplished writer. He ventured to the United States for nine months in 1831 to discern how democracy was proceeding since the American Revolution. Tocqueville began by observing how politics was lived in this nascent democracy; he imposed no grand principles or theories from the outside. With thoroughness and a surprising honesty, he wrote two comprehensive volumes detailing and evaluating his experience.

Besides writing a sophisticated depiction of America’s social and political life, he also engaged in certain predictions about her future. He had a willingness to speculate across many disciplinary silos, including the fine arts, as to future developments in the republic. One such prediction was the invention and flourishing of a uniquely American poetry movement; in this, Tocqueville was prescient. He anticipated the lyrical, moving poetry of Longfellow, Emerson, Dickinson, and Frost -- but also, especially, the splendid poetry of Walt Whitman as seen in his celebrated “Song of Myself.”

There were few respected American poets to speak of in 1831, but Tocqueville was undaunted by that fact. He earnestly believed that “in the heart of this incoherent and agitated multitude,” great poets would appear in the decades to come. Americans were, for the time being, focused on politics, religion, journalism, and wealth creation and scarcely had time for literary pursuits. But he expected that such accomplishments would develop. He recognized the writings of Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper as indicating a promising future and the existence of a blossoming literary class.

Tocqueville believed that the great extent of equality in the country withered old ideas and traditions; literary conventions, too, would be redefined and rewritten here. Americans would reinvent poetry, making it anew for their egalitarian society. A quite different American poetry would emerge, without European structures or themes as its masters. Poetry would be animated by images of a shared national experience, since Americans, Tocqueville wrote, wished “to be spoken to about themselves.” He also predicted that this poetry would be grounded in reality, without flights of fancy, retreat to antiquity, or ethereal gods and goddesses – just “the confused mixture of conditions, sentiments, and ideas that they [Americans] encounter before their eyes.”

Poets would speak for the nation, about the nation, in a common language that elevated their own experience. The poets, he believed, would be drawn to verse as the ideal of poetic language. Moreover, poetry would be uniquely American in the degree to which it would be instinctive, fluid, spiritual, natural, and emotionally direct. In all of this, Tocqueville was indeed predictive.

It appears, however, as though Tocqueville did not believe all Americans were capable of producing such poetry. He wrote: “one can conceive of nothing … so dull … so antipoetic, as the life of a man in the United States.” Yet he remarked, “one always meets one that is full of poetry, and that one is like the hidden nerve that gives vigor to the rest.” No other image could better describe the arrival, two decades later, of Walt Whitman on the American literary stage when he published his first book of poetry, Leaves of Grass, in 1855. It truly was “the hidden nerve that gives vigor to the rest” – revolutionary, effervescent, a bouncy spring, the pioneering mechanism for developing and advancing poetry in America. He was, as Tocqueville anticipated, an individual who was “full of poetry” and would inspire other poets and invigorate a young nation to think differently and to sing.     

Whitman created poetry with a less formal structure, utilized the language of the common man, celebrated individualism, and was not bound by the past. He was energized by the American move westward and the nation’s flourishing democracy, and was moved by the struggles and journeys of its ordinary citizens.

His poem “Song of Myself” has the fluidity Tocqueville foresaw. After the first line had been crafted in iambic pentameter, Whitman abandoned all semblance of standards, rules, and convention. Gone were rhymes, metrics, and links with past poets; he was, as it were, the master of the open poetic road. He sang his celebratory chant: “I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable.”

Tocqueville would have been pleased with his prognostication’s accuracy. It was as he had suggested it would be. He called forth, with prophetic words, the prospect of a poetry and poets for America that described in detail its people’s energy, their industry, their decency, their love of creation, their language, and their gift for freedom and democracy. He wanted for America someone who would listen to their voice, what Whitman called his own “barbaric

Within his admirable panegyric to American democracy, then, Tocqueville not only predicted the style and structure of a new American poetry; he also gleaned from the tea leaves, long beforehand, the voice of one of its most beloved and original poets, Walt Whitman. In appreciating Whitman’s gift, we appreciate Tocqueville’s genius as well.

Consolation

Consoling the sorrowful and broken-hearted looms as a daunting task for a true friend. The philosopher Iris Murdoch once wrote: “Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.” It is an aptitude, an art, and a challenge, then, to accompany and console the bereft. It is not for the unmoved, the self-absorbed, or the apathetic; it is heroic work to search and help rescue a grief-stricken friend in the churning seas that have sundered their little boat.

Johannes Brahms was such an exceptional friend. Born in Hamburg, he is known to the world as an accomplished 19th-century pianist and master composer of symphony orchestras, piano and organ music, and chamber ensembles. His works, like those of Beethoven, Bach, and Haydn, influenced the 20th-century composers Schoenberg, Elgar, and Stravinsky. Unknown to most was his other role, as a life raft of sorts for the extraordinarily talented pianist Clara Schumann, wife of Robert Schumann.

Robert Schumann suffered from bouts of depression and delusions of persecution most of his adult life, culminating in a complete mental breakdown. After attempting suicide, he was committed to an insane asylum near Bonn in 1854, where he would die two years later from pneumonia, never having regained his mental abilities. Within this circle of despair, Brahms, a friend of both Robert and Clara, offered his steadfast support. He visited Robert in the asylum and helped Clara to recover and support her seven children.

On her own, Clara was an accomplished composer and piano virtuoso and continued to tour throughout Europe after Robert’s death. One can gain a glimpse of the profound importance of the relationship between Clara and Johannes through a letter she wrote to her children as adults: “You hardly knew your dear Father, you were still too young to feel deep grief, and thus in those terrible years you could give me no comfort. Hope, indeed, you could bring me, but it was not enough to support me through such agony. Then came Johannes Brahms. Your Father loved and admired him, as he did no man except Joachim,” the father of Mary, Jesus’s mother. “He came, like a true friend, to share all my sorrow; he strengthened the heart that threatened to break, he uplifted my mind, he cheered my spirit when- and where-ever he could; in short he was my friend in the fullest sense of the word.”

She later wrote of Brahms: “I can truly say, my children, that I never loved any friend as I did him – it is an exquisite harmony of soul. I love his freshness of mind, his wonderfully gifted nature, his noble heart, which I have learned to know in the course of years, as others cannot.” Clara and Johannes remained close friends for the rest of their lives. They never married, nor did they marry other people. They died nine months apart, Clara in 1896 and Johannes in 1897.

In their relationship, one sees the illustration of an essential theme: that friendships are critical to human happiness, to creative and psychological flourishing, and in some cases to human survival.  No human life is without loss or suffering. We do not get to pick what poisons our daily existence, but we do get to choose the medicine. Friendship is a divinely inspired inoculation against loneliness and sadness.  It can bring candor, wonder, patience, clarity, love, communion, affirmation, virtue, enchantment, mercy, and forgiveness to the fore. Greek philosophers were sophisticated in their understanding of love and taught about the rarity of the deepest kind of friendship, which they called philia. It was not defined by sexual or romantic passion, but by a quite different distinguishing characteristic. Philia would be analogous to two people walking side-by-side on life’s journey, not possessive of the other, but in communion, souls made out of the same cloth.  

Countless brilliant writers, playwrights, and poets have commented on the nature and necessity of deep friendships, of philia, such as that of Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms. The Bard, Shakespeare himself in Hamlet, commanded: “Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel.” Though he may have intended to indicate a cliché, he nonetheless describes with brilliance the strong friendship so many hold dear. The philosopher, scientist, and statesman Francis Bacon wrote that friendship “makes daylight in the understanding, out of darkness, and confusion of thoughts.” The 19th-century poet Emily Dickinson lamented: “Till the first friend dies, we think our ecstasy impersonal, but then discover he was the cup from which we drank it ...”

Friendships like that of Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms are unusual in their intensity; they were given a special gift. The world can seem insubstantial, pitiless, or hollow when we suffer grief or loss, and deep friendships are a welcome lifeline helping one to gain calm, bearings, and perspective. They help to reinforce or awaken the best version of ourselves, even when all seems confused and chaotic. These relationships are intellectually transformative and spiritually illuminating, and, in the end, make our hearts sing – which is a rare thing indeed.

Fire Watch

For a time, Thomas Merton was of the world. He was funny, brilliant, passionate, faithless, contemporary in his thinking, fluent in French, athletic, shallow, drank too much, smoked too much, dabbled in communism, loved jazz, and loved women. He unexpectedly converted to Catholicism in 1938 while attending Columbia University for his master’s degree, then inexplicably and quietly left the world behind forever when he joined the cloistered Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani  in Kentucky at age 26 in 1941. Merton left New York  a different man.

He wanted to gather up his disjointed existence and weave it into something less chaotic, more coherent, and more meaningful. He no longer wanted to live with “the abyss that walked around in front of [his] feet … ” He chose a life of deprivation and silence, entirely consecrating his life to God in order to settle his restless heart. It was, for him, a quiet rebuke to the modern world with its constant noise and distraction, emptiness, fake rebellion, and self-satisfied conceit.

Life in the monastery in the farmlands of Kentucky was the polar opposite of his bohemian lifestyle in New York. Merton now lived on the edge of civilization. He had only two sets of garments, slept on straw for a mattress and a pallet for a bed frame, ate bland food, shaved once a week, lived with 70 to 80 other monks (which swelled to more than 270 after World War II). He prayed every four hours, worked outside even in the winter, did hard manual labor, studied philosophy and theology, and did not speak to anyone except “spiritual directors” or the “superiors” in charge of the monastery. It was a difficult life with a myriad of deprivations. Merton took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and lived in silence as demanded by the austerity of his order. And he wrote. He wrote movingly, candidly, and beautifully about the spiritual life for the world to read and appreciate.

Merton became one of the most widely read spiritual writers of the 20th century. His first book, The Seven Storey Mountain published in 1948, was an autobiography of sorts. It was the story of his early life in France, England, and then America and his conversion to Catholicism.  He did not flinch from writing about the broken parts of his life before his conversion. It was engaging, humorous, eloquent, venturesome, moving, and spiritually insightful. He pointed to something lost in the culture. It was a runaway bestseller, selling millions of copies over the years. It has been translated into at least 20 languages. He went on to write more than 70 books, along with countless essays, journals, letters, and reviews.

Many readers believe his most beautiful and deeply personal writing came from the journals he wrote leading up to his ordination to the priesthood. Some of his journals over this five-year period were compiled for his book The Sign of Jonas, published in 1953. The final chapter was titled “Epilogue: Fire Watch, July 4, 1952” and discussed his role as a temporary watchman in the monastery. He walked the levels of it that summer night, while everyone was asleep, to ensure there were no fires – one could engulf the building in minutes – from the many candles used, or a defective furnace, a faulty fuse box, or an electrical glitch. He described his solemn, silent journey – the sights, the people, the sounds, the history of the place, and even the smells – from the bottom of the monastery all the way up to the bell tower.

For Merton, it was not just a physical journey but a spiritual one as well, from descent to ascent to the mountaintop. His insights were haunting and poetic. To be a watchman was to be the monastery’s early warning system to alert the community to danger. To be a watchman also meant to be an intermediary, an advocate, perched on the rooftop between heaven and earth, leaning outward in order to best communicate with God. It was a powerful image and meditation on the monastic life. This experience, as you can read in the journal, brought him to a deeper relationship with God and a better understanding of his vocation and his place within his community.

One cannot read “Fire Watch” without being inspired by the poetry and imagery of Merton’s language: “Will You open a door upon the great forest and set my feet upon a ladder under the moon, and take me out among the stars?” But to see his work in that context alone is a disservice to the breadth and range of his talent and teaching.

The writing of Thomas Merton was and is relevant because he asked his readers, in “Fire Watch” and elsewhere, to be alert, to pay attention to the small details, to contemplate God even in the persistent darkness, and to not fail to recognize the potential for ordinary human experiences to be theophanies or signs of grace, “life within life and of wisdom within wisdom.”

Messiaen’s Quartet

About 300 prisoners—and several Nazi officers and guards--in prisoner-of-war camp Stalag VIII A, near the Polish border, were the first to hear one of the most beautiful and haunting musical works of the 20th century, on a winter’s night in 1941. Before the event, a prisoner drew up an artistic poster with the imprint of a camp-sanctioned seal. On the evening of the performance, officers and guards seated themselves in the front row, placing prisoners behind them— half-frozen in an unheated barracks.

Stalag VIII A (or Prisoner-of-War Camp 8A) in Goerlitz, Germany was not unlike other camps of the Third Reich. Subject to brutal conditions, prisoners were often treated as less than human. This particular camp, however, was unique in three distinct ways. Inside, there inhabited: three gifted musicians, a sympathetic officer, and a renowned 31-year-old French composer named Olivier Messiaen. This famous composer, captured at the (World War II) Battle of Verdun in 1940 while his wife and two-year-old son were back in Paris, wrote and premiered one of his greatest masterpieces, the Quartet for the End of Time, in this German camp. 

Messiaen wrote the whole Quartet for piano, cello, clarinet, and violin while imprisoned. Unquestionably, this complex and religiously inspired musical piece about the end of days in the Book of Revelation would never have come to fruition without a little serendipity. The combination of a surprisingly civilized Nazi officer encouraging Messiaen to write and a few musically gifted prisoners spurred his composition. The Nazi officer fortunately loved classical music, and Messiaen’s mere presence at the camp thrilled him. He went out of his way to supply the composer with the necessary writing materials and instruments. There were three prisoners who were brilliant musicians — one could even say virtuosos. They were willing to learn Messiaen’s demanding and textured composition, with its eight movements, using inferior instruments under appalling circumstances. Étienne Pasquier was the cellist, Henri Akoka was the clarinetist, and Jean Le Boulaire was the violinist. Messiaen himself debuted as the pianist.

The reaction to the performance of these beleaguered, emaciated musicians and to the composer’s music on that January evening in 1941 was one of astonishment. Even the cynical, hardened Nazis at the camp and the demoralized prisoners were made speechless by its grace, exquisite construction, serenity, and passion. The cellist, Pasquier, described what he saw afterward: “These people … sensed that this was something exceptional. They sat perfectly still, in awe. Not one person stirred.”

For Messiaen, the Quartet for the End of Time was not really about a dramatic and awful end, nor was it about the war, or prison life. Instead he saw it as a song without words, written to God. It recounted, in quiet and dramatic ways, the triumph of beauty and truth – what was eternal and outside of time - with the help of the ordinary, powerless prisoners trapped in a quagmire of extraordinarily terrible circumstances. The piece was not only difficult to play and impressive in scope; it was also thought- provoking and a compelling spiritual response to the ugliness, destruction, and evil that pervaded the camp. It was a window into eternity, “the harmonious silence of heaven.” It was not a window into bitterness, anger, or resignation to the darkness.

The Quartet was an unexpected gift, a beautiful bird in flight. Given all that Messiaen suffered through and saw in the war and the camp, one senses from his music that he did not lament his lot in life, or ask God why he was stuck in such a desolate hellhole. He instead whispered to God: “At the end of all days, I want to be with you, you whom I love. I am not able to walk this difficult path alone.” Messiaen presented a wellspring of hope, faith, and love when he could have composed something utterly different. He created something so thoughtful, delicate, and lovely - almost the opposite of a response to catastrophe. After listening to the eight movements, one cannot help but shed tears. One can easily see how the piece left prisoners and guards at a loss for words. 

January 15 is the anniversary of the Quartet for the End of Time performance in Stalag VIII A. For many years, to mark that event, Germans and Poles have descended into a museum and concert hall, next to the remains of the old prisoner-of-war camp, to quietly listen to a performance of this remarkable, moving piece of music by a deeply religious Catholic French composer and former prisoner of war, Olivier Messiaen.

After his release from the camp, Messiaen returned to Paris. He died in 1992. 

Go to the Opera

Opera is a break from the daily slog; it is like the gift of seeing fireflies or hearing raindrops from a windowsill on a summer’s night. There is no material benefit, just the joy of seeing and listening.

Opera is unique. It is composed of many parts – singers, orchestra, and sets, elaborate details and moving pieces. The characters are never one-dimensional, and they emote passionately and dramatically through their solos, duets, and extravagant gestures. There is never a dull moment: mysterious spells, dreaded illnesses, dancing fairies, ill-advised marriages, magical forests, ice queens, unrealistic fathers, manipulative siblings, overbearing mothers, unexpected deaths, star-crossed lovers.

The costumes and sets are usually over-the-top as well – like eating a sprinkled or chocolate-covered doughnut. But who doesn’t love those? And the orchestras, they are magnificent -- always boisterous and raucous, constantly striving to not be overlooked.

There are so many favorite characters and choruses. To name just a few: Violetta in Verdi's opera La Traviata, the unknown prince in Puccini’s Turandot, and the chorus in Verdi’s Nabucco when they sing “Va, Pensiero,” a haunting and captivating melody that one could also call a popular tune. Italians from all walks of life, as part of Verdi’s funeral procession, spontaneously sang it through the streets of Milan. They adored him, wanted to lament his passing, loved the politics the song represented (Italian unification), and knew great music when they heard it.

When Luciano Pavarotti played the unknown prince in Turandot and sang “Nessun Dorma” at the summit of his powers, there was no one his equal. After listening to him on iTunes, one understands how the audience reacted: Swoon! Bravo! None of the YouTube videos of “Nessun Dorma” sung by the most famous tenors in the last 50 years match Luciano; he was the master.

But iTunes, YouTube, or an iPad do not suffice; the revelation indeed happens when one attends an opera, even in the cheap seats. That visual and auditory experience can only be described as magical, a feast for the senses. It all comes together to cast an enchanting spell, like a fairy tale where the princess goes to the ball. It’s exciting to dress up, drink champagne, people-watch, take your seat in anticipation, and watch the thrilling scenes progress.

Do not listen to opera because it is viewed as sophisticated or for “keeping up appearances.” Listen to opera because it truly has a range, complexity, drama, and beauty that cannot be found anywhere else; it’s kismet! Sure, there is exceptional folk, pop, hip hop, jazz, rap, classical, rock n’ roll, blues, and swing music – all laudable -- but who can pass up a riotous thunderstorm? Plays are amusing; Shakespearean plays, such as Taming of the Shrew, are fantastic. Musicals, besides Phantom of the Opera, can be boring. But opera is the apex. It consists of incredible stories, lots of passionate singing throughout, expansive arm-waving, extravagant costumes, instances of over-acting, and a boisterous orchestra – the whole delicious éclair.

Opera is always surprising and vital, even when it was written two hundred years ago. It is a means of expressing in an exaggerated and intense way what it means to be human – in all its joy, despair, confusion, humor, sweetness, and power. Opera covers the spectrum of emotions in four hours; it can make you sigh, shiver, smile, laugh, guffaw, or weep.  One cannot listen to, or see, an opera and not be engaged and transfixed by its sublime nature. To appreciate opera is to see what waits just below the surface of things: truth, understanding, courage, love, sacrifice, anger, perhaps forgiveness – everything that makes life beautiful, all-too-human, and worth living. Don’t miss out on the spectacle.