Historical story
A letter to a darkened room
Relation · 13 April 1942 · A letter toward Carcassonne
13 April 1942
She is writing to a wounded poet who cannot leave his room.
Joë Bousquet had been hit in 1918. He lived in a darkened room in Carcassonne. Simone Weil wrote to him on 13 April 1942. Attention, she said, is the rarest and purest form of generosity. In Waiting for God she also called school studies a training in waiting: thought emptied enough to receive what is actually before you.
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.Weil to Bousquet, 13 April 1942.
Concordance
- The thing
- A sentence: attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
- Seen
- The letter exists. The sentence is hers.
- Sourced
- Simone Weil, letter of 13 April 1942; later printed with Waiting for God.
- Miss
- School studies as training in waiting is another page of the same book. Do not collapse them.
- One question remains
- What would it mean to offer attention without taking the other person as a sign?
