Editing by Carmen Revilla
Translation by Alejandro del Río Herrmann, Emilia Bea, Carmen Revilla
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Simone Weil left Paris, declared an open city, in June 1940. He accompanies his parents on an uncertain exodus that, in September, leads them to Marseilles, an obligatory way station for those who find themselves in the need to leave Europe at war. There he interacted with groups of resistance fighters and harbored the idea of escaping to London to continue the struggle. But the departure, finally bound for New York and always with his parents, did not take place until May 1942. During this time of forced waiting, Marseille and its surroundings become, however, a kind of welcoming homeland, a place conducive to experiences and encounters.

Marseille is one of the richest stages of Simone Weil's writing, the one that brings the maturation of her thought in the light of the Mediterranean. A time of friendship, as reflected in the letters gathered here to Déodat Roché, Antonio Atarés, Gustave Thibon, Joë Bousquet and Jean Wahl, interlocutors and sometimes confidants, as was also Father Perrin. A time of philosophical work, in the veneration of his Notebooks, as evidenced by the texts gathered here on the notion of reading, the method of philosophy or the notion of value. A time whose most important fruits include the two essays on the country of Oc and the Albigensian crusade, "The agony of a civilization seen through an epic poem" and "What does the Occitan civilization consist of?", of beauty and mastery only comparable to those of his text on the Iliad.