Simone Weil's Chronology

1909	Born February 3, in Paris, to Dr. Bernard and Selma Weil.
1914	Dr. Weil mobilized into the French army soon after the outbreak of World War I. The family, including André, born 1906, moves each time he is transferred.
1916	Attends the Lycée Montaigne in Paris for three months.
1917	Dr. Weil assigned to Laval, where Simone enters the girls’ lycée.
1919	Several months after the end of World War I, the family returns to Paris. In September, Simone enters the Lycée Fénelon.
1924	Admitted to the baccalauréat. Enters the Lycée Duruy.
1925	Passes her baccalauréat exams in philosophy.
1925-28	Attends the Lycée Herni IV, where she studies with the philosopher Alain (Emile-Auguste Chartier).
1928	Passes the entrance examinations for the École Normale Supérieure, in first place. Enters at the end of the year.
1931	Receives her agrégation diploma and takes her first teaching post at the girls’ lycée Le Puy.
1932	Engages in a demonstration for unemployed workers. Transferred to the girls’ lycée in Auxerre by the school authorities.
1933	Appointed to the girls’ lycée in Roanne. Participates in a march of miners organized by the Confederated Miners’ Union, December 3. Meets Trotsky December 31.
1934	Takes leave from teaching and works as a power press operator at Alsthom Electrical Works in Paris.
1935	Takes job at the J. J. Carnaud et Forges de Basse Indre factory in Billancourt, where she works at a stamping press. In June works on a milling machine at the Renault factory at Boulogne-Billancourt.
1936	In August, leaves to join the republican front in the Spanish civil war. Joins an international group allied with an anarchist trade union in Aragon. While on bivouac a few weeks later, steps into a cooking pot of boiling oil. Leaves the front and is treated in Sitgès.
1937	On sick leave for the school year 1936-1937, visits Italy in the spring. In Assisi, in a chapel frequented by Saint Francis, feels compelled to kneel and pray. Teaches for the fall term at the girls’ lycée in Saint-Quentin, a working-class town near Paris.
1938	Takes another sick leave in January. At Easter, attend services at the Benedictine abbey of Solesmes, where “the Passion of Christ entered my being once and for all.”
1939	Six months’ holiday with her family. When war is declared in September, they return to Paris. Reads the Bhagavad-Gita for the first time.
1940	After the Armistice, moves with her family to Vichy, then in October to Marseille, where she becomes involved with the literary magazine Cahiers du Sud and the group associated with it. Requests a new teaching post, but receives no reply from the minister of education, no doubt because of the Vichy anti-Jewish laws.
1941	Begins to study Sanskrit. Meets the Dominican priest Father J.-M. Perrin, who helps her find farm work with Gustave Thibon, a catholic writer in the Ardèche.
1942	Leaves her notebooks with Thibon and sails to New York with her parents on May 17, after two weeks in a refugee camp in Casablanca. Eager to join the Resistance movement headquatered in London, she writes various officials there. Sails to Liverpool in November. Is held in a detention camp.
1943	Obtains work as a writer with the Free French organization in London. Her reports for them include The Need for Roots. In April enters the hospital, where tuberculosis is diagnosed. Refuses food. Dies on August 24. Buried in Ashford, Kent.