06: Lucy Newman Cleeve

 

Station 6

 

Video and sound, duration 1:41

‘In 1938 I spent ten days at Solesmes, from Palm Sunday to Easter Tuesday, following all the liturgical services. I was suffering from splitting headaches; each sound hurt me like a blow; by an extreme effort of concentration I was able to rise above this wretched flesh, to leave it to suffer by itself, heaped up in a corner, and to find a pure and perfect joy in the unimaginable beauty of the chanting and the words. This experience enabled me by analogy to get a better understanding of the possibility of loving divine love in the midst of affliction. It goes without saying that in the course of these services the thought of the Passion of Christ entered into my being once and for all.’
– Simone Weil, Letter to Father Perrin (1943)

Acknowledgements:
Lynne Ramsey, Ratcatcher (1999)
Elvis Costello, Veronica (video) (1989)
Still image of Simone Weil, source unknown

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