Base (adjective): lacking or indicating the lack of higher qualities of mind or spirit (Merriam-Webster)

The Stanford Encyclopedia describes Weil's idea of gravity as "the forces of the natural world that subject all created beings physically, materially, psychologically, and socially, and thus functions as a downward 'pull' on the attention, away from God and the afflicted." When we act on these forces (necessity, appetite, vanity, compulsion), it is baseness. Both the superficial and the base belong to gravity's realm; they exist on the same plane.

Here, Weil argues that the object of an action (what you do) and the level of the energy (whether that energy comes from gravity or grace) are independent. For example, a virtuous action can degrade if one is compelled by gravity. This idea that the moral worth of an action depends on the motive with which you act is reminiscent of Kant, but the rest is quite different. Kant believes in acting in accordance with duty, while Weil has an ethic based more on grace, compassion, and attention.

So a love can be violent and base because these are both forces of gravity, but a love cannot be deep (or profound, considering the French is profondément) and base because profundity stems from grace while baseness does not.

I'm borrowing SEP's definition of affliction (malheur): embodied pain combined with psychological agony, social degradation, and spiritual distress. It then makes sense that affliction, this utmost combination of suffering, forces us to cling onto the scraps we have left. By examining this extreme form of attachment, Weil argues that the nature of attachment is one of need and fear (thus belonging to gravity).

And what is detachment here? I don't think she means detachment as coldness or contempt, but rather as another word for her idea of decreation. It's the refusal to grasp or claim things (by will, by force) and instead attending to things purely. In her own words, detachment is to forgive debts, to accept the past without asking for future compensation, to stop time at the present instant.

And to me, it's observing the people and the world rather than judging, enjoying a friend's company without trying to own them, doing things because they align with your natural interests. Detachment, according to Weil, allows us to observe reality without the flattering lies we create.

My main confusion with this quote is (1) how do interior solitude and a friendship based on attachment oppose each other and (2) how are interior solitude and friendship based on true affection hand-in-hand, and maybe (3) what does interior solitude even mean?

Here, interior solitude means the detachment she discusses in the quote above, or letting reality and others appear as they are. It is the void that attention makes within us.

This quote is Weil arguing that real affection should look more like letting the other be rather than possessing or clinging onto the other, letting there be two and not one. In her chapter on Beauty, Weil writes "Beauty: a fruit which we look at without trying to seize it." I think she sees real friendship the same way.

These quotes are all from Weil's chapter on Metaxu, which means 'between' in Greek. She defines them as intermediaries leading to God, like home, country, traditions, and culture. I think the sentence (we should experience them as such) makes the nuance between idol worship and regarding these things with attention and detachment.

We can have earthly goods (in fact, Weil insists that we need them), and they lead us closer to God, but we should see them as stepping stones: intermediaries. The wall between prisoners becomes their means of communication; the barrier becomes the bridge.