Les écrits d'Etty Hillesum. Journaux et lettres 1941-1943 (The writings of Etty Hillesum. Diaries and letters 1941-1943. Complete edition). Paris: Seuil, 2008, 1081 p.
Sunday morning [June 28, 1942], 9 a.m.
A thought from this sweet pea and Karl Nötzel:
Last night I suffered the almost unbearable beauty of this pinkish red sweet pea between my books. If I had enough vocabulary (and fortunately I don't), I would have sat down and written an aesthetic treatise. And I would have rid myself of the weight under which this beauty had practically crushed me. But I didn't have the words, so I just wrote with resignation, "Beauty is also something you have to be able to bear. "
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September 15, 1942 Tuesday morning, 10:30 a.m.
And now I feel what it was, the weight you gave me to carry, my God. So much beauty and so many trials. And always, as soon as I was ready to face them, the trials turned into beauty. And the beauty, and the greatness, sometimes proved to be harder to bear than the suffering, so much they subjugated me.
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