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.
Friday [December 5, 1941], afternoon, quarter to five.
The truth is, there is no goal. One should not set a goal outside oneself. Every moment of this life must be a goal in itself. Self-realization. Reaching heights in a few isolated moments. And then continue. To tell yourself with confidence that the path leads somewhere, and not to want to see a goal by force.
p. 248
Thursday, December 11 [1941], 4:30 in the afternoon.
The dark branches of the trees whip my pallid tiles, I'll put on my black dress and lipstick, then the blind Hungarian (Imre Ungar) and my deaf friend will arrive, along with a bunch of other people, and we'll see what life will bring us. As long as you are ready to participate in every minute of this life, not to oppose it or close yourself off, and as long as you know that it doesn't matter where you are or what you are doing, as long as you have God in you. - And now, get up!
p. 256
Friday morning [December 12, 1941], 9 o'clock.
This morning, deep peace in me. Like after a storm that has just subsided. I notice that the calm always returns. After days of furious inner life, of searching for clarity, of labor pains about sentences and thoughts that are still far from being ready to come into the world, of enormous demands on myself and of absolute priority given to the search for a small personal form, etc., etc., etc. Suddenly all this is gone from me, a beneficial fatigue descends on my mind, the melee has ended to make way for what could almost pass for indulgence, even towards myself; a veil of lethargy envelops me and the echoes of life reach me more muffled, more amiable too. And the feeling of being reconciled with life. And moreover: it is no longer me in particular who wants or has to do this or that, life is great, good, exciting, eternal, and to give so much importance to oneself, to agitate and struggle, one misses this great, powerful and eternal current that is life. These are the moments - and they fill me with gratitude - when all personal ambitions fall away, when my thirst for knowledge and learning is quenched, and when, with a broad sweep of wings, a little bit of eternity comes flying over me.
I know, I know well, yes I know, that these good dispositions do not last. They may be gone in half an hour, but I will still have drawn strength from them. Is this indulgence, this dilation of the being, due to the six aspirin pills I took yesterday to fight a strong migraine, to Mischa's "mysterious" playing in the evening and to Brahms' "Lullaby", to S.'s good big pallid head which suddenly came to life at Mischa's playing, or to Han's warm body in which I literally buried myself last night, who can say, and who cares?
These five minutes are still mine. Behind my back the clock is ticking. The noises of the house and the street make like a distant surf. A round lamp with a white light, in the house of the neighbors across the street, pierces the livid day of this rainy morning. Here, in front of the big black tray of my office, I feel like on an island, away from the world. The little black-haired Moroccan girl stares at the greyish morning with that dark and serious look, which is both animal and serene at the same time. What does it matter if I study one page more or less? The main thing is to listen to your own rhythm and to try to live according to it. To listen to what comes out of you. Your actions are often nothing but imitation, assumed duty or misrepresentation of what a human being should be. But the only true certainty as to the best way to live and act can only come from the sources that bubble up deep within you.
p. 257-258
March 27, 1942, Friday morning, 10:30 a.m.
A satiation that no longer makes me yearn for new adventures, and without the spur of this desire, life is only one great inner adventure, continuous and full of the unexpected, and every minute of the day and night brings new food to this adventure, so to speak. And we now also allow ourselves times of rest: sometimes between two deep breaths, and sometimes by kneeling down for five minutes, in any place of the house. And what I experience, including the most emotional experiences, I assimilate right away and in the moment.
This does not mean that I immediately forget what I have experienced, but this experience is immediately inserted, without any regimen, in the great current of life, it flows immediately, so to speak, in the course of this great current, without forming, as in the past, obstacles and dams and piles of impure materials impeding the course of life. This is what I must not forget to tell Leonie: that she has a more precise awareness of the infinite number of small waves than of the great current, of this great single swell encompassing all the waves. And she must become more aware of this great current.
And this is how I feel about life today: my life flows through me like a great river, rich and powerful, fed by an infinity of small tributaries - etc.
p. 424
Wednesday evening [April 8, 1942], half past nine.
I jumped on this notebook, taken by a sudden impulse, between the typing of some letters and a strong headache. A huge urge to write down some words. With more or less this feeling: here, on these pages, I am constantly spinning a single thread. Some continuities in my life, which are my reality, and which, like an uninterrupted track... - but well, I don't see how to formulate the continuation. It is the Gospel of Matthew, in the morning and in the evening, and it is from time to time a few words in this notebook. Or to put it better, it's not the always deficient words scribbled on those blue lines, but the feeling of coming back each time to the same place, where one continues to spin a single thread, where a continuity slowly takes shape, where in fact my real life is found. In a general way: a growing desire to gather with ever greater concentration around one's center. The need to go inside oneself often, to work with discipline, and in the long run to give form. If I write this, is it only under the influence of reading Rilke's letters? Or do these letters captivate me to such an extent - to the point that I live in a perpetual desire to find them again and drink them in, so to speak, at length - because I feel I have reached a stage comparable to the one he was in when he wrote them, in 1903 and 1904?
p. 462
Saturday morning [July 4, 1942], 9 o'clock.
At first we walked like happy tourists visiting a beautiful sunny city. As we walked, he kept taking my hand, and they felt good together, our two hands. Then I started to feel very tired, and it was a strange feeling not to be able to get on any of the streetcars of this city with its long streets, nor to sit at any of the terraces (many of the terraces brought back memories and I told him about them: "Look, this is where I came two years ago with a bunch of friends after my law exam", etc.). I thought then, or rather I didn't think, it was an intuition that came to me: "Throughout the centuries, men have exhausted themselves, have bruised their feet walking on the Lord's earth, in the cold or in the heat, and this too is life." It is an experience that has been growing stronger in me lately: in my smallest daily actions and sensations a hint of eternity is creeping in. I am not alone in being tired, sick, sad or anxious, I am in unison with millions of others throughout the centuries, all of this is life; and yet life is beautiful and meaningful. It is even full of meaning in its absurdity, as long as one knows how to make room for everything and carry it all within oneself in its unity; then life, in one way or another, forms a perfect whole. As soon as one refuses or wants to eliminate certain elements, as soon as one follows one's own pleasure and whim to admit this aspect of life and reject another, then life becomes indeed absurd: as soon as the whole is lost, everything becomes arbitrary. –
At the end of our long walk, a welcoming room awaited us, offering us security and a comfortable couch to throw ourselves on after we got rid of our shoes; and a warm welcome, and a basket of cherries that friends had sent from Betuwe. A good lunch used to be the most natural thing in the world for us, now it is an unexpected boon, and if life has become harsher and more threatening, it is also richer insofar as one has renounced its demands and welcomes with gratitude, and as a gift from heaven, all that remains of good. At least this is my reaction, and it is also his; we are sometimes surprised that together we do not feel hatred, indignation or bitterness - something that cannot be said openly in society anymore, we are probably terribly alone in thinking this way. - As I walked, I knew that a friendly house was waiting for us at the end of the road, and I thought of the day when it would be over, when we would walk along the paths to the common room of a barrack, where we would die with many others. I knew all this as I walked, that this would be not only my fate but that of all the others, and I accepted it. –
p. 648-650
July 27, 1942. Monday, evening, 10:30.
A few more words. I learned something important today: where fate has placed you, you must be present with all your heart. When your heart is elsewhere, you don't bring enough to the group you happen to be in and that group is impoverished. Whether it's pushy young women in an office or God knows what else, you still have to be fully present where you are and from then on, you'll discover something in others as well. –
p. 705
[Tuesday,] September 22, [1942].
I once wrote in one of my notebooks, "I would like to follow the contours of our time with my fingertips." I was sitting at my desk and did not know how to approach life. This was because I had not yet accessed the life that was within me. It was at that desk that I learned how to reach the life that was inside of me. Then I was thrown without transition into a hotbed of human suffering, on one of the many small fronts open all over Europe. And there I suddenly experienced the following: by deciphering the faces, by deciphering thousands of gestures, little sentences, life stories, I began to read sign after sign the message of our time - and a message that goes far beyond it. Having learned to read within myself, I realized that I could also read in others. There I really had the impression that I was groping, with a finger sensitive to the slightest roughness, the contours of our time and of life. How is it that this small piece of moorland enclosed by barbed wire, crossed by human destinies and sufferings that break in successive waves, has left an almost sweet image in my memory? How is it that my mind, far from being darkened by it, was as if enlightened and illuminated by it? I read in it a fragment of our time, a time that does not seem to me to be without meaning. At this desk, among my writers, my poets and my flowers, I loved life so much. And there, in the midst of barracks populated by hunted and persecuted people, I found confirmation of my love for this life. My life in those draughty barracks was in no way opposed to the life I had led in that quiet, protected room. At no time did I feel cut off from a life that was supposed to be over: everything merged into a great continuity of meaning. How will I ever describe all this? To make others feel how beautiful life is, how worthwhile it is to live and how fair it is - yes: fair. Maybe God will make me find the right words one day, some simple words? Colorful, passionate and serious words too. But above all, simple words. How to paint in a few touches/tender/light but powerful this small village of shacks between sky and moor? How to make others read with me in an open book in all these people that must be deciphered like hieroglyphs, line by line, until they compose a readable and intelligible whole, a world caught between sky and moor?
In any case, I already know one thing for sure: I will never be able to write all this as life has written it before me in living letters. I have read it all, with my eyes and with all my senses. But I will never be able to tell it as it is. I would despair if I had not learned to accept that one is obliged to work with the insufficient forces at one's disposal, but that one must make the best of these forces. –
I observe beings as one reviews plantations and I see how far the grass of humanity grows in them.
This house, I feel it, is beginning to detach itself from me like a piece of clothing slips from your shoulders. So much the better, the detachment will be totally accomplished from now on. Carefully, with a great melancholy but with the certainty that everything is fine, I let it slip away, day by day.
p. 729-730