Etty Hillesum - Corinthians 13: 1-13

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 morning [November 28, 1941], quarter to nine.
It's time I decided to deal with my relationship with my father with as much energy as love. Mischa told me that Daddy was coming on Saturday night. First reaction: "What a jinx! My freedom threatened. What a nuisance! What am I going to do with him?" Instead of: "What a joy that the dear man could escape for a few days from his exalted wife and this provincial hole! How can I, with my feeble means, make these few days as pleasant for him as possible?" You bitch, you selfish little bitch! Touché: you only think of yourself. Your precious time. Which you spend intoning more bookish knowledge into an already muddled head. "And what good are all things to me if I don't have love?" Always a nice theory at hand to indulge the feeling of your noble soul, but the smallest gesture of love to put into practice makes you recoil. No, this is not a small gesture of love. It is an act of principle, very important and very difficult. To love your parents to the core. It means forgiving them for all the hardships they have made you endure just by virtue of their existence: through dependence, disgust, the weight of the complexity of their lives, added to the already heavy burden of your own difficulties. I write the worst nonsense, I think. Anyway, it doesn't matter. And now we have to think about making Father Han's bed and preparing the lesson for our disciple Levie. But anyway, this is the program for the weekend: to love my father to the core and forgive him for coming to expel me from my selfish tranquility. In fact, I love him very much, but of a complicated love (or that was): forced, tense and mixed with pity, to break my heart. But a pity with masochistic tendencies. A love that was resolved in debauches of pity and sorrow, without inspiring the slightest gesture of love. A lot of affection and effort on the other hand, but of such intensity that each day he spent here cost me a full tube of aspirin. But that's all in the past. Lately our relationship has been much more normal. Still, there was a sense of constraint. More or less derived from the fact that I was angry at him for coming to see me so far. This is what I now have to forgive him for in my heart. Thinking to myself (and really meaning it): "What a chance that he can take his mind off for a few days!" And there you have it, a morning prayer worth another. –

p. 234

February 20, 1942. Friday morning, 10 o'clock.
When I woke up Tuesday morning, my first thought was, "And now I have to make sure I accept my father with true love." I was again haunted by the remnants of an inferiority complex, as probably all children have about their parents: don't they seem weird to them?

A human being has much to do to educate himself. Yes, and of what use are all things to me, if I do not have love? –

"We'd like to make a story out of it," Wiep said last night, when I told him about Mischa dragging his old parents with him across the frozen country to attend his private concerts. He simply refuses to thwart them if they don't come. Very touching. They used to run to mental institutions and doctors, now they run to concerts. I haven't yet become sufficiently aware of the great happiness that this state of affairs carries with it, nor of all the reasons for gratitude that one has towards one's family. And if one is not yet fully aware of it, it is because of the remains of uneasy feelings that persist in the face of family complexities. Always this fear of being suddenly confronted with puzzling surprises that disturb your calm. This is where I still have the most to clear up with myself. –

p. 355

February 27 [1942]. Friday morning, 10 o'clock.
And yesterday afternoon, when I came home and sat by the fire, I was very sad, a sadness at first incomprehensible to myself, and I was going through Leonie's letter again, when I suddenly picked up the Bible and opened it to the first epistle to the Corinthians 13, for the umpteenth time. –

Yes.-

"When I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, if I have not love, I am a sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal.

And when I have the gift of prophecy, the science of all mysteries and all knowledge, when I even have all the faith to move mountains, if I do not have love, I am nothing.

Love is patient, it is full of goodness; love is not envious; love does not boast, it is not puffed up with pride, it does not do anything dishonest, it does not seek its own interest, it is not irritated, it does not suspect evil."

As I read these words, I felt, well, yes, what did I feel? I can't express it well yet. They acted on me like a cedar stick, which touched the hard ground of my heart and made hidden springs bubble up. Suddenly I fell on my knees next to the little white table and the liberated love began to flow in me again, for a moment free from lust, jealousy, malice, etc. But I think I was quite hysterical yesterday afternoon. The next thing I knew I was sitting by the fire, crying, and sad like I hadn't been in a very long time. With an immense desire and a kind of rage of a scorned woman. At the same time I was admonishing myself: Do you realize how childish it is to feel cheated like you do now?

And shortly afterwards, when Han entered the room, I said to him: "Little Father, it is high time you came back downstairs to sleep, I feel myself becoming completely melancholic and nymphomaniacal, and I tend, once again, to reject all things of the mind as old things to be thrown away." And Han, very wisely: "No, you shouldn't, that would be breaking the balance again, let the mind be what it is and keep all its value, but restore the balance first."

p. 364-365

[Sunday,] September 27 [1942]
How can one burn with such fire, throw so many sparks? All the words, all the phrases I have ever used in the past seem grey, pale and dull compared to this intense joy of living, this love and this strength that burst out of me like flames.

My pianist brother, who at the age of 21 was in a psychiatric hospital, after how many years of war, wrote this: "Henny, I too believe, I even know, that after this life there is another. I even believe that some people are able to see and feel the presence of the other life in this life itself. It is a world where the eternal whispers of mysticism have become a living reality, and where everyday objects and words, in their banality, have been given a higher meaning. It is quite possible that after the war men will be more open to this reality and will collectively persuade themselves of the existence of a higher order of the world."

- And even if I gave all my possessions for the maintenance of the poor... if I don't have love, it would be of no use to me.

You are lucky to be free of pain, but I am able to face a little cold and a little barbed wire, and I extend your life. What in you was immortal, I extend it in my life.

p. 738-739

Letter to the two sisters from The Hague. Amsterdam, late December 1942. (excerpt)
This long talk may have led you to assume that I have indeed given you a description of Westerbork. But when I talk about this camp of Westerbork with all its facets, its eventful history, its material and moral deprivation, I feel that I have failed miserably. And moreover, this is a very subjective account. I can imagine that one could make another one, more filled with hatred, bitterness and revolt.

But the revolt, which waits to be born the moment when the misfortune reaches you personally, has nothing authentic and will never bear fruit.

And the absence of hatred does not necessarily imply the absence of a basic moral indignation.

I know that those who hate have good reasons for this. But why should we always choose the easiest, most hackneyed path? At the camp, I felt with all my being that the smallest atom of hate added to this world makes it even more inhospitable. And I think, with a childish but persistent naivety perhaps, that if this land ever becomes habitable again, it will only be through that love of which the Jew Paul once spoke to the people of Corinth in the thirteenth chapter of his first letter.

p. 828-829