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.
April 22 [1942]. Wednesday. 11 o'clock in the evening.
Something totally different: Sometimes I think I could write, could describe, but suddenly weariness takes hold of me and I think, "What's the point of all these words?" I would like every word I ever wrote to be born, truly born, for none of them to be an artificial product, for every word to be a necessity, otherwise it makes no sense. And that is why I will never be able to live from my "pen", I will always need another job to earn my living. Each word born of an inner necessity, it must be that, writing, and nothing else. –
p. 479
June 19 [1942]. Friday, 10 o'clock in the evening.
But no, not "good night" again. To tell the truth, this is the situation, I am suddenly convinced. I probably do not have the talent to write. I only have the talent, if you can call it that, to live everything that one can live, feel and experience in this life, not only in my own way, but also in the way of many others. The greatest vices are not unknown to me, but at the same time I also experience the greatest faith in God and a spirit of self-denial and love for my neighbor. And I live all this body and soul, in blood and darkness, and pierced through and through. I don't think I have an easy time writing. I could perhaps write easy and weird things if I had to, entertainment, but it has nothing to do with my deeper nature, it's just a light scum on the surface - but under the scum ridges, isn't there the sea? I can't write, but I live this life, body and soul, every moment, in all its sinuosities, its aspects, its colors, its sounds. I live the people and I also live the suffering of the people. And from this experience, words may one day emerge that I will be obliged to express, words that are fed from a source so true that they will have to find their way. They may be extremely clumsy words, but they will want to be said. I am also afraid of a certain ease in my writing. I think I could do it, but it's like I'm resisting it, because I'm not going to get to what matters anyway. I will find my words, or rather my words will find me one day, perhaps my way of living things will one day meet the words that will free it. I can't write, but I can live. And from this real life that is mine will be born one day words.
p. 605
Friday morning [July 10, 1942]
One day, if I survive all this, I will write about this time in small stories that will be like delicate brushstrokes on a great background of silence that will signify God, Life, Death, Suffering and Eternity. The crowd of worries sometimes jumps on you like vermin. Well, you just have to scratch a little, it may make your body ugly, but you have to get rid of the unwanted ones.
I have decided to consider the short time I have left here as an unexpected gift, a moment of vacation. These last few days, I have been going through life as if I had a photographic plate inside me, recording without fail everything around me, without omitting the slightest detail. I am aware of it, everything rushes into me with well-cut contours. One day - far away perhaps - I will develop and shoot all these pictures. To find the new tone that will suit a new meaning of life. As long as one has not found this tone, one should impose silence. But it is by speaking that one must try to find it, one cannot be silent, that would also be an escape. One must also follow the transition from the old tone to the new one in its finest articulations. - Hard, very hard day. One must learn to carry the weight of a "mass destiny" with the others, eliminating all personal trivia. Everyone still wants to try to save themselves, knowing full well that if they don't leave, someone else will replace them. Does it really matter if it is me or someone else, this or that? It has become a "mass destiny", and we need to know that. A very hard day. But I always find myself in prayer. And praying, I will always be able to do it, even in the most cramped place. And this little fragment of the "mass destiny" that I am able to carry, I fix it on my back like a bundle with ever stronger and tighter knots, I become one with it and already carry it through the streets.
I should brandish this frail pen like a hammer and the words should be as many blows of the mallet to speak about our destiny and to tell an episode of history as there has never been one before. Not in this totalitarian form, organized on a mass scale, encompassing all of Europe. It will take a few survivors to become chroniclers of this era. I too would like to be a small chronicler among them. –
p. 673-674
Wednesday, September 30, 1942
And, where we are, to be one hundred percent present. My "doing" will consist in "being" there. Now there is a point where my fidelity must be strengthened, where I have failed more than elsewhere in my duties: it is my fidelity to what I must call my "creative talent", however thin it may be. Anyway, there are so many things waiting to be said and written by me. It's about time I got started. But I shy away under the most diverse pretexts, I fail in my mission. It is also true, I know it well, that I must have the patience to let what I have to say grow within me. But I must contribute to this growth, go ahead of it. It's always the same: you want to write surprising or "great" things right away, you are ashamed of your banalities. However, if in my life, at this moment of my life, at this time, I have a real duty, it is to write, to note, to fix. In doing so, I assimilate at the same time. I decipher life and, certain of being able to read it with an open book, I persuade myself, in my youthful unconsciousness and indolence, that I will effortlessly retain and be able one day to recount everything I have deciphered. I will still have to provide some discreet reference points for my story sooner or later. I live intensely, I wear life out, and I feel a growing sense of obligation to what I would like to call my talents. But where to start, my God? There are so many things. Let's not make the mistake of wanting to throw everything we live so intensely onto paper without transition. That's not the point either. But how do I go about dominating all the material? I do not know, it is too much. All I know is that I will have to do it alone. And that I will have the strength and patience to do it alone. But I must stay true to my mission, stop scattering like sand in the wind. I divide myself and offer myself in sharing to the crowd of sympathies, impressions, beings and emotions that melt on me. I must remain faithful to them all. But I will add a new fidelity, the one I owe to my talent. It is no longer enough to live all this. I must add something of my own.
–
p. 742-743