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.
Wednesday morning [December 3, 1941], 8 o'clock, in the bathroom.
I kneel once more on the rough sisal carpet, face in my hands, and ask: O Lord, make me dissolve into one great indivisible feeling. Make me do the thousand small daily tasks with love, but make the smallest act spring forth: from a great central focus of availability and love. Then the nature of what one does, the place where one is, will no longer matter. But I am not there yet, not by a long shot. -
p. 243-244
Thursday, December 11 [1941], 4:30 in the afternoon.
Lord, I can't call on you all the time. The other time, when I really invoked you with passion, by virtue of a deep impulse, continue to give me strength, to act in me.
p. 256
Friday morning [December 12, 1941], 9 o'clock.
I say it at this moment with great humility and gratitude and I mean it deeply (even though I know that by now I will be rebellious and flayed alive again): "God, I thank you for making me the way I am. I thank you for giving me sometimes this feeling of dilation, which is nothing else than the feeling of being full of you. I promise you that my whole life will be an effort to achieve this beautiful harmony, and to obtain that humility and true love which I feel within me at my
best moments."
p. 258
Friday morning [January 9, 1942], 9:30 a.m.
God, I thank you for all the strength you give me: the inner center from which my life is governed is continually gaining strength and influence.
The many contradictory impressions that come from the outside are wonderfully reconciled with each other. The inner space is constantly increasing in capacity and the many contradictions have stopped attacking each other's lives, they no longer even stand in each other's way. And after a day like yesterday, I dare to say with some conviction: my inner kingdom knows peace because it has a strong central power.
It seems to me, God, that I work well with you, that we work well together. I am giving you more and more space to inhabit and I am also beginning to be faithful to you. I almost never have to deny you anymore. I never have to deny, full of shame, my deeper life in my more frivolous and superficial moments. The mighty center shoots its rays to the farthest reaches of the periphery. I am no longer ashamed of my deep moments, I have stopped periodically pretending not to know them.
...................
I thank you, God, in my great inner kingdom there is calm and peace, thanks to the power of the central authority that you exercise there. The extreme steps still feel your authority and your love and let themselves be led by you. –
p. 321-322
January 23, 1942. Friday morning, 8 o'clock.
Last night I was so well, at home in my lonely little bed. I thanked God again, not for the warmth of that bed or for the pea soup, but because he was willing to come back and live in me. I never give thanks for the good things I receive from him on earth, nor will I rebel the day I no longer have them. I do not like to give thanks for something that so many others do not have. For it is still very bad, the distribution of material goods on this imperfect earth. And whether one is on the side of the satiated or the hungry, it seems to me to be a matter of chance. I will never be able to give thanks for my daily bread if I know that others have to do without it. But: if one day I no longer have this daily bread, I hope to give thanks all the same. For something else. For what God is in me. And it has nothing to do with a full stomach or not. At least that's what I'm saying now, next to my hot stove and after a hearty breakfast. These things are not so simple.
p. 339-340
February 20, 1942. Friday morning, 10 o'clock.
It already seems so long ago, that February 3rd, there were whole days when I didn't feel the need to write, when I didn't have to "listen deeply" inside myself, because I was living in a permanent state of "deep listening". (I wonder why I can't find an equivalent Dutch expression). During this period I did not pray either, because I was actually in a state of permanent inner prayer. In the evening, when I went to bed, it seemed as if I was carrying in my arms the impressive pile of the rich harvest of the day, almost too abundant to be embraced. It is good that such a state does not last. One must constantly leave one's center and let oneself be thrown into the turmoil, in order to conquer a greater peace in return. And one should never think that one is sure of something, because then all evolution becomes frozen. But that is not what I wanted to write this morning either.
.................
7 hours and half of the evening.
O Lord, please make me live a little more according to the spirit. And don't let me steal any more toast from the cupboard in the evening just after dinner.
p. 351-356
Saturday morning [February 21, 1942], 9:30 a.m.
This morning I suddenly found myself kneeling by the unlit stove in the living room and said, "God, give me some patience and love for the little things in everyday life. Don't let me get irritated by Hans' continual coughing." Sometimes I suspect he coughs, out of sheer need for drama, a little louder than necessary. But consider this: this need for dramatization is an integral part of his illness, and he may be suffering more from this pathetic side of him than from his illness itself. In the old days, we used to beat the madmen. This irritation at Hans' excessive worry is a primitive vestige of this kind of medieval reaction to the ills of our fellow human beings. Anxiety born of an imaginary cause - and here one can hardly speak of an imaginary cause, his lung congestion is all too real – is no less real to the patient, so it must be regarded as an illness and treated with love and understanding. If you do not overcome the irritation which it inspires, humanity will always remain at the primitive stage, and you can only work for the progress of humanity by first overcoming these primitive vestiges within yourself. Such were more or less the reasonings that I was holding, thus kneeling near the extinguished stove. And, later: "And make me also capable of more pity and understanding for Bernard's perpetually hungry belly, instead of taxing him
and deny him the right to every mouthful he swallows."
p. 357-358
Monday morning [March 23, 1942], 9 am.
It has been a long time since I prayed with as much focus and passion as I did in the five minutes I spent in the bathroom this morning. I seem to be entering a new phase of increasing inner focus. And this was always as a reaction, when I felt to my core the dangers of plunging into a boundless space. During this short prayer, I also asked, "Preserve me from vanity." I want to say this: more and more people are coming to me, who are laying bare their inner lives and submitting their difficulties to me, yet there are interesting and valuable people among them, and I must guard against feeling flattered in my vanity, seeing these people coming to me. I have to keep these things in the impersonal realm. You have to recreate the distance each time and make it clear that what you are dealing with is the resolution of a human problem, the clarification of difficulties and conflicts that have found a fortuitous home in this or that person. The problem is tackled jointly, so to speak, with love and professionalism - and without creating an overly personal bond, which would lead you to invest misused strengths in each other. It is especially in the presence of a passionate young lady like Hetty that I have to guard against too strong a personal bond.
p. 421
Sunday evening [March 29, 1942], 9:30.
There are no more wasted minutes, no more minutes of boredom; one must learn more and more to rest between two deep breaths or in a short five-minute prayer; one must always, in spite of a crowd of people, a crowd of questions, a multiplicity of subjects of study, carry within oneself a great silence to which one can retreat at any moment, even in the midst of the greatest crowd or the most intense conversation. One must constantly draw new strength from oneself.
p. 436
Good Friday morning [April 3, 1942], 8:30 a.m.
Between S.'s library, which still stands there like a mysterious temple full of wisdom, and my narrow monastic bed, there is just enough room to kneel down sometimes. One thing I've been wanting to note for days, or even weeks, but which a kind of shyness - or is it still false shame? - I have been wanting to write down for days, or even weeks, but a kind of shyness - or is it false shame? - prevents me from expressing it: my whole body is sometimes filled with the natural movement of wanting to kneel, or rather no, it's something else: it seems that the gesture of kneeling is shaped in my whole body, I feel it sometimes in my whole body. Sometimes, in moments of deep gratitude, I have an irrepressible urge to kneel, my head bowed low, my face buried in my hands. It has become a gesture infused in my body, and sometimes it wants to be done. And I remember "the girl who couldn't kneel" and the roughness of the sisal carpet in the bathroom. While writing these things, there is a certain feeling of embarrassment, as if we were approaching the most intimate of the most intimate. Much more shyness and modesty than if I were talking about my love life. But what can be more intimate than people's relationship with God? And also, for this reason, a certain aversion to the Oxford meeting of the other day. What exhibitionism! Like making love in public with God! It looks like a bacchanal, and when you see these good petty bourgeois and old maids in full search... No! We won't repeat the experience. Maybe fun once, to give oneself sensations. But at the same time, it is much too convenient for us to watch it as a sensational show.
p. 451
Thursday morning [April 9, 1942], 10 am.
This morning I found myself suddenly on my knees in the living room, amidst the bread crumbs on the rug. And if I were to formulate the prayer I prayed, it would probably be this: "O Lord, this day, this day - it seems so difficult to me, make it possible for me to carry this day to its end, in the multitude of days. It will probably be no heavier to carry than any other, but my strength to do so is not much."
And then again this worry and anxiety: what does this new summons of S. to Lippm[an] and Ros[enthal] mean? "But, God, grant that I may not waste an atom of my strength in fear or anxiety, but that I may keep them all available to carry this day." German soldiers were already at the exercise on the ice rink field. And I also asked, "God, don't let me lose any of my strength, a single ounce of my strength, in hatred, in unnecessary hatred against these soldiers." I will save my strength for other things. –
p. 463
April 17 [1942], Friday morning, 9 o'clock.
I am still too often the target of such remarks. Early this morning I prayed, "Lord, deliver me from petty vanities." They take up too much inner space, and I know for a fact that there are other things that matter than being found lovable and charming by my fellow human beings. In other words: it should not occupy too much attention and imagination. Otherwise, you can get caught up in a kind of intoxication, like: I'm really pleasant and witty, everybody loves me. -
I used to be a clown because I forced myself to be cheerful, while feeling miserable like the stones. Today, if I am sometimes exuberant, if I act crazy, it is because of an overflow of strength, and it is precisely on the days when I am internally the most serious and concentrated that a childish excitement, bordering on clowning, sometimes springs up without warning from a hidden source. And that's okay. But if you realize that you are pleasing others, this should not hold your attention too much nor occupy your imagination, nor should it flatter your vanity too much, at the risk of bringing the accent of your interiority back outwards. You are living very much in external pleasures these days, and it is precisely in these days that you must be more "gathered" and more peaceful inwardly than ever, otherwise everything falls back into vanity and externality.
p. 471-472
[Monday, May 18, 1942].
The external threats are getting worse and worse, the terror is increasing day by day. I raise prayer around me like a protective wall full of favourable shade, I withdraw into prayer as into a convent cell and I come out of it more concentrated, stronger, more "gathered". This retreat into the well-enclosed cell of prayer takes on a stronger and stronger reality for me, becomes also a necessity. This inner concentration raises high walls around me between which I find myself and gather myself, escaping all dispersions, into a unique entity. I can well imagine that times could come when I would remain on my knees for days and nights until I finally felt the protective screen of walls rising around me to keep me from scattering, losing and destroying myself.
p. 510
Tuesday morning [May 19, 1942], 8 o'clock.
Leonie weighs heavily on my stomach. Oh, Lord, make me a little fair, free of jealousy and really, really grown up, with a bit of elevation of spirit. And if someone has a mouth that is too soft and sensual for your taste, is that a reason to reject them entirely as a human being? And what about your own humanity, under those conditions?
p. 511
May 26 [1942]. Tuesday, late evening.
God, give me a lot of strength. I must have the strength and acuity of mind of a man, a grown-up type, so that I can serve as much as possible as a counterweight to him in his work. If I were married to him and we had a house, I would see to it that I attracted men of his age, reasonable and intelligent, fellow-workers who were more or less on his level and with whom he could compete. At the moment this is not the case, and I am only a little girl. And yet I want to have enough strength, foresight and understanding to temporarily replace all these colleagues. - But now I'm getting tired. –
p. 532
May 29 [1942], evening, after dinner.
It is sometimes very difficult to conceive and admit, my God, all that your earthly creatures inflict on each other in these unchained times. But by staying in my room I do not close myself to this spectacle, my God, I continue to look everything in the face, I do not run away from anything, I try to understand and to dissect the worst exactions, I always try to find the trace of the man in his nakedness, his fragility, of this man very often untraceable among the monstrous ruins of his absurd acts. I don't stay here, in a peaceful and flowery room, stuffing myself with poets and thinkers and praising God, I wouldn't have much merit there, and I don't believe either to be as "foreign to the world" as my good friends like to repeat with an air of tenderness. Every human being has his own reality, I know, but I am not an enlightened person lost in his dreams, my God, at most a "beautiful soul" who has remained a bit adolescent (Werner said about my "novel": "from a beautiful soul to a great soul"). I look deep into your world, my God, I don't run away from reality by taking refuge in beautiful dreams -I mean that there is room for beautiful dreams next to the cruelest reality- and I persist in praising your creation, my God, in spite of everything!
p. 538-539
June 22 [1942]. Monday evening, 9 o'clock.
"It will pass eventually, I'll let time do its work. I live better than anyone in Europe and Asia," I confided to S. this afternoon in the sunshine on his gravelled roof terrace. And I mean it. I wouldn't trade places with anyone. But I always have to remind myself that I live in privileged circumstances, I don't have to stand in line at a market garden - and even if I should. I am a loner and I can fly as high and as hard as I want. I am at the beginning, but the beginning is here, I am sure. It is to have drawn into oneself all the forces that can be found in a being, it is a life with God and in God and God in me (I find the word God sometimes so primitive, it is finally only a metaphor, an approximation of our greatest and most uninterrupted inner adventure, I think I don't need the word "God", it sometimes feels like an original and primitive sound. Of a supporting construction). And when sometimes in the evening I feel the need to address God and I say in a very childish way, "God, I'm not going to be able to go on much longer"-and sometimes my prayers can be very desperate and very needy-it's as if I'm addressing something that's inside of me, or as if I'm trying to conjure up a part of myself.
p. 614
Sunday Morning Prayer [July 12, 1942].
These are frightening times, my God. Last night for the first time I lay awake in the dark, my eyes burning, images of human suffering flashing before me. I will promise you one thing, my God, oh, a trifle: I will keep from hanging on to the present day, like so many weights, the anxieties that the future inspires in me; but that takes some training. For the moment, each day has its own punishment. I will help you, my God, not to extinguish you in me, but I cannot guarantee anything in advance. One thing is becoming clearer to me: it is not you who can help us, but we who can help you - and in doing so, we help ourselves. This is all we can save in this time and it is also the only thing that counts: a little of you in us, God. Perhaps we can also help to bring you to light in the martyred hearts of others. Yes, my God, you seem to have little ability to change a situation that is finally inseparable from this life. I am not asking you to account for this, it is up to you on the contrary to call us to account, one day. It is becoming more and more clear to me, almost with every beat of my heart, that you cannot help us, but that it is up to us to help you and to defend to the end the house that shelters you in us. There are people - would you believe it? - who at the last moment try to put vacuum cleaners, forks and silver spoons in a safe place, instead of protecting you, my God. And there are people who try to protect their own body, which is now only the receptacle of a thousand anxieties and a thousand hatreds. They say: "I will not fall into their clutches!" They forget that one is never under the clutches of anyone as long as one is in your arms. This conversation with you, my God, is beginning to give me back some peace. I will have many more with you in the near future, keeping you from running away from me. You will probably also experience times of dearth in me, my God, when my trust will not feed you so richly, but believe me, I will continue to work for you, I will remain faithful to you and will not drive you from my enclosure.
I do not lack strength to face the great suffering, the heroic suffering, my God, I rather fear the thousand small daily worries that sometimes assail you like a biting vermin. Finally, I scratch my head a little and say to myself every day: today has been provided for, the protective walls of a welcoming home still wrap your shoulders like a familiar, long-worn garment; you have enough food for today and the white sheets and warm blankets of your bed await you for one more night, so you have no excuse for wasting even the smallest atom of energy on these small material worries. Make good use of every minute of this day, make it a fruitful day, another strong stone in the foundation on which the days of misery and anguish that lie ahead will be built. –
Behind the house, the rains and storms of the last few days have ravaged the jasmine, its white flowers floating scattered in the mud of the black puddles on the flat roof of the garage. But somewhere inside me that jasmine continues to bloom, as exuberant, as tender as it once was. And it spreads its fragrance around your home, my God, you see how I take care of you. I don't only offer you my tears and my sad presentiments, on this windy and grey Sunday morning I even bring you a fragrant jasmine. And I will offer you all the flowers I meet on my way, my God, and they are legion, believe me. I want to make your stay as pleasant as possible. And to take a random example: if I were locked up in a narrow cell and I saw a cloud passing beyond my bars, I would bring you that cloud, my God, if I had the strength. I can't guarantee anything in advance, but the intentions are the best in the world, you see.
p. 679-681
Wednesday evening [July 15, 1942]
When I pray, I never pray for myself, always for others, or else I pursue an extravagant, infantile or terribly serious dialogue with what is deepest in me and which for convenience I call God. To pray to ask for something for oneself, it seems so childish, I have no idea. However, tomorrow I will ask him if he prays for himself; in that case I will do it for myself too, despite everything. I find it no less childish to pray for someone else, asking that everything will go well for him: at the most we can ask that he will have the strength to endure the trials. And by praying for someone, you give them some of your own strength. –
p. 687-688
July 20 [1942] Monday night, 9:30.
This was the meaning of my prayer today, in the early morning:
"My God, this time is too hard for fragile beings like me. After it, I know, will come another time much more human. I would like so much to survive in order to transmit to this new era all the humanity that I have preserved in myself in spite of the facts I witness every day. This is also the only way to prepare for the new times: to prepare them already within ourselves. I am so light inside, so perfectly free of resentment, I have so much strength and love inside me. I would like so much to live, to contribute to prepare the new times, to transmit to them this indestructible part of myself; because they will come, certainly. Don't they already rise up in me day after day?"
That was pretty much my prayer this morning. I knelt with total spontaneity on the sisal carpet in the bathroom and the tears rolled down my face. And that prayer, I think, gave me strength for the whole day. –
Now I'll read a little news. I persist in maintaining my lifestyle against all odds, even though I type a thousand letters a day from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and get home at 8, with bruised feet and no dinner yet. I will always find an hour for myself. I remain entirely true to myself, I will not resign myself, I will not weaken.
Could I even continue to do this work if I did not draw every day on the great reserve of calm and quiet that is within me?
Yes, my God, I am very faithful to you against all odds, I will not let myself be destroyed, I persist in believing in the deepest meaning of this life; I know how to live from now on, I have great certainties, and... and this will seem incomprehensible to you, but I find life so beautiful and I feel so happy. Isn't that extraordinary? I wouldn't dare to confide in anyone so openly. –
p. 691
[Wednesday] July 22 [1942], 8 a.m.
My God, give me strength, not only spiritual strength, but also physical strength. I want to confess to you, in a moment of weakness: if I have to leave this house, I won't know what to do. But I don't want to waste a single day worrying about it. Take these worries away from me, because if I had to carry them on top of everything else, life would be impossible! I am very tired this morning, in all my body, and I hardly have the courage to face the work of the day. I don't believe much in this work; if it were to be prolonged I would end up, I believe, totally amorphous and discouraged. However, I am grateful to you for having torn me away from the peace of this office to throw me into the middle of the suffering and worries of this time. It would not be difficult to have a romance with you in the protected atmosphere of an office, but what counts is to take you, intact, everywhere with me and to remain faithful to you against all odds, as I have always promised you. When I walk through the streets like this, your world gives me a lot to think about - no, think is not the word, I try to penetrate things with a new meaning. I often have the impression that I can look at our whole era with my eyes, like a phase of history whose ins and outs I can discern and which I can "fit into its place" in the great whole. And I am especially grateful that I feel neither resentment nor hatred, but that I feel a great acquiescence which is something other than resignation, and a form of understanding of our time, strange as it may seem! We must know how to understand this time as we understand people; after all, it is we who make the time. It is what it is, it is up to us to understand it as such, in spite of the fright that its spectacle sometimes inspires us.
I follow a clean inner path, increasingly simple, increasingly bare, but nevertheless paved with kindness and trust. –
p. 693
Letter to Henny Tideman. Westerbork, Wednesday, August 18, 1943. (excerpt)
"You who have enriched me so much, my God, allow me also to give with my hands. My life has become an uninterrupted dialogue with you, my God, a long dialogue. When I stand in a corner of the camp, my feet planted in your earth, my eyes raised to your sky, my face is sometimes flooded with tears - the only outlet for my inner emotion and gratitude. In the evening too, when I lie in my bed and meditate in you, my God, tears of gratitude sometimes flood my face and that is my prayer.
I have been very tired for a few days, but it will pass like everything else; everything progresses according to a deep rhythm that is unique to each of us and people should be taught to listen to and respect this rhythm; it is the most important thing a human being can learn in this life.
I do not struggle with you, my God, my life is one long dialogue with you. I may never become the great artist I would like to be, for I am too well sheltered in you, my God. Sometimes I would like to draw little aphorisms and stories with drypoint, but the first word that comes to my mind, always the same, is: God, and it contains everything and makes everything else useless. And all my creative energy is converted into inner dialogues with you; the swell of my heart has become wider since I've been here, more animated and more peaceful at the same time, and I feel that my inner richness is constantly increasing." -
p. 897-898