Hillesum, E. (1996). An interrupted life: the diaries, 1941-1943; and, Letters from Westerbork. Henry Holt and Company, Inc.
Hence that painful longing that could never be satisfied, the pining for something I thought unattainable, which I called my creative urge. I believe it was this powerful emotion that made me think that I was born to produce great works (p. 14).
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All that beauty would have gone like a stab to my heart, and I would not have known what to do with the pain. Then I would have felt the need to write, to compose verses, but the words would still have refused to come. I would have felt utterly miserable, wallowed in the pain, and exhausted myself as a result. The experience would have sapped all my energy. Now I know it for what it was: mental masturbation (p. 14).
I was just as deeply moved by that mysterious, still landscape in the dusk as I might have been before, but somehow I no longer wanted to own it. I went home invigorated and got back to work (...). I no longer "masturbated" with it (p. 15).
The writing was about as well: it was just another way of "owning", of drawing things in more tightly to oneself with words and images (...). And now that I don't want to own anything any more and am free, now I suddenly own everything, now my inner riches are immeasurable (...) once again I find that I am open to an experience that makes me forget myself (p. 15-17).
I make very high demands on myself and in inspired moments consider myself quite capable of meeting them, but inspiration doesn't last forever, and in my more mundane moods I am filled with sudden fears that I might not fulfill the promise of those "exalted" moments. But why do I have to achieve things? All I need to do is to "be", to live and to try being a little bit human. One can't control everything with the brain; must allow one's emotionsand intuitions free play as well. Knowledge is power, and that's probably why I accumulate knowledge, out of a desire to be important. I don't really know. But Lord, give me wisdom, not knowledge. Or rather, the knowledge that leads to wisdom and true happiness and not the kind that leads to power (p. 46-47).
What I really want is a man for life, and to build something together with him. And all the adventures and transient relationships I have had have made me utterly miserable, tearing me apart. But I always lacked the strength to resist, and my curiosity always got the better of me (p. 17).
Love of mankind is greater than love of one man. For when you love one person you are merely loving yourself (p. 33).
And yet my brain, my capable brain, tells me that there are no absolutes, that evrything is relative, endlessly diverse, and in eternal motion, and that it is precisely for that reason that life is so exciting and fascinating, but also very very painful. (...) Do I demand absolute love from others because I'm unable to give it myself? And then I always expect the same level of intensity, when I know from my own experience that it cannot last. And I take flight just as soon as I notice the other becoming lukewarm (p. 49-50).
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I simply refused to do what needed to be done, what lay right under my nose. I refused to climb into the future one step at a time. And now that every minute is so full, so chock-full of life and experience and struggle and victory and defeat, and more struggle and sometimes peace, now I no longer think of the future, that is, I no longer care whether or not I shall "make it", because I now have the inner certainty that everything will be taken care of (p. 19).
To live fully, outwardly and inwardly, not to ignore external reality for the sake of the inner life, or the reverse -that's quite a task (p. 25)
I feel like a small battlefield, in which the problems, or some of the problems, of our time are being fought out. All one can hope to do is to keep oneself humbly available, to allow oneself to be a battlefield. After all, the problems must be accommodated, have somewhere to struggle and come to rest, and we, poor little humans, must put our inner space at their service and not run away. In that respect, I am probably very hospitable; mine is often an exceedingly bloody battlefield, and dreadful fatigue and spliting headaches are the toll I have to pay. Still, now I am myself once again, Etty Hillesum, an industrious student in a friendly room with books and a vase full of oxeye daisies. I am flowing again in my own narrow riverbed, and my desperate involvement with "mankind", "world history" and "suffering" has subsided. And that's as it should be, otherwise on might go mad (p. 31).
Sometimes I long for a convent cell, with the sublime wisdom of centuries set out on bookshelves all along the wall and a view across the cornfields -there must be cornfields and they must wave in the breeze- and there I would immerse myself in the wisdom of the ages and in myself. Then I might perhaps find peace and clarity. But that would be no great feat. It is right here in this very place, in the here and now, that I must find them. But it is all so terribly difficult, and I feel so heavyhearted (p. 36).
With all the suffering there is, you begin to feel ashamed of taking yourself and your moods so seriously. But you must continue to take yourself seriously, you must remain your own witness, marking well everything that happens in this world, never shutting your eyes to reality. (...) I want to live to see the future, to become the chronicler of the things that are happening now (p. 41).
I also have the feeling that all the problems of our age and of mankind in genera have to be battled out inside my little head (p. 45).
"You are not really as chaotic as all that, it's just that you refuse to turn your back on the time when you thought being chaotic was better than being disciplined" (p. 33).
All this devouring of books from early youth has been nothing but laziness on my part. I allow others to formulate what I ought to be formulating myself. I keep seeking outside confirmation of what is hidden deep inside me, when I know that I can only reach clarity by using my own words (...) if at the ende of a long life I am able to give some form to the chaos inside me, I may well have fulfillled my own small purpose (p. 35-36).
I still lack a basic tune; a steady undercurrent; the inner source that feeds me keeps drying up, and worse still, I think much too much. My ideas hang on me like outsize clothes into which I still have to grow. My mind lags behind my intuition (p. 37).
Life is composed of tales waiting to be retold by me (p. 44).
I must be grateful to have all this time to myself, so let me use it well in God's name (p. 39).
I really must become a bit simpler. Let myself live a bit more. Not always insist on the results straightaway. (...) Thinking gets you nowhere. It may be a fine and noble aid in academic studies, but you can't think your way out of emotional difficulties. That takes something altogether different. You have to make yourself passive then, and just listen. Reestablish contact with a slice of eternity (p. 46).
When I cycled home yesterday, so unspeakably sad as heavy as lead inside, and heard an airplane overhead, I was suddenly struck by the notjion that a bomb might put an end to my life, and I felt liberated. It's been happening more often, that feeling that it's easier not to go on... (p. 49).
I dwell too much on my sensuality, after all it only lasts a few days at a time, this rising wave. And that little bit of sensuality is what I then try to project onto the whole of life, until it overshadows all the rest (p. 50).