Etty Hillesum
"An interrupted life" and "Letters from Westerbork"

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).

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).