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Etty Hillesum: An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork

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Etty Hillesum
Etty Hillesum

Etty Hillesum was a Dutch writer and diarist, born on January 15, 1914, and died on November 30, 1943. Her works are known for their profound personal insights and philosophical reflections on human existence. more

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“Theodora dreamed over the fire just beyond the tips of her toes, and Eleanor thought with a deep satisfaction that her feet were handsome in their ed sandals; what a complete and separate thing I am, she thought, going from my red toes to the top of my head, individually an I, possessed of attributes belonging only to me. I have red shoes, she thought —that goes with being Eleanor; I dislike lobster and sleep on my left side and crack my knuckles when I'm nervous and save buttons. I am holding a brandy glass which is mine because I am here and I am using it and I have a place in this room. I have red shoes and tomorrow I will wake up and I will still be here.”

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“I often think that he's the only one of us who's achieved immortality. I don't mean in the sense of fame and I don't mean he won't die someday. But he's living it. I think he is what the conception really means. You know how people long to be eternal. But they die with everyday that passes. . . They change, they deny, they contradict- and they call it growth. At the end there is nothing left, nothing unreveresed or unbetrayed; as if there had never been an entity, only a succession of adjectives fading in and out of an unformed mass. How do they expect a permanence which they never held for a single moment? But Howard- one can imagine him living forever.”

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“he told me i was like a poem, all kinds of feelings bundled into one but i am a song without melody, a screeching noise you don't want to hear i am like an ointment but for the wrong wound; i can't heal you but i would burn i am like that paragraph you delete before sending an okay the last drop of coffee still stuck on your discarded cup i am the rubber band on your wrist, i am lost as soon as you set me down and like the moon on a moonless night i am there but not in your world, not in your eyes, not in your heart. i could have been your comfort shoe, but i broke your feet and you discarded me so now I'm just an occupied space on your shelf you don't use anymore I'm like the stain on the mirror when you're taking pictures; an irritation that stays like the push and shove on the subway station that doesn't make you stop and stare but the one that keeps you moving, completely unaware i'm the stranger on the street that you see yet you don't your eyes pass through me, not in focus, not in the zone i'm not the art kind of beautiful, i'm the beauty that lies there, ignored my existence is poetry, unnoticed, unaware, invisible to your eyes and you just keep moving and i stay, i stay, i stay right there”

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“In fact I've got to thinking not that there's a baby growing inside me, but that there's another heart inside. Lying very still on my back at night, I can feel it beating away. Zig, zig, zig, zig, goes the tiny heart, beating at a faster pace and to a different rhythm than my own. Holding my breath, I have to lie completely still in order to sense the tenuous vibrations. Zig, zig, zig, zig, the fragile and busy motion of this second heart.”

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“What did the woman tell you?" she asked. "What did she say when she took my hand?" "That she could see everything inside you," he said. "And then she told me what was there." Juliana didn't press any further. She wasn't at all sure she wanted to know what was inside of her.”

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