Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence: A Voegelinian Analysis

Etty Hillesum

and the Flow of Presence f

Books in the Eric Voegelin Institute Series in Political Philosophy: Studies in Religion and Politics Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism, by Albert Camus; translated with an introduction by Ronald D. Srigley Voegelin and the Problem of Christian Political Order, by Jeffrey C. Herndon Republicanism, Religion, and the Soul of America, by Ellis Sandoz Michael Oakeshott on Religion, Aesthetics, and Politics, by Elizabeth Campbell Corey Jesus and the Gospel Movement: Not Afraid to Be Partners, by William Thompson-Uberuaga The Religious Foundations of Francis Bacon’s Thought, by Stephen A. McKnight

Books in the Eric Voegelin Series in Political Philosophy The Philosopher and the Storyteller: Eric Voegelin and Twentieth-Century Literature, by Charles R. Embry The Constitutionalism of American States, edited by George E. Connor and Christopher W. Hammons Voegelin Recollected: Conversations on a Life, edited by Barry Cooper and Jodi Bruhn The American Way of Peace: An Interpretation, by Jan Prybyla Faith and Political Philosophy: The Correspondence between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, –, edited by Peter Emberley and Barry Cooper New Political Religions, or an Analysis of Modern Terrorism, by Barry Cooper Art and Intellect in the Philosophy of Étienne Gilson, by Francesca Aran Murphy Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin: A Friendship in Letters, –, edited by Charles R. Embry Voegelin, Schelling, and the Philosophy of Historical Existence, by Jerry Day Transcendence and History: The Search for Ultimacy from Ancient Societies to Postmodernity, by Glenn Hughes Eros, Wisdom, and Silence: Plato’s Erotic Dialogues, by James M. Rhodes The Narrow Path of Freedom and Other Essays, by Eugene Davidson Hans Jonas: The Integrity of Thinking, by David J. Levy A Government of Laws: Political Theory, Religion, and the American Founding, by Ellis Sandoz Augustine and Politics as Longing in the World, by John von Heyking Lonergan and the Philosophy of Historical Existence, by Thomas J. McPartland

Etty Hillesum

and the Flow of Presence   

f Meins G. S. Coetsier

      

Copyright ©  by The Curators of the University of Missouri University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri  Printed and bound in the United States of America All rights reserved     

    

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Coetsier, Meins G. S. Etty Hillesum and the flow of presence : a Voegelinian analysis / Meins G. S. Coetsier. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: “Using the views of Eric Voegelin on the nature of consciousness, Coetsier explores the mystical thought expressed in the diaries and letters of Etty Hillesum, who died at Auschwitz at twenty-nine, revealing the inner development of her mystically grounded resistance to Nazism and the symbolism of her spiritual journey”—Provided by publisher. ISBN ---- (alk. paper) . Hillesum, Etty, –. . Jews—Netherlands—Biography. . Holocaust, Jewish ( –)—Netherlands. . Netherlands— Biography. . Voegelin, Eric, –. I. Title. DS.NH  .—dc  ø This paper meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z., . Design: Kristie Lee Typesetter: The Composing Room of Michigan, Inc. Printer and binder: Integrated Book Technology, Inc. Typefaces: Adobe Garamond and Carlton Publication of this book has been assisted by a contribution from the Eric Voegelin Institute, which gratefully acknowledges the generous support provided for the series by the Earhart Foundation and the Sidney Richards Moore Memorial Fund.

   Mary Keogh Timothy Hamilton Stephen Tuohy





ix



xiii



Spiritual Filter 



Etty Hillesum 



The Letters and Diaries 

 

Eric Voegelin  Etty Hillesum in the Flow of Presence 













vii



I owe the completion of this book to the patience and helpful criticism of many people. It is now almost five years since the reflections of Eric Voegelin entered my philosophical journey. During my stay in Ireland, his writings introduced me to the philosophy of experience and symbolization. I was struck by his rearticulation of the experience of the In-Between, the central locus for the recapture of reality historically lost to consciousness. The existential authenticity of the language symbols that Voegelin uses has challenged me to be aware of an attunement to the flow of presence in my own life. Meditating on his philosophical symbols has helped me realize that the experience of such attunement to the flow of presence is the key to being human. To Voegelin, therefore, I owe my first thanks. During my stay in Dublin, I studied the works of Etty Hillesum, a young Dutch woman. Considering my own Dutch nationality and the historical background and sufferings of some of my family members during World War II, I have tried to make my philosophical approach to her work as “real” as possible. I visited Etty’s family home in Deventer, Amsterdam, where she studied; Camp Westerbork in the Netherlands, where she was detained; and Auschwitz in Poland, where she was imprisoned and murdered. In the light of my research journeys and of those visits to Auschwitz and Westerbork and as a result of having had the privilege of reading and studying the original diaries of Etty Hillesum in the Dutch language in the Jewish historical museum of Amsterdam, I have gradually become aware of how Etty Hillesum brought “mind” and “heart” together in a personal attunement to the flow of presence. She helped me see the deeper reality of the “hart” (heart) ix

x

Acknowledgments

and “liefde” (love) in an experience that is beyond words. To her, my warmest thanks. I would like to thank Gabriel Slattery for his vital encouragement. This book owes an incalculable debt to him. He has been unsparing with his time, enthusiastic interest, and critical support. What I valued most was the patience he exercised in allowing my understanding of Voegelin to evolve gradually, as I, a native Dutch speaker, struggled with the latter’s often complicated technical vocabulary. He also guided my exploration of Voegelin’s thought in relation to Etty Hillesum’s letters and diaries with tolerance and good humor. I will remember his kindness with gratitude. Warm thanks go to Fr. Brendan Duddy and Joe McCarroll for the hours of philosophical debate in which we engaged. It was during these encounters that the idea for this study took shape. The book could not have been written without their help, humor, and, at times, fiery criticism. I want to thank McCarroll especially for his golden suggestions and ongoing support. My meeting with Brendan Purcell (University College Dublin) not only helped me clarify the direction of my thought but also brought this study to America. I wish to thank Ghent University and especially the FWO, Flanders, Belgium, for having given me the FWO-aspirant scholarship. Their trust and financial support means a lot to me. In this line, I also want to thank Ronald Commers, head of the department of philosophy and moral sciences, and the director of the EHOC, the Etty Hillesum Research Center, Klaas A. D. Smelik, for the essential parts they played in writing this book. Smelik’s efforts and hard work to publish the complete edition of Etty Hillesum’s writings, both in Dutch as well as in English, is a timeless gift to us all. I sincerely thank Smelik and Commers for their personal encouragement, humor, and dedication over the last years. The Etty Hillesum Center, Deventer, the Netherlands, provided me with the opportunity to be able to do research there on several occasions. I gratefully acknowledge my debt of thanks to the staff members, who also brought me into contact with Denise de Costa, who became my adviser for the Hillesum part of the book. I would like to thank her for her invaluable suggestions and courteous advice in relation to the life and works of Etty Hille-

Acknowledgments

xi

sum. Her warm analysis of the life of Etty provided a stimulating starting point from which to research the letters and diaries. I also would like to thank the staff members and scholars of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and the Center for Prayer and Dialogue in Auschwitz, Oswiecim, Poland; the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC; the Eric Voegelin Institute, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana; the Anne Frank Museum and the Library of the Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam; the Memorial Center Camp Westerbork, the Netherlands; the Lonergan Center and the Jesuit Library of the Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy, Dublin. A special thanks goes out to the Irish Province of the Society of Jesus and the librarians of the Milltown Institute, who were always so generous with their time and assistance. Writing a book is a lonely endeavor, so the encouragement, love, and understanding of friends is paramount. In this I have been fortunate. My friends abroad as well as here in Belgium have been enormously supportive and generous to me. I would like to thank them all most sincerely. Warm thanks go to Dorothea and my own family for their love, faith, and trust in me and their constant encouragement at every stage of the research and the writing of this book.



Works by Etty Hillesum EH EHe

Etty: De nagelaten geschriften van Etty Hillesum –, ed. Klaas A. D. Smelik Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, –, ed. Klaas A. D. Smelik, trans. Arnold J. Pomerans

Works on Etty Hillesum EHF

Etty Hillesum in facetten, by Ria van den Brandt and Klaas A. D. Smelik EHISS Anne Frank and Etty Hillesum: Inscribing Spirituality and Sexuality, by Denise de Costa, trans. Mischa F. C. Hoyinck and Robert E. Chesal AAZZ Van Aandacht en Adem tot Ziel en Zin: Honderd woorden uit het levenbeschouwend idioom van Etty Hillesum, by Ton Jorna and Denise de Costa EHHBS Etty Hillesum,  –: Een historisch-biografische studie, by Els Lagrou

Works by Eric Voegelin CW,  CW,  CW,  CW,  CW,  CW,  CW, 

Anamnesis: On the Theory of History and Politics Published Essays – Order and History, vol. I, Israel and Revelation Order and History, vol. II, The World of the Polis Order and History, vol. III, Plato and Aristotle Order and History, vol. IV, The Ecumenic Age Order and History, vol. V, In Search of Order xiii

xiv

CW,  CW,  CW, 

Abbreviations

What Is History? And Other Late Unpublished Writings The Drama of Humanity and Other Miscellaneous Papers, – Autobiographical Reflections

Etty Hillesum

and the Flow of Presence f



Spiritual Filter The start of the millennium precipitated a sense of turning point, of a before and after, and occasioned innumerable reflections seeking to identify the issues that would shape the new epoch. Among the issues that have so far emerged as likely to be of major impact, at least in the new century, are family dysfunction and its legacy of emotional, psychological, and sexual disorientation; the ongoing modern, and now postmodern, crisis of values and identity in the West and elsewhere in the wake of its radical secularization; the search for new meaning and values in a world after ideology as the old ideologies are ever-more-widely seen as exhausted, misdirected, and ineffectual social forces for real human liberation and social progress; and the eruption onto the world stage and into global consciousness of a new anti-Semitic totalitarianism and religious fundamentalism with the events of /, one of the defining moments thus far of the new century, events that are having a significant impact in my native Netherlands. Some of the elements of the response to this new global totalitarian tension are on a military and law-enforcement level; but there is widespread agreement that the decisive response has to be cultural. So, once again, we have a role to play in articulating persuasively the values on the basis of which it is possible for individuals, groups, and communities with different values and backgrounds, different attitudes toward religion and a range of ethnic origins, to come together in mutual respect and form a successful, functioning society and state. In a search for political order in our new millennium, I introduce the 



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

Dutch Jewish thinker Etty Hillesum and analyze her Letters and Diaries  (EH, EHe) in the light of Eric Voegelin’s philosophy of history. The lives and writings of Etty Hillesum and Eric Voegelin have something to offer to our time as we search for the spiritual, intellectual, cultural, and religious symbols to articulate what is happening and how to move ahead in responding to these milestone issues and events. Their lives witness to Europe’s biggest trauma of the twentieth century: the destruction of reality committed by alienated human beings who persecuted and murdered  million Jews (including Hillesum) and millions of others for their perceived deviation from, and inferiority to, the “Aryan race.” Both authors, exiled by the times in which they lived, testify to an experience of the “divine presence,” which they discovered in the course of their search for a solid ground of existence. It is precisely their honest search for this solid ground, their experience of “divine presence,” and their rich articulation of reality that make this book so valuable for the contemporary search for meaning. Etty Hillesum’s experience, I would suggest, may have the potential to speak to a greater number of people precisely because it works at a “lower” level. It starts as the diary of a confused and troubled young modern woman, reflecting on the turmoil and longings of her life. Then, without warning, it shifts gear. Etty Hillesum was startled into dialogue by, and with, a Presence she found irrupting into what thereby, for her, became mapped and cordoned off as the center of her consciousness. Where she has gone first, I suspect, many like-minded others may follow. It is the purpose of this book to offer a philosophical context drawn from the work of Eric Voegelin that will put in the hands of readers of The Letters and Diaries a way of taking the measure of the spiritual breakthrough they disclose. Since the book tries to facilitate both fields—Hillesum as well as Voegelin studies—I include two biographies. In chapter three, for those . Hillesum, Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, –. First published as Etty: De nagelaten geschriften van Etty Hillesum, –. Hillesum’s letters and diaries were written in Dutch, but she introduces German words without explanation, sometimes reflecting the Jungian linguistic perspective of her German therapist and lover, Julius Spier. These German terms are neither translated, footnoted, nor explained in the Dutch text. In this book, I comment where necessary on Dutch or German usage and its significance.

Introduction



readers who know Hillesum but are not familiar with Voegelin, I present a short biography (CW, ) of Voegelin, focusing in particular on the historical context of World War II, and I give a brief introduction to his philosophical work. Similarly, for those who are not familiar with Hillesum’s life and works, chapter one contains her biography, and chapter two gives an introduction to The Letters and Diaries. In this way, without omitting essential historical material on both authors, a broad rage of readers can benefit from this book. In the final chapter, Hillesum’s writings are brought to light through a Voegelinian analysis of The Letters and Diaries.

 It is surely not an exaggeration to describe Etty Hillesum’s life as living in hell. She and her family were literally chased by anti-Semitism and Nazism through Europe: first from east to west (Riva Bernstein, Etty’s mother, fled Russia for the Netherlands) and later from west to east (from Amsterdam, to Westerbork, to Auschwitz-Birkenau), until they were finally murdered. The life of Etty Hillesum moved from family dysfunction, through emotional, sexual, and interpersonal struggles for healing, passing through profound personal chaos and distress, only to be engulfed in the waves of Nazi genocide sweeping across Europe. She was imprisoned in the Westerbork concentration camp in the Netherlands and sent from there to death in Auschwitz, Poland, at twenty-nine years of age. As we follow her intimate reflection on her troubled life as it unfolds in The Letters and Diaries, however, another side to her life comes to light. What starts out as a diary of self-analysis undertaken for therapeutic reasons begins to break out into an interior conversation with a Transcendent Other encountered as a Presence immanent within the Center of her inmost being. In shocking, radiant pages, we witness the flowering of this transcendent dialogue into a remarkable, out-of-place serenity, altruism, even forgiveness, together with an authoritative, sharp representative consciousness of being . See also Geoffrey L. Price, Eric Voegelin: A Classified Bibliography.



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

an Everywoman discovering and living out a paradigmatic response to the ideological mass murder she could see was soon to devour her. As a present-day mystic, she was living heaven in hell. As such she speaks to our age, our new millennium, in a multitude of ways. The Letters and Diaries mirror current issues of epidemic family dysfunction, sexual revolution and chaos, emotional and interpersonal distress, and disorientation, confusion, and despair. Hillesum’s personal search for meaning confronts an age of exhausted traditions struggling to be reborn from originating experiences that seem so often to be tantalizingly elusive. Perhaps this Jewish woman, who read so deeply the signs of her times, still has something to teach us about how to read the signs of ours. Her rediscovery of what true interior religious experience is, and how it says no to violence, is so timely. Amid atrocity, Etty discovered beauty. Faced with a fearful, “Nazi-eclipsed” reality, she fearlessly attuned herself to “the flow of life” (“stroom van leven”) and was utterly alert to mystery. Living in hope (“hoop”) while the world around her was breaking (“breken”) down, she clung to a faith in the goodness of humanity. Etty Hillesum used the Dutch symbol “hoop” (hope) more often in the letters from Westerbork than in her diaries (AAZZ, –). It is striking that the Dutch verb hopen hardly appears in the first few diaries. In the beginning she used “hoop” only in a day-to-day context (e.g., “hoping” to concentrate, “hoping” to find). In her letters, she often wrote “ik hoop dat . . .” (I hope that). The symbol hoop throughout her writings is mainly focused on ordinary things: that she may stay healthy, or work properly, or will keep contact with people. In Westerbork, Hillesum found herself between “hoop” and “wanhoop” (despair): “After feeling really low for ages, you can suddenly rise so high above earthly misery that you feel lighter and more liberated than ever before in your life. I am now very well again, but for a few days I was quite desperate. Equilibrium is restored time and again” (EHe, ). Hillesum used the word breken (breaking, being broken) in different ways (AAZZ,  – ). She experienced “breakdown” in society. Breken in The Letters and Diaries, however, refers mostly to her inner experience of being “broken.” She understood the experience of breken as an opportunity for spiritual and human growth. In writing about her inner processes, she

Introduction



also used symbols such as afbreken (to interrupt), open breken (to break open), doorbreken (to break through), and naar buiten breken (to break out). Along the way, Hillesum transgressed boundaries and broke taboos in terms of the Jewish and Dutch social and cultural contexts of the time. She kept herself alive by writing (schrijven). Hillesum managed to transform her exile, imposed by a deformed Nazi reality, into a “nomadic consciousness” (EHISS, ) or awareness of the “divine presence.” She attempted to transform the “meaninglessness” of her exile by emphasizing that what is “meaningful” (het zinvolle ). She tried to nurture life (het leven) wherever she was: I am ready for everything, for anywhere on this earth, wherever God may send me, and I am ready to bear witness in any situation and unto death that life is beautiful and meaningful and that it is not God’s fault that things are as they are at present, but our own. We have been granted every opportunity to enter every paradise, but we still have to learn to handle the opportunities. It is as if I shed further burdens from moment to moment, as if all the divisions there now are between men and nations are being removed for me. There are moments when I can see right through life and the human heart, when I understand more and more and become calmer and calmer and am filled with a faith in God that has grown so quickly inside me that it frightened me at first but has now become inseparable from me. (EH, ; EHe, –)

Hillesum was an example of someone who did not know what would happen to her in the next week or even the next afternoon. Instead of pretending to know what the future held, she returned repeatedly to the source within herself of the encounter with “God.” Gradually, this encounter with the divine transvalued the inner horizon from which she interpreted and responded to what was happening to and around her. In a stark and immediate manner, Etty’s life and writings bring us face to face with someone living a tumultuous and precarious present. Her life moved toward an unknown future that she sensed was converging quickly on her own, her family’s, and her people’s murder. Within this climate of ideologically deliberate and systematic terror, Hillesum’s Letters and Diaries record a surprising series of responses to a di-



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

vine presence she stumbled upon in the course of a self-exploration, originally undertaken at the suggestion of her therapist, Julius Spier. From the “Centre” that these encounters built up within her consciousness and character, a truly astonishing peace blossomed. This development is all the more amazing in view of the context of the mass murder that she felt bearing down upon her and all her Dutch and European fellow-Jews. Through The Letters and Diaries, we can feel and follow Hillesum’s refusing to allow herself to become terrified and disoriented by the fate that was rushing toward her. She maintained an equanimity, a sense of the goodness of life and being alive, and an attitude of other-centered support. She kept a solidarity that evokes wonder every time one reads her writings. This inner peace and positivity and her concern for those around her are the existence in truth, the new order in her life that radiated from the inner meetings between her soul and the presence she found there. A key difference between Etty Hillesum and many of her contemporaries, who had been exposed to broadly the same ideological currents and intellectual fashions and lived through the same terrible historical events, is her personal rediscovery of an existential interior openness to the divine. It is matched by an equally original and authentic struggle to articulate this experience and its therapeutic and transfigurative reverberation throughout her character. In only a few years, her writings chart a remarkable transformation. Springing from sources deep within her, the cultural forces that had shaped her had ill-equipped her to achieve such astonishing and unforgettable articulation. Here is a personal odyssey, a spiritual turn-around, an emotional healing, an emergence of representative consciousness, that is eminently worthy of study. Etty Hillesum’s writings are a work of spiritual stature that would bear much fruit as the subject of a meditative interpretation. She has important things to say about the search for meaning. The Letters and Diaries present three interrelated aspects that command philosophical attention. ) Her writings allow the reader to follow an intellectually gifted, emotionally troubled young woman struggling with several dimensions of her life. The Letters and Diaries express a view from within of autobiographical narrative as a “spiritual matrix” and “midwife” (Plato, Socrates) of personal development in the very process of establishing and bringing about radical

Introduction



shifts in personal identity before the reader’s eyes. Hillesum was trying to clarify what it meant to be a woman in her time and had been shaped and harmed by a dysfunctional parental relationship. She was trying to understand and heal her own turbulent inner life while struggling to find an appropriate way to live her emotional and especially her sexual life. Hillesum expressed the tangle of different strands of her life that were developing at the same time. So, we see intertwined personal developments taking place as we read. ) The Letters and Diaries are the writings of a Jewish woman during the Third Reich. They are a lived but at the same time reflective response to totalitarianism. Hillesum was aware that she was in a process that would lead her and her fellow Jews to their murder in the extermination camps. The writings give the reader an insight into someone who was achingly conscious of what it meant to be a human person while experiencing that experience’s polar opposite: a totalitarian ideology committed to extinguishing individuality. Yet Etty Hillesum adopted an atypical stance: she made a clear-eyed decision not to respond to this totalitarian system by seeking to escape from it or to oppose or resist it by force of arms. Although not a “practicing” or even a “believing” Jew in any conventionally recognizable sense, she nonetheless chose to stay with “her people,” knowing that she was going to be murdered. ) The writings give the reader a view from within of experience at the very point and moment of its emergence at the center of consciousness. In the midst of her writings, there is an irruption of openness toward the transcendent, which she articulates in her own individual way, crafting the symbols for this experience as she goes along. Etty Hillesum had a strong conviction of the representative status, “authority,” and value of the experience she was going through. She speaks of encountering the divine presence in the Center (“Centrum”) of her consciousness and repeatedly addresses the divine, reaching a striking and even strange, “positive” attitude toward the situation in which she found herself. She describes feeling a remarkable attitude of benevolence toward everyone she meets in Westerbork. The often sudden and significant “bursts” of personal development seem to have taken place in her at all levels over the short period covered in her writings. In this way, the writings of Etty Hillesum take their place alongside the



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

other modern philosophies that seek the meaning of symbols in the experiences that motivated and engendered them and which they were forged to articulate. Finally, there is a dramatic contrast between her writings and those of many others in similar situations.

 As a native German, born in Cologne, Eric Voegelin had to find an answer to this central German experiential problem, the burning question: What went wrong, that Adolf Hitler could rise to power (CW, :– )? What were the reasons for it? How could we, as thinking human beings, allow these atrocities to take place? What are the consequences? This question and Voegelin’s intense awareness of Europe’s need for radical spiritual reform after his experience of the intellectual and general breakdown of Europe before and during World War II, was a constant inner backdrop for his scholarship. Although he was not a Jew, he was moved by what he had seen and experienced, and he started his philosophical quest by trying to recapture a reality that had been lost, brutalized, or scarred (CW, :: “Why Philosophize? To Recapture Reality!”). A key difference between Voegelin’s philosophy of experience and symbolization, interpretation and history, and the philosophies of many of his contemporaries is a centrality throughout his entire philosophical and scholarly enterprise of a personal experiential responsiveness to the divine presence moving within human consciousness (CW, ). This key difference exists despite the fact that he and many of his contemporaries lived through broadly the same historical events and were exposed to the same ideological and philosophical currents. On the basis of this personal receptivity, Voegelin recovered and developed the classical philosophical insight that the soul is moved by the divine presence within, which is the constitutive core not only of philosophy but also of the main experiences that motivated and engendered other historical modes of human experience. . For instance: “Central Experiential Problem: Hitler’s Rise to Power” and “The Experiential Occasion of the Lectures: Schramm’s ‘Anatomy of a Dictator.’” See CW, :–.

Introduction



Under the influence of Plato (CW, ), Voegelin became what he calls a “spiritual realist.” He saw that his own altered spirit, formed and molded by his response to the German fall into totalitarianism, had to be linked with the integrity of philosophy and the academic life in order to become socially effective. In search of his humanity and in acceptance of his own past, he discovered “the flow of presence” and became a philosopher of experience and symbolization. Like Plato in many ways, Voegelin pointed out how one could recognize “the flow of presence” as an event, a leap in being, through which the love of wisdom enters as an ordering force into human existence. In The Letters and Diaries we read how Hillesum became gradually aware of “the flow of presence” and how her response to “the flow” in many ways became the core of her character and its principal ordering and reordering force.

   To read Etty Hillesum, we need to acquire a perspective, a horizon, and a framework that highlight the core development she underwent. Here, I believe, Voegelin has something to offer us. His philosophy of experience and symbolization encourages us to reenact her writings imaginatively; more, to retrace, to undergo something like the breakthrough she achieved. As David Walsh writes in his After Ideology, Voegelin is one of a number of major thinkers who not only offered diagnoses of the spiritual disorder constitutive of modernity, but by doing so, grew in and through and beyond the spiritual crisis of the age. In a less systematic and theoretical way, the diaries and other writings of Etty Hillesum achieved something similar; and since the crisis that Voegelin and the other thinkers Walsh presents is still with us, these breakthrough experiences beyond contemporary closure are as needed as ever. Hillesum, like Voegelin, also felt committed to search for adequate language symbols, and in doing so she discovered “the flow of presence” in her life (“leven”). Hillesum’s positive attitude toward “life” (“leven”) is significant. She witnesses to the fact that her life is beautiful (“schoon”) and meaningful (“zinvol ”) despite the awful war and mass murder of her own people (AAZZ, – ). Having been robbed of her nationality, like her Dutch



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

contemporary Anne Frank, Hillesum entered the land of writing, where she could grow and develop and freely express her inner (“innerlijke”) feelings without being hemmed in by restrictive measures. She was able to describe and symbolize her experience as she lived it. She did not pin herself down with her pen but committed herself to inscribing her experience as an “eternal flow” (“eeuwige stroom”). From very early on, Hillesum had a vision: “A hand that was busy writing” (“Een hand die schreef ”) (EH, ; EHe, ). She referred to her hand as “the writing hand” (“die schrijvende hand ”) (EH, ; EHe, ). “Writing” (“schrijven”) was her life. A diary entry from October , , shows she was in dialogue with God: “God You have given me the gift of reading, are You also willing to give me the gift of writing [‘te kunnen schrijven’ (EH, )]” (EHe, ). For Hillesum, this gift was the ability to write about her “innerlijk,” the “inner,” “inward,” or “internal.” She referred to the “inner world” of emotions, thoughts and feelings (“innerlijke wereld ”) and to the meaning and value of “the inner life” (“het innerlijk leven”). The term innerlijk appears in more than two hundred pages of The Letters and Diaries. Hillesum wrote about the experience of her “inner life” (“innerlijk ”) with the following symbols: “innerlijk rijk ” (internally rich), “innerlijk landschap” (inner landscape), “innerlijke horizonten” (inner horizons), “innerlijke werkelijkheid ” (inner reality), “innerlijk terrein” (inner territory), “innerlijk gebied ” (inner region), “innerlijk (be)-leven” (the inner life), “innerlijke wereld ” (inner world), “m’n innerste innerlijk ” (my utmost inner), “innerlijk centrum” (inner center), “innerlijke stem” (inner voice), and “innerlijk wezen” (inner being [soul]) (AAZZ, ). Hillesum was also aware that “it is always hard to get to the bottom of things with words” (EH, ; EHe ). In her first diaries (), she expressed her difficulties in writing down her emotions and feelings. But it was precisely for this reason that she wanted to write: to penetrate to the essence of “being.” “I still can’t write. I want to write about the reality behind things” (EHe, ). Another way to attune herself to the flow of writing and to connect herself to the timeless Presence was to write down quotations of other inspirational figures: “It may be odd, but I really love to write down sentences, passages, etc., that affect me deeply; whenever I do that I feel, so to speak, physically close to the words;

Introduction



it is as if I were stroking them with my fountain pen, although that sounds a bit crude” (EH,  –; EHe, ). The rich philosophical and religious symbolizations of The Letters and Diaries make them an excellent source of illustration for Voegelin’s symbol “the flow of presence.” The diary years of Hillesum’s life challenged the status quo around her in every way and illustrate what Voegelin calls “the Drama of Humanity” (CW, ). In the introduction to Hitler and the Germans (CW, ) Brendan Purcell refers to Hillesum and Voegelin as participants in “the biography of the flowing presence,” inviting us to be differently: The “Hitler and the Germans” lectures are a powerful anamnesis of the humanity of each man and woman as imago Dei, as participating in “the biography of the flowing presence” [emphasis added]. Only within the context of that presence can we ground a judgment regarding the absolute dignity of each victim and the awful guilt of each attempt at desecrating that image of God. Etty Hillesum ( –), herself a Dutch Holocaust victim, while at Westerbork concentration camp spoke of her “love for all our neighbours, for everyone made in God’s image.” And she reveals the source of actualization of her participation in universal humanity to be her intense consciousness of the fact that each one is a you-for-God, when she writes, “My life has become an uninterrupted dialogue with you, my God, a great dialogue.” Voegelin’s belonging, in its existential height and depth, to the worldwide “community of suffering” would not claim comparison with Etty Hillesum’s. Yet, by his reminding us that our judgment of the Nazi period must be made within the perspective of her “great dialogue,” he is inviting us too, not just to think or to speak differently, but to be differently. (CW, :) . Central to tracing the development of the flow of presence is The Drama of Humanity and Other Miscellaneous Papers,  –. This volume contains the significant Candler Lectures that Voegelin delivered at Emory University in  under the title “The Drama of Humanity,” previously available only on tape. An unedited transcript of tape recordings of these lectures can be found in Voegelin Papers, box , file I, Hoover Institution Archives. The lectures represent a summary overview of Voegelin’s understanding of history at that time, showing the conceptual framework he was bringing to bear on the problems involved in understanding what is going ahead in human history. . See especially “The Philosophical Context of the ‘Hitler and the Germans’ Lectures” in the editors’ introduction, CW, : –.



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

Voegelin’s analysis of experience and symbolization will thus be employed to explore the life and writings of Etty Hillesum. This reflection will display the way in which Voegelin’s conceptual framework contributes significantly to a more nuanced and more profound understanding of Etty Hillesum. It will also show the way in which Etty Hillesum’s life and writings put Voegelin’s theoretical apparatus “through its paces” and demonstrate its considerable analytic power. This book seeks to explore what is happening in Hillesum’s writings, drawing on both Voegelin’s philosophy of experience and symbol and his analysis of Order and History, modernity, ideology, and totalitarianism. What Voegelin has in common with Hillesum is a strong sense of the value of the human person. As a young political philosopher during the rise of Nazism, he had written studies of the race idea and of totalitarian ideologies as “political religions.” His passionate yet fiercely intellectual rejection of totalitarianism and his different response to its approach invite comparison with the similar situation and attitude of Hillesum; yet they differ in their “philosophies of action.” Voegelin went on to develop one of the most powerful analyses of the origins of symbols in experience, which he saw the need to explore from within modern philosophy. Making an in-depth use of Voegelin’s philosophy of experience and symbolization is irresistible when one tries to come to terms with the life, writings, and personal decisions of Etty Hillesum. As I cast around for an image to describe what I think Hillesum’s and Voegelin’s works represent, I am drawn back to Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s haunting image of the filter: Forming the “backbone of a new people” is not something that can be done as safely and light-heartedly as we are promised, at weekends and in our spare time, without giving up our scientific research institutes. No, it will have to be done on weekdays, as part of the mainstream of our life, in its most dangerous sector—and by each one of us in chilling isolation. A society so vicious and polluted, implicated in so many of the crimes of these last fifty years—by its lies, by its servility, either willing or en-

Introduction



forced, by its eagerness to assist or its cowardly restraint—such a society can only be cured and purified by passing through a spiritual filter. And this filter is a terrible one, with holes as fine as the eye of a needle, each big enough for only one person. And people may pass into the spiritual future only one at a time, by squeezing through. By deliberate voluntary sacrifice . . . There is no way left for us to pass from our present contemptible amorphousness into the future except through open, personal, predominantly public (to set an example) sacrifice. We shall have to “rediscover our cultural treasures and values” not by erudition, not by scientific accomplishment, but by our form of spiritual conduct, by laying aside our material well-being and, if the worst comes to the worst, our lives. The first tiny minority who set out to force their way through the tight holes of the filter will of their own accord find new definitions of themselves, either while they are still in the filter, or when they have come out on the other side and recognize themselves and each other. It is there that the word will be recognized, it will be born of the very process of passing through. . . . It would not be inaccurate to call them for the moment a sacrificial elite.

This is what Etty Hillesum and Eric Voegelin have to offer the search for political order in our new millennium: a recovery of the lost foundations of society and the lost center of the person. They inspire us to see that glimpse of heaven in our personal experiences, enabling us to hold onto our humanity in any man-made hell and take up the long work of resistance to it, through an attunement to “the flow of presence.”

. Solzhenitsyn, “The Smatterers,” –.



Etty Hillesum Etty Hillesum was a Dutch Jewish woman drawn by religious and intellectual temperament toward mystical experience and philosophical selfexploration, but equally drawn by her emotional and social temperament toward engagement with the full range of life’s experiences, especially on the interpersonal level. Her short and interrupted life (–) during World War I (–) and World War II ( –) was lived across two dark and cruel chapters of modern history. It was a depressing, complex, and turbulent era, decisive for the history of Europe, the fate of the Jews, and the economical and political instability of the world. With the outbreak of war in , Germany began the first stages of what would become the Holocaust, involving premeditated and industrialized massacre of between  and  million people. As a Jew, Hillesum belonged to the largest group of the “undesirables” and was part of Nazi Germany’s primary target for mass destruction. By , the Nazi leadership had already begun to implement “the final solution,” the genocide of all Jews in Europe. She was sent first to Westerbork labor camp in the Netherlands and then transported to Auschwitz in Poland, one of the six extermination camps . Michael Burleigh, “Nazi ‘Euthanasia’ Programs,” in Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race, ed. Dieter Kuntz and Susan Bachrach (Durham: University of North Carolina Press, ). The publication of this book accompanied an exhibit of the same name at the United States Holocaust Museum, which ran from April , , through October , . See also Charles Patterson’s “Customer Review” of Deadly Medicine on amazon.com. Patterson is the author of Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust (New York: Lantern Books, ).



Etty Hillesum



built by the Nazi leadership specifically to kill the Jews. Hillesum’s fate was caught up in the unfolding of this unprecedented systematic genocide that led her from being a young Dutch woman to a Jewish target for ideological mass murder. Her life was swept up in and ultimately destroyed by the events of World War II, one of the bloodiest, most expensive, and most significant wars in history, a war that saw the end of an old political world order, to be followed by the establishment of the United Nations in  and the European Coal and Steel Community in  (at the Treaty of Paris), the forerunner of the European Union. Hillesum was emotionally and intellectually engaged on so many fronts that at first glance her life may seem fragmented by a welter of moods, emotions, and ideas. In her younger years, she loved to read books and was eager to meet boys. As a student, she studied law in Amsterdam, where she lived a wild and disorganized life with her friends. She moved house several times. Indeed, family life for all the Hillesums was chaotic, disordered, and hectic. Her biographers underline that she lived with a pen in her hand: she wrote many diaries and letters. The Diaries cover the first part of her life during World War II. She writes varied reflections and sometimes even rewrites them, to find a sense of meaning and order in her life and to come to terms with decisions to be made. Ten of Hillesum’s diaries have survived. Others were lost, among them those she kept in Westerbork. She also wrote numerous letters to friends and acquaintances, especially in Westerbork. The Letters describe the experiences and activities that made up her days and

. After reading Hillesum’s diaries and letters, artist Pieter Starreveld, who had known her personally, made a bronze sculpture of her head and one of her hands, writing. In , the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, received this sculpture, created circa  –. The artwork, a gift to the museum from the Friends of the Etty Hillesum Foundation, has been on display in the museum’s library. Other playwrights, sculptors, and composers responded to Hillesum’s oeuvre as well: Willem G. van Maanen wrote “Etty: Toneelstuk over Etty Hillesum” [Etty: A Play] (Baarn: de Prom, ); Julika Marijn took the role of Etty in her monologue “In duizend zoete armen” [In a thousand sweet arms], which was performed in  in Hillesum’s house at  Gabriël Metsustraat, in South Amsterdam; Margreet Blanken reevoked Hillesum’s words and emotional life in her solo act “Etty”; Ed de Boer composed Symphony no. , op. D, “Uit het dagboek van Etty Hillesum” [From Etty Hillesum’s Diary].



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

the atmosphere surrounding the more significant moments, with many perceptive remarks about events taking place around her. Hillesum’s handwriting, which she herself characterized as “illegible wriggly lines,” looks strikingly modern in some places, while in others it has a passing resemblance to Arabic. Her vocabulary is strikingly modern, too (EHISS, ). The Letters and Diaries (EH, EHe), which comprise almost six hundred pages of closely printed diary entries and more than one hundred pages of letters, express the history and her personal reflection on her life. The comprehensive range of her surviving writings, in which she tried to symbolize her experience, give us precious and tantalizing glimpses into her personality as her life enfolds. Hillesum was an intuitive woman living a deeply philosophical and spiritual life impelled by an urgent search for meaning and value. In his article “Etty Hillesum: ‘At One with All Existence,’” Peter King argues that the diaries “belong alongside the works of such figures as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Thomas Merton as authentic expression of a contemplative faith in our troubled times[. . . .] At the heart of the spirituality of Etty Hillesum is a profound awareness of what we might term ‘connectedness’ [. . . S]he describes a ‘feeling of being at one with all existence.’” In “Etty Hillesum: In Me Is the Earth and in Me Is Heaven,” Frans Maas conveys that “mysticism enhances one’s quality of life. In Etty Hillesum’s diaries and letters we discover that this can be true even in the bewilderment of the holocaust.” As a consequence of her spiritual search, her “mysticism of connectedness,” Hillesum learned to kneel in prayer, and she dedicated her hand to “God” in order to write. Or conversely, it was the deep experience expressed in her writings that brought a significant change and order within herself and toward God. The unity between reflection and life, philosophy and action, was a fruit of her writings: it was a journey of discovery, a quest for self-understanding. Two of Hillesum’s phrases are often repeated in the secondary literature: “The thinking heart of the barracks” (EH, ; EHe, ), and her last fa. King, Dark Night Spirituality,  – . . Maas, Spirituality as Insight, . . Also used as title for a collection of Hillesum’s letters published in : Het denkende hart van de barak: Brieven van Etty Hillesum.

Etty Hillesum



mous words in the diaries, “We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds” (EH, ; EHe, ). They are paradigmatic articulations of the central driving forces in her life. Etty Hillesum’s life is best understood as passing through three phases: family background, Amsterdam, and the war.

  Childhood Etty (Esther) Hillesum, daughter of Louis (Levi) Hillesum and Riva (Rebecca) Bernstein, was born in her parents’ home at Molenwater  Middelburg, the Netherlands, on January , . Louis and Riva had three children: Etty, Jaap, and Mischa. The Hillesum family could be described as belonging to the middle class, and they were socially well-established. Her father taught classical languages, and after moves to Tiel and Winschoten in Groningen Province, he and his family settled down in  in Deventer in Overijssel Province, a medium-size city in the east of Holland, beautifully situated by the IJssel River. Before the war, Deventer had , inhabitants, of which  were Jews. When they first came to Deventer, the Hillesums lived at Duymaer van Twiststraat . Etty joined the fifth year in School A (a primary school) in what was then Zwolschestraat and later went to the gymnasium (grammar school) where her father became headmaster in . The family was part of the ethnic Jewish Community, de Joodse Gemeente, but did not participate actively in Jewish religious practices (EHHBS, ). Louis Hillesum worked on Saturdays, so the family rarely visited the synagogue. This must have been a conscious choice, since both Etty’s father and mother had an orthodox Jewish background (EHHBS, ). When Etty left Deventer for her university studies in Amsterdam, the family moved to Geert Grootestraat . They remained in Deventer until January , when, like all Jews, they were required to move to Amsterdam. There they lived at Retiefstraat  until they were deported to Westerbork during the great raid of June  and ,  (EHe, ). . Also used as title for a study on Hillesum by Hans Bendien: Men zou een pleister op vele wonden willen zijn: Reacties op de dagboeken en brieven van Etty Hillesum.



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

Louis (Levi) Hillesum Etty’s father, Louis, was born in Amsterdam on May , , the youngest of four children. His father, the tradesman Jacob Samuel Hillesum, was married to Esther Hillesum-Loeza, after whom Etty was named. When Louis Hillesum had successfully finished his classical languages studies at Amsterdam University (cum laude), he received his first teaching job in Middelburg. In , he moved to Hilversum gymnasium. Louis was deaf in one ear and had impaired vision, which caused him various troubles in maintaining order in class. Consequently, he became an extremely strict teacher and had to search a few times for a smaller gymnasium. He worked as a teacher in Tiel (), in Winschoten (), and finally in Deventer (), where he became assistant headmaster of the gymnasium. Four years later, he was appointed headmaster (), until he was forced to retire in November  (EHe, x–xi, ). Although he was strict, Louis Hillesum was a quiet, thoughtful, and humorous man. His colleagues and students praised his scientific knowledge and pedagogic qualities. He was a disciplined scholar: books and intellectual pursuits filled his life. He studied the Jewish and Christian scriptures, read French literature, especially Pascal, explored various German philosophers, and studied Freud (he read Das Unbehagen in der Kultur). Fascinated by culture, education, and Jewish identity (even while being highly assimilated), Louis Hillesum was among Deventer’s leading citizens, and even in Westerbork he maintained these contacts and cultural interests (EHe, x–xi). Louis’s great respect for learning and his attraction to the Bible can be inferred through Etty’s own attitudes, as indicated by these phrases from her diaries and letters: “The great lesson from Matthew ” (EHe, ); “When I last took out the Bible . . .” (EHe, ); “That Stundenbuch now lies under my pillow, together with my small Bible” (EHe, ); “How glorious the Psalms are!” (EHe, ); “Christine, opening the Bible at random . . .” (EHe, ). Developing her love for language and the classics, Etty followed courses at her father’s gymnasium in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, completing them successfully (EHHBS, ). Els Lagrou suggests that this focus could indicate both Hillesum’s early literary interest as well as her Jewish consciousness. Etty had much in common with her father’s philosophical outlook on

Etty Hillesum



life, but she did not share the skepticism which kept him away from social contacts and denominational organizations. His intellectual attitude of situating himself above mundane reality characterized him to the end of his life. Etty’s letters from Westerbork witnessed to her father’s strength when he faced the horrific alienation of the camp: “He passes his days here with half a dozen little Bibles—Greek, French, Russian, etc.—and keeps surprising me with particularly apposite texts” (EHe, ). “My father is lying sick in a shed with  people. ‘The lower Depths,’ he chuckles. He chuckles a great deal. Little Bibles in various languages and French novels are strewn all over his untidy blankets [. . .] Father thanked her with extreme courtesy[. . . .] We chuckle together a lot, Father and I; you can’t really call it laughing. He has a primitive sense of humor” (EHe, – ). Hillesum’s Letters and Diaries showed her love for her father, though they also show that she was aware of his shortcomings. On November , , she wrote: “Then something dawned on me. At a fairly advanced age, my father had traded all his uncertainties, doubts, and probably also his physical inferiority complex, his insurmountable marriage problems, for philosophical ideas that, though held in perfect sincerity and full of the milk of human kindness are totally vague” (EH, ; EHe, ).

Rebecca (Riva) Bernstein-Hillesum Etty’s mother, Riva, was born to Michael Bernstein and Hinde Lipowsky in Potchev, Russia, on June , . Following a pogrom, she was the first person in her family who fled from Surash in Chernigol, Russia, to the Netherlands in , at the age of . Having escaped the “hunting” by shaving her head and wearing soldier’s clothes, Riva would carry the fear of persecution for most of her life. In February , she arrived in Amsterdam and moved in with the Montagnu family, at Tweede Jan Steenstraat . Her younger brother Jacob set his feet on Dutch soil on May , followed by her parents on June . Riva was described in the Amsterdam Registry as a teacher of Russian, and she married Louis Hillesum on December , . Not even a year later, after her brother had married Marie Mirkin in , the entire family, including Jacob’s newly born daughter Rahel Sarra, emigrated illegally to the United States. Only Riva and her husband remained behind (EHe, xi, ).



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

Etty wrote in The Letters and Diaries that it was hard for anyone to trace back whether her mother was truly Jewish or not. Riva’s parents had vanished, and Etty’s mother certainly did not look Jewish. Considering Riva’s unclear Jewish origin and Russian background, she could have been “Aryanized” quite easily. Amsterdam lawyer Benno Stokvis tried for this reason to Aryanize the Hillesum family. Riva Hillesum made contact with Stokvis of her own accord and asked him to try this strategy. Although great progress was made, Louis Hillesum asked him to stop. If Riva had been Aryanized, Etty would have been considered “half-Aryan,” something she more than likely would not have wished (EHe, ; EHHBS, ). It is generally agreed that Etty’s mother had an unbalanced and difficult temperament. Riva has been characterized as lively, extroverted, and dominant. Etty shared the emotional tonality of her mother’s life. She was passionate, chaotic, and quite the opposite to her father in almost everything. Etty seemed to have looked like her mother, and her inner life, too, turned out to be quite similar to Riva’s. Etty, however, recognized her mother’s shortcomings. On October , , she wrote about the psychological and emotional contradictions and complications of her mother’s personality: Mother is a model of what I must never become. There she was, well dressed, almost elegant, young for her sixty years, vivacious and vital, but I know that she is only that for moments at time. She has to pay for one day of forced vitality by feeling awful for days. A disorganized life, moaning and complaining about feeling tired, spoiling the atmosphere in the house as she has been spoiling it her whole life long. (EH,  –; EHe, )

Despite her fears, her disorganization, and “spoiling the atmosphere,” Riva brought a warm Russian Slavic touch to the Hillesum family. Etty inherited her mother’s affection for and interest in Russia as well as her proficiency in Slavic languages. Although their communication had been difficult in the early years, Riva and Etty gradually improved their relationship while they were at Westerbork (EHe, xi).

. B. J. Stokvis, Advocaat in Bezettingstijd (Amsterdam: Polak & Van Gennep, ), .

Etty Hillesum



Jaap (Jacob) Hillesum Etty’s brother Jaap was born in Hilversum on January , . He was named after Louis’s father and was two years younger than Etty and four years older than Mischa, her youngest brother. Like his sister, Jaap went to the gymnasium in Deventer. He seemed to have been a quiet and intelligent young man. Although mentally unstable, he wrote poems and was attractive to women. Like his father, he tried to be scientific and rational. His moods were mild, and it appears he was somewhat cold. Jaap and Etty respected each other’s intellect, but they had very little feeling for one another (EHe, xi; EHHBS,  – ). In , having matriculated, Jaap moved to Amsterdam to begin studies in medicine. He had already discovered several new vitamins by the time he was seventeen. This assured him a place in the academic laboratories, an unusual honor for a medical student. He and Etty shared a number of lodgings in Amsterdam. In October , he came to stay at Han Wegerif’s house, a large residence in South Amsterdam at  Gabriël Metsustraat, where Etty also lived during her studies. Jaap remained here for eleven months. The Amsterdam register of births, deaths, and marriages shows that there were psychiatric problems on both the maternal and the paternal sides of the Hillesum family (EHISS, ). Jaap was admitted to a hospital for psychiatric care a number of times. He was always open about the fact that he suffered from schizophrenia. He was able to diagnose himself when he needed treatment, and he would admit himself to a hospital. After his graduation, Jaap worked as a medical assistant at a Jewish hospital in Amsterdam (EHe, ). On October , , Etty reflected on Jaap’s presence in her life: Jaap is having a murderous effect on me one way or another, what with his icy, insecure intransigence, that arrogance which only hides his insecurity. I feel awfully sorry for him, and he repels me. That is probably because he rather despises me, or at least I think he does. He once headed a letter he wrote to me during a sick phase with: Cogito, ergo sum. Credis, ergo non es. I think that antithesis between us is still there, and that it is irreconcilable. (EH,  –; EHe, ) . Cogito . . . non es. Translation: “I think, therefore I am. You believe, therefore you are not.” Variation upon “Cogito, ergo sum,” the words of the French philosopher René Descartes. (See EHe,  n .)



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

Michael (Mischa) Hillesum Etty’s youngest brother, Mischa, named after Riva’s father, was born in Winschoten in . He was a brilliant pianist, and he played works by Beethoven in public at the age of six. Mischa was said to have been one of the most promising pianists in Europe at the time. In , at the age of eleven, he went to stay with the Horowitz family in Amsterdam, where he was able to take piano lessons from George van Renesse, a professor at the Amsterdam Conservatory. Etty also stayed in their house for a few months when she first went to study in Amsterdam. Mischa went to school at Nicolaas Maesschool. In , he enrolled at the conservatory while continuing school at Vossius Gymnasium for the first three years. During the immediate prewar period as well as during the war, Mischa moved between Amsterdam, Deventer, and Apeldoornsche Bosch, the Jewish psychiatric hospital. Mischa apparently became psychotic when he turned sixteen. The resident hospital psychiatrist, who knew Mischa well, described him as “a bit of an odd man who made contact in a far-off manner, a young man with the sort of unaffected, slightly ironic expression you often find among schizophrenics” (EHe, ). After Rauter’s prohibition, on July , , of public performances by Jews—which included concerts—Jewish musicians such as Mischa Hillesum were only able to play at illegal private concerts or at home (EHe, ). Mischa’s talent as a musician dominated the daily course of the Hillesum’s household. On November , , Etty listened to her brother playing the piano: In the evening, Mischa. At first I had been opposed to it. I know too much of what is behind it, behind the mask as he sits at the piano, so I can no longer enjoy his music. But it turned out differently this time. I was deeply moved by his playing and wondered whether I truly understood his character, whether I did not take too one-sided a view of him by virtue of a rigid family complex and so judged him unfairly. (EH,  –; EHe, )

“Madhouse” Looking at Etty’s parents and their relationship, we could understand something more about Etty’s own inner chaotic life, where mind and heart

Etty Hillesum



were sometimes far apart. Her father and mother were experts in complaining: “‘In Deventer, you live like a cow,’ Father said, ‘nothing but being fed, and on top of that we are slaves to that big house.’ And Mother, in the afternoon, ‘In Deventer, I am a “myortviy chelovek,” a dead person, there’s no strength left for anything but housework’” (EH,  – ; EHe, ). Her parents led a very isolated existence in the house at  Geert Grootestraat, and Etty grew up in an ideological vacuum, which later contributed to her identity problems. The psychological instability of her brothers eventually resulted in their psychiatric hospitalization. Etty, however, seems to have reacted to the family vacuum by turning inward: she read constantly. She was quite mature for her age, but she feared that she would become ill like the rest of the family: “Ah, well, I must be out of my mind, like the rest of my family, something I always think when I feel the slightest bit desperate. But I know again now that I am not mad” (EH, ; EHe, ). It is not surprising that Etty refers to her home as “a madhouse.” The children were given considerable freedom. Mischa spent much of the day playing the piano. Etty’s father locked himself in his study, and her mother was preoccupied with the cooking. Etty reacted strongly to the way her mother was running the household. The frustration she felt found expression in her diaries: “Stop whining, for goodness’ sake, you shrew, you nag, carrying on like that.” Such are my inner reactions when my mother sits down to have a chat with me. My mother is someone who would try the patience of a saint. I do my best to look at her objectively, and try to be fond of her, but then suddenly I’ll find myself saying empathically, “What a ridiculous and silly person you are.” (EH,  –; EHe, )

Etty was aware of the effect the family had on her: “I always used to go to pieces in this madhouse” (EH, ; EHe, ). She felt her vital energies “were being sucked out” of her. She recognized positives in her parents but could not help observing that they tended to be wasted or misdirected, speaking of the “small fortune” in “talent and human worth, in both Father and Mother, but unused, or at least not put to good use” (EH, ; EHe, ). “Life in this house is bogged down in petty details” (EH, ; EHe, ). Etty



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

records bursting into tears on occasion when emotions ran high in the Hillesum “madhouse,” and she interpreted this as weakness and lack of objectivity on her part; but in truth her response was the objective distress of a sensitive, talented, and vulnerable young woman to a dysfunctional family situation: “Downstairs they are screaming blue murder, with Father yelling, ‘Go, then!’ and slamming the door; that, too, must be absorbed, and now I am suddenly crying since I am not all that objective really and no one can breathe properly in this house” (EH, ; EHe, ).

A Hand That Wrote Despite the difficulties she experienced in the “madhouse,” Etty was witty, lively, interested in reading and drawn to philosophy during her early adolescence in Deventer. In these ways, she was far ahead of her school friends. A trip to Paris when she was fifteen made an enormous impression on her. From her diary, we sense her excitement at receiving a passport and traveling abroad, an experience she could still remember many years later. I remember going to Paris as a fifteen-year-old innocent. The train thundering through ever-changing landscapes, the many new faces, the hubbub, the fresh impressions—it was overwhelming. I wanted to write something about it, and to my own surprise what appeared on my notepad was: “the world must surely have collapsed at least once in the lifetime of every individual, yet strangely enough it still exists.” (EH, ; EHe, )

From very early on, Etty made an attempt to explore and articulate her experience of reality through the medium of language. She had a strong urge to write. A sensitivity to the richness and depth of life and the marked inclination to reflection were evident in her early adolescence. She had a remarkable capacity for expressing her experience. As she entered her midtwenties, this quality matured into an exploration of life in all its aspects and contradictions. She continued to reflect and appreciate life in whatever circumstances she found herself (EHF, ). On Friday, October , , she wrote about the vision that had been emerging from her youth: “I think it is bound to be the ‘desk’ after all, and not having a family. That was always the case with me. Other girls had visions of husbands and children,

Etty Hillesum



but I used to have visions of a hand that was busy writing. I always saw a slender hand and lots of paper and the hand kept writing, writing, on and on” (EH, ; EHe, ).

   Studies Etty left her father’s school in . She went on to take her first degree in law at the University of Amsterdam, which she finished, in the words of journalist David Koning, “with high intelligence and playfulness” (words that were also used by Gaarlandt in his introduction of ). But according to one of Hillesum’s fellow students, Louis Zimmerman, this was not the case: Etty was not really interested in law. One wonders why such an independent spirit continued to study law instead of choosing a direction that was more suited to her temperament, such as Russian literature. From her mother, she had received a great love for and interest in Russia and Russian literature, and she enrolled in the Faculty of Slavic Languages after she completed her law studies. (She had not been able to find a job in the legal profession, which would have been difficult for a Jewish woman at the time.) She studied Russian under the guidance of Bruno Becker, who later recommended her as a teacher of Russian and en. Boas, “Etty Hillesum,” . . Louis Zimmerman was born in Amsterdam in  and first met Hillesum in left-wing, socialist milieus in . During the prewar years, they saw each other regularly; their mutual interest was largely political at the time. Hillesum often visited Zimmerman at home. After the war, he became a professor of economics (EHe, ). . Hillesum attended B. Becker’s course at the University of Amsterdam. Becker gave subsidiary courses in Russian language studies at three levels: beginning, intermediate, and advanced. When she was writing her diaries, Hillesum was in the advanced course. Becker used to call his students by their first name and their patronym, following the Russian custom. Hillesum was known as Esfira Lyudwigovna. Contact between the students themselves remained superficial. Those whom Hillseum met outside lectures and whom she mentions in her diaries were not Becker’s students. Hillesum’s fellow students describe the atmosphere in Becker’s lectures as cold and formal, but they remember Hillesum as relaxed and cheerful (EHe, ). . Hillesum typed out tests for the “Foundation for Psycho-technique,” organized a Russian course, and gave private Russian lessons. Clara van Mesdag, who took one of Hillesum’s courses in Amsterdam around , described Hillesum as a rather self-conscious teacher who was, nonetheless, charming and delightful company (EHe, , ).



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

couraged her to give private lessons in Russian to other students in order to make some sort of a living. People who knew Etty said that she acted like a native Russian woman: always busy, now joyful, now sad, now expressive, now chaotic. Karel van het Reve, who also studied Russian at the time, was very critical of her, however. On January , , Reve gave his reaction to Het Verstoorde Leven: Dagboek van Etty Hillesum, – (An Interrupted Life) in NRCHandelsblad, a Dutch newspaper. He was annoyed with the “teenage nature” (“het bakviskarakter”) of the beginning of the diary. He judged Etty’s moods, her ups and downs, her fantasies and eroticism, as more appropriate for a teenage girl rather than a mature woman. Reve even claimed that Etty had more to eat during the war than himself and that her knowledge of Russian was very poor. Reve held that Hillesum, as a student of Russian, was not as well known or as intelligent as some might have claimed she was. The professor’s perhaps overcritical response to Etty’s diaries caused a wave of misunderstanding of her writings in the early s (EHF,  –). Some reviewers, however, did respond with admiration to Het Verstoorde Leven, but often uncritically. Thus, the diaries met with mixed reaction upon their publication. Etty spent part of her life in the academic world of Russian language students and professors, such as van Wijk and Becker, and through them she made connections with the leftist student resistance movement. In her diary, Etty mentioned a number of friends and acquaintances from that time, using just their first names. From  onward, it was impossible for her to follow any academic courses. By the time she turned to psychology, World War II had broken out, and her life dramatically changed.

. Nikolaas van Wijk (born in Delden in ) was an internationally known scholar of Dutch and Slavonic languages. Van Wijk founded Baltic and Slavonic studies in the Netherlands and was a professor of this subject in Leiden from  until his death, in . He held the only chair in this subject in the Netherlands before . Van Wijk kept in touch with scholars of Slavonic Studies in both East and West. In The Letters and Diaries, Hillesum mentioned several students with whom she had made acquaintance while studying Russian in Leiden under van Wijk, and some of his students continued their studies in Amsterdam after his death (EHe,  –).

Etty Hillesum



Han Wegerif Etty’s life in Amsterdam was mainly centered on two specific groups of people: the so-called Spier group, and “the family” of five with whom she lived. Just before the war, she had moved to a large house at  Gabriël Metsustraat, in South Amsterdam. Her room on the third floor overlooked the Museumplein, the main square in Amsterdam, with the concert hall at one end, the Rijksmuseum at the other, and a skating rink in the middle. The owner of the house, a non-Jew, Han Wegerif ( –), was a sixty-twoyear-old widower. He had been married to Willemina Johanna Wegerif (born in ), who died in . They had four children: Ella, Willem Jan, Heleen Wilhelmina, and Hendrik Johannes (Hans) (EHe, ). Wegerif had his own accounting firm and had asked Etty in  to live at his house as a sort of housekeeper, as a “femme d’honneur.” In return for doing some housework, not something she was particularly good at, she received free board and lodging. Han often gave Etty a little pocket money (EHe, ); and although it was generally prohibited for Jews to house with non-Jews, it was precisely because of this role as housekeeper that Etty could live with Han. Exceptions were made by the authorities when residence was necessary upon the grounds of existing rental or labor contracts (EHe, ). Besides Etty and Han, others in the house were Han’s twenty-one-yearold son Hans, who studied economics; a German cook, Käthe Fransen; a moderate “social democrat,” Bernard Meylink; and a nurse, Maria Tuinzing, who later became one of Etty’s best friends. Most of them seemed to have had left-wing political sympathies. Etty usually called Wegerif senior “Papa Han,” although she soon developed a more intimate relationship with him. Han became both a father and a lover to her. Only the disapproval of his youngest son and the arrival of Julius Spier in Etty’s life would disturb their relationship. The liaison between Han and Etty was seen by acquaintances as a marriage. On April , , Etty wrote: “I have absorbed him into my life, he has become one of its constituents and can no longer be discarded without making the whole edifice totter” (EH, ; EHe, ). A day later she added, “I’ve been living as man and wife with him for five years, and it has left me with a great residue of peace” (EH, ; EHe, ). The Letters and Diaries between  and  indicate, however, that she



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

felt that she was not ready for marriage at this time. Han Wegerif was conscious of this. Concerning their sexual relationship, as with so many other life issues, Etty held a nonconformist position that contrasted with the norms and values of the social class and the times in which she lived. During the war, Han was involved with the Dutch Resistance against Nazi Germany. The Letters and Diaries are silent on this side of his life. According to Hillesum’s friend Swiep van Wermeskerken, Etty must have been familiar with Han’s activities, but she made it a rule never to speak or write about them (EHHBS,  – ). With the collapse of Dutch society, one did not know whom to trust. Even among friends, one was never sure of where one stood. Aware of this breakdown in trust, Etty wanted to create a community among the people in the house in order to be a sign of unity in a hostile Nazi environment: “But it seems a worthy task to keep this small community together as a refutation of all those desperate and false theories of race, nation, and so on. As proof that life cannot be forced into pre-set molds” (EH, ; EHe, ). Etty Hillesum lived with Han Wegerif until she moved to Westerbork in . Although Han was not the main love of her life, he gave her strength and peace in difficult times. On June , , Hillesum wrote: For the first time in ages I spend a good, intimate evening with Han. Without too many words. Wavy grey hair over a frail face. I have been watching him grow old of late. That is what happens to you when you are young, you watch a fiery and passionate lover gradually turn into an old man. As long as I can rid myself inwardly of every demand on him, I recognize that I love him very much. Tonight we sat by the open sun lounge windows, in peace and friendship, with a newspaper, a pipe, a book and a cup of chocolate, as if we’d been married for twentyfive years. (EH,  –; EHe,  –)

. A. G. (Swiep) van Wermeskerken was born in Amsterdam in . To distract herself from the Nazi terror, Swiep decided to learn Russian. Swiep reported that Hillesum was a good teacher and that they got along well. Swiep attended house concerts, where she met Spier (EHe, ).

Etty Hillesum



Julius Spier and the Spiercircle The other important circle that affected Etty’s life was the group around the German “psychochirologist” Julius Philipp Spier, whom Etty called S. in her diaries. Spier was born in Frankfurt in , and despite a twentyseven-year age difference between them, he became the love of her life. He left a successful business career at an early age to concentrate on a “new science” that he termed psychochirology (a special kind of palmistry). He trained as a therapist with Carl Gustav Jung, and in  he opened a practice in Berlin. Jung had advised Spier to make chirology his profession, since Spier’s talent for reading hands made a deep impression on him. Jung influenced Etty both indirectly, through Spier, and directly, through his publications (EHe, ). In , the twenty-nine-year-old Spier had married the twenty-six-yearold Hedl (Hedwig) Rocco; they were divorced in . (Because Hedl was not Jewish, their children were “half-Aryan,” in Nazi terminology. This situation later gave rise to Spier’s hope that his deportation at least would be postponed [EH, ].) One of the reasons for the divorce was Spier’s affair with Vilma Fichtmüller (born in Berlin in ). About the time his relationship with Fichtmüller broke down in the mid-s, Spier met Hertha S. Levi in Berlin. She became his student and later his fiancée. As Etty did later, Hertha Levi worked with Spier and acted as his secretary. Spier immigrated to the Netherlands in November , since being a Jew in Nazi Germany was becoming increasingly dangerous. Spier escaped well before die Pogromnacht, the Night of Broken Glass in November , after which many Jewish artists and thinkers were arrested. Hertha fled to London around . During the war, they corresponded via Switzerland. Hertha Levi seems to have known little of Spier’s life in Amsterdam, in particular his newly developed intimate relationship with Etty Hillesum. Spier, for his part, apparently remained determined to marry Hertha as soon as it was possible (EHe,  –, ). As in Berlin, Spier soon became the center of a circle of students in Amsterdam. On February , , Etty was introduced to Spier by Bernard Meylink as an “object,” that is, her hands were to be examined during a course session. Spier’s personality made a great impression on Hillesum, and she asked him if she could go into therapy with him. He suggested a num-



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

ber of exercises to start the day, such as “breathing exercises” or “the Buddhist quarter of an hour” (EHe, ). Hillesum was very interested in Eastern philosophy from her reading. Spier encouraged his pupils to take fifteen minutes or half an hour each morning to withdraw and read a piece of religious or philosophical text, to think about it, and to write these thoughts down (EHe, ). Thus, it was Spier who advised Hillesum to keep a diary. He not only taught Etty to listen to herself, by “listening within” and “turning her attention inward” (“hineinhorchen”), but also to kneel and to pray, although kneeling is not a usual posture in Jewish prayer. Spier believed in a healthy and natural lifestyle. One of Spier’s passions was music. Etty met him at a music evening at the home of Mien Kuyper, where her brother and another pianist, Evaristos Glassner, played and where Spier used to sing. Adri Holm, Henny Tideman (“Tide”), Dicky de Jonge, Liesl Levie, and Etty frequently gathered at  Courbetstraat in South Amsterdam, where Spier rented a room in the house of the Nethe family. He talked to them about palm prints and psychology, and he also became a therapist to each one of them. After three or four therapy sessions, Etty became his assistant, his “Russian secretary” (as he called her), and, after a while, his lover and intellectual partner. On March , , she wrote about Spier: His penetrating, clear gaze, his full, sensual mouth; his bull-like, burly figure and his feather-light, easy movements. A fifty-four-year-old in whom the struggle between the spirit and the flesh is still in full cry. And it seemed as if I were being crushed under the weight of that struggle. I lay buried under his personality and could not get away; my own problems, which seemed to be much of the same kind, made me flounder. (EH, ; EHe, )

The Diaries Spier seemed to have had a major influence on Hillesum’s psychological and spiritual development. His motto, “become who you are” (from Pindar), was a powerful inspiration to Etty. The first text of The Letters and . For Pindar, see, e.g., Frank J. Nisetich, Pindar’s Victory Odes: Translation, Introduction, Prefaces (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, ).

Etty Hillesum



Diaries is not a diary entry but a letter to “Dear Herr S.” (EH, ; EHe, ), and it is written in German, as Spier was a Jewish refugee from Germany. Etty had an excellent command of German, which is why she and Spier often communicated in German when speaking and when writing. The letters and quotations in German in the diaries must be seen in this context. Etty’s letter to Spier reveals that he wanted to help her to get rid of psychosomatic symptoms, which originated in her conflicted family dynamics. Etty began to write her diary in March , when she was twenty-seven years old. She wrote at her desk in the small room on Gabriël Metsustraat. Her life with Han Wegerif was rather uncomplicated, but her inner experience was marked by profound distress and division. She had difficulties with her own behavior and with her fluctuating moods (“stemmingen”) and was tormented by existential questions as she searched for order in her life. With Spier’s encouragement, she attempted to probe the depths of her being, wherein she encountered a presence that she symbolized as “God.” The self-exploration she undertook, which is recorded in the diary, slowly bore fruit in a newly emerging order in her life. On June , , she wrote about the diary: And a diary, well now, a diary is really only there to help one come to terms with all one’s different kinds of moods, at least that’s how it is with me. I also told him [Spier] that the reason why most people don’t bother about themselves is sheer indolence and intellectual laziness— and lack of courage. And finally, that for me, the source and starting point of all creative acts is my own state of mind. (EH, ; EHe,  – )

Hillesum also became conscious that what she was writing represented a testimony of faith and love created during the darkest hours of modern history: I hope I shall remember everything that happens to us so that one day I’ll be able to retell it all. It is so different from everything you read in books, altogether different. I can’t write about the thousand little things I witness every day, but I want very much to remember them. I have noticed that my powers of observation register everything unerringly, and that gives me special joy. With all the destruction, with all my tiredness, suffering, and everything else, this is constant: my



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

joy, the artist’s joy in observing things and shaping them mentally into an image of his own. I shall read the last expressions on the faces of the dying with compassion, and preserve them. (EH, ; EHe, )

Rainer Maria Rilke Hillesum read voraciously during the war. With Spier’s help, she learned to read more consciously and autonomously (EHe, –). The literature that became an essential part of her life can be put into four categories: (i) Russian literature (e.g., Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Pushkin); (ii) art literature (e.g., Van Gogh, Rodin, Goya, Da Vinci), psychological literature (e.g., Carl Jung, Alfred Adler), and religious literature with a philosophical emphasis (e.g., Rittelmayer, Augustine, Thomas à Kempis, together with the Bible, which she came to know through her father and Spier); (iii) classical and contemporary writers (e.g., Plato, Shakespeare, Kierkegaard, Kant, Du Perron, Marsman); and last, and specially, (iv) the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Spier encouraged and helped Etty to read Rilke. Sometimes he would quote from Rilke’s diary (EHe, ). Hillesum mentions in her diaries two works of Rilke’s letters: Briefe aus den Jahren  bis  and Briefe aus den Jahren  bis  (EHe,  – ). Etty found in Rilke what Celtic monastic spirituality called an anam chara, a soul mate. He is the author with whom she identified most: “At last I have my ‘Young Poet’ back” (EHe, ). She experienced a strong, perhaps “timeless” empathy between herself and Rilke and a profound familiarity, a feeling that he was ever-present to her. Rilke helped Etty in many ways. Feeling her own words insufficient, Etty began to invoke Rilke’s help in expressing her thoughts and feelings. Rilke’s poems reflected what Etty herself wanted to say. Through a meditative reading of his letters and poems, she became aware of a timeless quality that enabled her to regain some order in her life. He helped her to deal with her relationships with men, such as with Spier. Like Rilke, Etty began to believe that being a woman should not compel one to assume a stance of opposition to a man, but that women and men should realize that they are human beings living side by side. . Pleshoyano, “Etty Hillesum: A Theological Hermeneutic in the Midst of Evil.”.

Etty Hillesum



And perhaps the sexes are more closely related than people think, and perhaps the great revival of the world will consist of this, that man and maid, freed of all misconceptions and antipathies, will no longer seek each other out as opposites but as siblings and neighbors, coming together as human beings to share the heavy sexual burden that has been laid upon them, simply, seriously and with patience. (EH,  –; EHe, , . Quote from Rilke, Briefe an einen jungen Dichter, .)

Rilke also encouraged Etty to try to connect to her inner world, her inner reality. She began to radically shut out the outside world and to concentrate on what she called her “Weltinnenraum” (inner universe or outer space within), a favorite term copied from one of Rilke’s poems. Quoting from his Gedichte – (Sämtliche Werke, II, ), she writes: “Durch alle Wesen reicht der eine Raum: Weltinnenraum” (“Through every being single space extends: outer space within”) (EH, ; EHe, ). Her comment: “These seem to me to be the loveliest words I know, probably because, being so rounded and perfect they express what I am coming to experience more and more intensely” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum’s engagement with Rilke’s texts was intense. His poetry evoked a security in her, something no one could take away. Reading and quoting Rilke was for Etty almost a primary need. She realized that she was the same age as Rilke when he wrote these poems. Inspired by Rilke’s “voice” and love of Russian culture, she tried to discover her own “voice,” but finding appropriate language symbols in which to articulate it required a certain amount of patience. Until she found her own voice, Hillesum borrowed Rilke’s words: “One day I shall find my own words for the things I have to say; meanwhile I keep borrowing them from Rainer Maria” (EH, ; EHe, ). Rilke evoked this passionate wish in her: “For the time being, this is my most fervent desire: to read the whole of Rilke—everything he has ever written, every letter—to take it all in, and then to cast him off, to forget him and to live on my own substance again” (EH, ; EHe, ). Etty described herself as someone in training. Both Rilke and Spier were her teachers: “My greatest teacher during this time, beside S., has been Rilke. He is not simply my relaxation for the hours when my work is done, but fills my days and is part of my being” (EH, ; EHe, ). But Etty



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

also thought it was her task as a woman to educate men. The following passage appears to be inspired by Rilke and Spier: I put it to him [Spier] again that I thought woman’s historical task for the future was to show the man the road to his own soul through her soul. In the process, none of the erotic tension need be lost provided everything is given its rightful place, fitted in. And I also think that the most important pioneers of the future will be those men who have a large dose of femininity—and are yet real men—men like him [Spier] and like Rilke—that such men, yes, that they—here my powers of expression desert me—that they are signposts to the soul. And not the he-men, those Führers and heroes in uniform. Not the so-called “realmen”—but perhaps the kind of men I have in mind only exist in the imagination of women. (EH, ; EHe, )

It almost seemed that Rilke and Spier had taught Etty to become “indestructible” despite the breakdown all around her. This indestructible part of her soul she sometimes symbolized as “God”: “And yet there in the passage, amid all the gloom and the bustle, I was able to read a few Rilke letters, to continue living my own life. Despite the deadly fear I saw in all those faces. All those faces, my God, those faces!” (EH, ; EHe, ). In the middle of hardships, Etty Hillesum was still able to see the beauty around her. That inner security had developed under the inspiration of Rilke and the guidance of Spier. Their assurance gave her courage and strength to be there for other people, even in the most difficult circumstances. “I always return to Rilke. It is strange to think that someone so frail, who did most of his writing within protective castle walls, would perhaps have been broken by the circumstances in which we now live. Is that not further testimony that life is finely balanced?” (EH, ; EHe, ).

. On occasion, Rilke stayed at the castles of his friends, e.g., Friedelhausen Castle in Hessen, Duino Castle in Italy, Lautschin Castle in Bohemia, and Muzot Castle in Wallis, Switzerland (EHe, ).

Etty Hillesum



  Jew Although on her father’s side the Hillesum family was Jewish—Etty’s grandfather had been the head rabbi of the upper three northern provinces in the Netherlands—Etty and her brothers were not brought up in a Jewish environment. Modern scholars still discuss the question how “Jewish” Etty Hillesum actually was. Her writings after the war were received with a mixed reaction, especially in the Jewish community. Piet Schrijvers, professor of classical languages at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands, has written a well-documented analysis about why the Jewish community in the Netherlands after the war was so varied in its perception and understanding of Etty Hillesum (EHF, ). Etty’s progressive and autonomous lifestyle, not segregated from the surrounding secular society, stood in stark contrast to the more traditional “Jewish” way of living. Someone like Henriëte Boas, one of the most famous Jewish publicists of the late-twentieth century, had much to say on this matter. Schrijvers compares Boas’s thinking with that of Sem Dresden’s, whose nuanced approach he acknowledges as a “defense” against critical Jewish opinion of Etty Hillesum. He emphasizes the importance of Etty’s decision to be with her Jewish people, “trying to assist and help them” (“proberen voor anderen nog te zijn, wat we kunnen”) (EH, ; EHF ). From the content of The Letters and Diaries, we can see that Etty, who declined to call herself by her original Jewish name Esther, writes and describes herself as an assimilated Dutch woman. She hardly felt herself to be Jewish, nor did she make any real attempt to speak out about her Jewish faith or background (EHF, – ). In The Letters and Diaries, we do not find any references to Jewish religion or Jewish feasts and customs. She followed a non-Jewish Dutch educational program, although she did attend some Hebrew classes. In this, she could be said to have continued where her parents left off: according to the historical research of Els Lagrou (EHHBS ), Etty’s mother and father lived a fairly secularized lifestyle (EHF, ). What we do find in The Letters and Diaries is that anti-Semitic activities during World War II led to an increase in Etty’s expressly Jewish sentiment. The Nazi violence toward the Jews confronted Etty with her own “Jewish-



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

ness.” In her article “Growing up Banished: A Reading of Anne Frank and Etty Hillesum,” Yasmine Ergas prioritizes Hillesum’s Jewish identity above her female identity. The increase of Nazi pressure forced an awareness of her Jewish identity upon Etty. Although she was not a practicing Jewish believer, her Jewish origin became essential to her sense of identity (EHF, ). The Letters and Diaries, chronologically analyzed, indicate that around the months of June and July , the time of huge deportations, Etty was more or less forced to be present in a Jewish network and adopt a Jewish lifestyle. It is only at this point, after more than half a year of writing, that Hillesum addressed herself as a Jewish woman for the first time. Her Jewish self-understanding gradually grew, and in  Hillesum began to speak about “us,” meaning the Jewish people: “They are out to destroy us completely, we must accept that and go on from there . . . I shall not be bitter if others fail to grasp what is happening to us Jews” (EH,  – ; EHe, ). Ergas thinks that Etty herself gradually took on a Jewish identity, while Feldhay Brenner links Hillesum’s dawning Jewish identity to her special identification with Jewish victims. To make this clear, Brenner uses Jean Améry’s term Katastrophen-Judeseins (Catastrophe Jew) to indicate that Etty’s loyalty to her ethnic roots was only evoked by the presence of antiSemitism. It is a more negative way of saying that her Jewish identity developed merely because of strong feelings of solidarity and compassion with her fellow Jews. Lawrence Langer is even more critical, claiming that Etty neither affirmed nor denied her Jewish identity. According to him, she may have brought Christian attitudes to suffering into her reflection on the meaning of the fate she and her people were facing. This would explain, according to Langer, Etty’s “misconception” in thinking that she had to take

. Ergas, “Growing up Banished,”  – . . Brenner, Writing as Resistance: Four Women Confronting the Holocaust, . . The philosopher and literary critic Améry was not able to take on the fate of the Jews. He was brought up as a Christian, not as a Jew. Although he considered himself an outsider of his culture, he finally concluded that he was Jewish, in an intellectual and spiritual manner, but not by birth or social circumstances (EHF, ). See Améry, Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne. . Langer, Admitting the Holocaust. See chap. , “Understanding Atrocity: Killers and Victims in the Holocaust,” .

Etty Hillesum



on the fate of her people. He described Hillesum as melodramatic, excessive, and pitiful, but above all arrogant. Others argued that Etty’s final decision to undergo the fate of the Jews, rather than go into hiding, was an act of love and care in which her essential dignity as a Jew, as well as a person, became distinctly visible. Etty’s care, her action on behalf of others, her acceptance of suffering, and her understanding of history were the greatest expressions of her “Jewishness.” For Schrijvers, Etty has been perhaps more Jewish than most Dutch Jews have dared to admit. She was more Jewish than non-Jewish Dutch people were able to recognize and possibly even more Jewish than she herself ever realized (EHF, ).

Nazi Terror On May , , Hillesum wrote: “The threat grows ever greater, and terror increases from day to day” (EH, ; EHe, ). At the time Etty began to write, Holland was increasingly under the sway of Nazi terror. After Holland’s capitulation in May , the Germans began to isolate the Dutch Jews. Nazi Germany blamed the Jews as the cause of, for example, poverty, unemployment, and ill health. The Nazi ideology was based on many theories, but it offered just one solution: Jews had to be exterminated. When in February  the first anti-pogrom strike in European history broke out in Amsterdam, the Nazis intensified their pressure on the Jews and on any form of Dutch resistance. Hillesum wrote: Last night I wondered again if I was so “unworldly” simply because the German measures affect me so little personally. But I don’t fool myself for one single moment about the gravity of it all. Yet sometimes I can take the broad historical view of the measures: each new regulation takes its little place in our century, and I try then to look at it from the viewpoint of a later age. And the suffering, the ocean of human suffering, and the hatred and all the fighting? (EH, ; EHe, )

The Jews were thrown out of their jobs, and they were forbidden to shop in stores frequented by non-Jews; ghettoes were established and “work camps” set up. It was the intention of the German authorities to confine the Jews to certain areas by means of a removal permit. Because of the forced



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

removal of Jews from the provincial regions to Amsterdam, which began in January , the number of Jews in the city increased dramatically. In many instances, this relocation led to overcrowding of the available houses (EHe, ). Signs reading “Jews not allowed” or “Jews not welcome” appeared in more and more places in town and country. In April , the Germans launched their first major roundups. On April , , Hillesum was still positive: And life being beautiful and worthwhile all the same. Or at least that was what I was bold enough to proclaim. Werner began to look serious then. But we were so contented, the three of us together that night—the very night on which the “yellow star” was issued. And I said, “It is probably worth quite a bit being personally involved in the writing of history. You can really tell then what the history books leave out.” (EH, ; EHe, )

On April , , the Nazis had introduced the yellow Star of David, with black lettering on it, which then had to be worn by all Jews in the Netherlands. The purpose of the provision was to facilitate a distinction between Jews and non-Jews. Etty and all Jews over six years old had to wear a yellow star when going outside. Precise details on the appearance of the star were given, and it was also announced where and how it should be worn. The stars were issued by the Jewish Council for Amsterdam (EHe,  –, ). After having moved all the Jews they could find to Amsterdam, the Nazis declared the provinces judenrein (free from Jews). This meant that the Jews were now only allowed to be in Amsterdam (and in the camp in Westerbork). Despite the Nazi pressure, Etty kept a “wide sky” within herself: This morning I cycled along the Station Quay enjoying the broad sweep of the sky at the edge of the city and breathing in the fresh, unrationed air. And everywhere signs barring Jews from the paths and the open country. But above the one narrow path still left to us stretches the sky, intact. They can’t do anything to us, they really can’t. They can harass us, they can rob us of our material goods, of our freedom of movement, but we ourselves forfeit our greatest assets by our misguided compliance[. . . .] Our greatest injury is one we inflict upon ourselves. I find life beautiful, and I feel free. The sky within me is as

Etty Hillesum



wide as the one stretching above my head. I believe in God and I believe in man, and I say so without embarrassment. Life is hard, but that is no bad thing. (EH, –; EHe, )

The Jewish Council Through the influence of her brother Jaap and her friends, Etty was given a job as a typist in one of the departments of the Jewish Council. Becoming a member of this council was a way for Jews to gain exemption from transport for their parents. Etty’s motivation to join, however, was not to save herself or her parents (EHe, ): Everybody must follow the way of life that suits him best. I simply cannot make active preparations to save myself; it seems so pointless to me and would make me nervous and unhappy. My letter of application to the Jewish Council on Jaap’s urgent advice has upset my cheerful yet deadly serious equilibrium. As if I had done something underhanded. Like crowding onto a small piece of wood adrift on an endless ocean after a shipwreck and then saving oneself by pushing others into the water and watching them drown. It is all so ugly. And I don’t think much of this particular crowd either. (EH, ; EHe, )

As in other occupied countries, the council was formed at the instigation of the Germans to mediate between the Nazis and the Jews. The Nazis gave orders and then let the council decide how to implement them. The council was under the illusion that by negotiation it could save the Jews from the worst, but somehow Etty, who was not an “official member” of the Jewish Council, knew that this was intentionally deceptive: “Nothing can ever atone for the fact, of course, that one section of the Jewish population is helping to transport the majority out of the country. History will pass judgment in due course” (EH, ; EHe, ). Ostensibly, the council’s task was to decide who was fit to be sent away for “labor service” and who was indispensable at home; its real purpose, however, was to calm the fears of those Jews who were panic-stricken. In this way, the council became a subtle weapon in the hands of the Nazis. Despite her courage, Etty was quite nervous: “Later I noticed that my knees were shaking. It was simply a form to be filled in by the staff of the Jewish Council. They haven’t even issued me an identity number yet. I shall take



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

the few steps I have to. My turn may not come for a long time” (EH, ; EHe, ). In the first period, the Westerbork section of the Jewish Council fell under the Jewish Council of Amsterdam; its employees were not registered in Westerbork and thus not considered to be inhabitants of the camp. Therefore, the personnel of the Jewish Council regularly had leave to go to Amsterdam. The employees, like Etty, of the Jewish Council enjoyed many privileges, and the fact that the council could not really achieve anything for most of the inhabitants of Westerbork caused considerable tension between groups of Jews (EHe, ).

Westerbork An in-depth analysis of the role of the Jewish Council falls outside the scope of this study. What is relevant is that Etty began to work for the council on July , . At about this same time, a girl named Anne Frank, hidden in a house a few miles away, began writing her diary; during this same month, the first big street roundup took place in Amsterdam. The Nazis wanted to concentrate all the Jews, including Etty, in Westerbork, a transit camp, Durchgangslager, in the east of the Netherlands, not far from the German border. Westerbork was not itself an extermination camp, but it became the last stop before Auschwitz for more than , Dutch Jews. On July , , Hillesum is clear: “I must admit a new insight into my life and find a place for it: what is at stake is our impending destruction and annihilation, we can have no more illusions about that. They are out to destroy us completely; we must accept that and go on from there” (EH, ; EHe, ). Not wanting to hide from the Jewish fate, Etty volunteered to go to Westerbork with the Jews arrested in the roundups. In order to prevent her departure, Klaas Smelik and his daughter Johanna made a plan to kidnap . Klaas Smelik, born in Den Helder in the Netherlands in , survived the war and died in . He started his working life as a marine engineer. Later he became a journalist and also wrote books and radio plays. Smelik was one of the first radio-play writers in the Netherlands. He worked for the VARA (Socialist Broadcasting Corporation) and for the Dutch Broadcasting Company, following the cessation of the VARA in . Smelik toured the country by car to find material for his plays. In , on one of his journeys, he met Hille-

Etty Hillesum



Etty from the house in the Gabriël Metsustraat (Amsterdam) and hide her in their house in Hilversum. Later, when Etty was on the point of leaving for Westerbork, Klaas Smelik grabbed her and tried to convince her of the danger. “She wormed herself free and stood at a distance of about five feet from me. She looked at me very strangely and said, ‘You don’t understand me.’ I replied: ‘No, I don’t understand what on earth you’re up to. Why don’t you stay here, you fool!’ Then she said: ‘I want to share the destiny of my people.’ When she said that, I knew there was no hope. She would never come to us,” said Smelik. Others also offered Etty a hiding place, but she steadfastly refused this (EHe, ). In Westerbork, Etty Hillesum worked in the camp hospital. The hospital section had a maximum of , beds, a staff of ,, and  doctors. It lay in the southwest corner of the camp. One could not move freely between the ordinary barracks and the hospital ones but had to ask special permission in order to visit a patient in the hospital. Since Etty did not have to ask permission every time she wanted to enter the area, her contact with her father was more free and more frequent. Hillesum went to the hospital daily as part of her work and stayed in the “residence and room for girls” (“woningen en zaal voor meisjes”)(EHe, ). “The hut where I have been put this time is something between a small storehouse and a boudoir. Beds, two or three tiers high, suitcases and boxes everywhere, flowers on the table and in the window, and a couple of languid females in long silk peignoirs. Most astonishing” (EH, ; EHe, ). Thanks to a special permit from the Jewish Council, Etty was able to travel to Amsterdam a dozen times. She took letters and messages to resis-

sum in Deventer. For Hillesum, the fact that Smelik was a writer was an important aspect of their relationship. They often discussed writers and writing with one another. Smelik gave Hillesum books by Bakunin and Kropotkin, and Hillesum once told him a story she had read, upon which Smelik based a radio play. In the late s, Smelik wrote a radio play about illegal aid to Israel, and the title, De Ester H., was a reference to Hillesum (Oudenbosch: MESEF, n.d.) (EHe, ). Hillesum and Smelik’s relationship lasted six months, when Hillesum brought it to an amicable end. After that, their contact was generally through his daughter, Johanna F. Smelik (born in The Hague ), who lived with her father most of the time. She had become a close friend of Hillesum and often visited her in Amsterdam. Hillesum, who liked turning first names into nicknames, called Johanna “Jopie” in The Letters and Diaries (EHe, ).



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

tance groups, and she picked up medicines to bring back with her. The hygiene in Westerbork was very poor. As the number of people in the camp increased, the space per person decreased. The barracks were overcrowded. Although there was a cleaning roster, supervised by the Jewish barracks leaders, this approach was not very effective. There were few, if any, cleaning materials, and soap had to be manufactured secretly. Because of the immense physical and psychological pressure on the Jews, polluted water (dust and sand was continually blowing around), and the severe hygiene problems in the camp, the general health of the Jews was poor, Etty’s included. There were many cases of diarrhea and dysentery among the often already physically weak inhabitants (EHe, –). Hillesum’s health was often very poor, and in September  she stayed in Amsterdam for almost three months. Early in June , Etty took leave of her closest friends and left Amsterdam for Westerbork. Etty was one of the Jewish Council workers who was compelled to remain in the camp. When the Jewish Council was abolished, Etty lost her privileged position. She could no longer write an unlimited number of letters, nor could she travel to Amsterdam. But she was given the red “Z” stamp in her papers, which meant that she would not be deported for the time being (EHe,  – ). As she left Amsterdam, she knew she would never return, but she kept a positive outlook: I am fine, and content. I live just as I did in Amsterdam, really; sometimes I don’t even notice that I’m in a camp, which is very strange. And all of you are so close to me that I don’t even miss you. Jopie is a cherished companion. In the evenings we go and watch the sun setting over the purple lupins behind the barbed wire. And if I get leave I’ll probably be back. Do write. Bye! (EH, ; EHe, )

God As the war continued, the number of times that Etty used the symbol “God” in The Letters and Diaries increased. Although she claimed to have found the symbol “God” somewhat primitive, it appeared more than  times in her writings. What had started gradually at the beginning of The Letters and Diaries—that is, her “listening to her inner voice” (“hineinhorchen”), her allowing herself to become intimate with what she called

Etty Hillesum



“God”—developed into an ongoing dialogue with “him” during her time in Westerbork. She experienced God within herself: “I hold a silly, naïve, or deadly serious dialogue with what is deepest inside me, which for the sake of convenience I call God” (EHe, ). She also experienced God through his creatures and through his creation: “I sank to my knees with the words that preside over human life: And God made man after His likeness” (EH, ; EHe, ). Echoing Jung, Hillesum wrote: I know people for whom the encounter with the strange power within themselves was such an overwhelming experience that they called it “God.” So experienced, “God” too is a theory in the most literal sense, a way of looking at the world, an image which the limited human mind creates in order to express an unfathomable and ineffable experience. The experience alone is real, not to be disputed; but the image can be soiled or broken to pieces. (EH, ; EHe, )

The progress of the war saw more and more of God’s images broken into pieces. Etty kept searching for the mystery behind the broken images and symbols. Her “God” is certainly not the traditional image of the JudaeoChristian God. She does use the symbol “God” from that tradition to symbolize her own experience of God. Nevertheless, she addressed “God” as a person to whom she could relate as a “You.” She felt responsible toward the person named “God,” and she rediscovered her own sense of human dignity through the encounter. Being made in the image and likeness of God, Etty saw herself as a participant in God’s creating. She had read the passage “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him” (Gen. :) (EHe, ). She was confronted by the helplessness around her, and she was equally convinced of God’s helplessness. She decided to help him: . Hillesum copied this passage three times. See C. G. Jung, “Die Bedeutung der Psychologie für die Gegenwart: Vortrag gehalten im Rheinland, Feb ” [The Importance of Psychology for the Present: Lecture Delivered in Rhineland in February ], in Gesammelte Werke,  ff. Hillesum also copied this passage into Levenskunst, her book of quotations (week ). See C. G. Jung, “Civilization in Transition” in The Collected Works, trans. R. F. C. Hull, vol. , The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man (New York: Bollingen Series, ), .



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

I shall try to help You, God, to stop my strength ebbing away, though I cannot vouch for it in advance. But one thing is becoming increasingly clear to me: that You cannot help us, that we must help You to help ourselves. And that is all we can manage these days and also all that really matters: that we safeguard that little piece of You, God, in ourselves. And perhaps in others as well. Alas, there doesn’t seem to be much You Yourself can do about our circumstances, about our lives. Neither do I hold You responsible. You cannot help us, but we must help You and defend Your dwelling place inside us to the last. (EH, –; EHe,  –)

Etty’s reading and reflection became embodied in her daily life in Westerbork. She carried her inner world with her. Struggling not to let herself be dragged down out of pity for her family, she wrote in one of her last letters from Westerbork: I know that we must not lose ourselves so completely in grief and concern for our families that we have little thought or love left for our neighbors. More and more tend towards the idea that love for everyone who may cross your path, love for everyone made in God’s image, must rise above love for blood relatives. Please don’t misunderstand me. It may seem unnatural—And I see that it is still far too difficult for me to write about, though so simple to live. (EH, ; EHe, )

On August , , less than a month before her deportation to Auschwitz, Etty once again reminded herself of the one thing necessary, an ongoing dialogue with God: “You made me so rich, oh God, please let me share out Your beauty with open hands. My life has become an uninterrupted dialogue with You, oh God, one great dialogue” (EH, ; EHe, ). She was able to give thanks for everything: “Tears of gratitude run down my face, and that is my prayer” (EH, ; EHe, ). Although terribly tired in the camp, Hillesum remained conscious of an experienced reality she called “God”: I am not challenging You, oh God; my life is one great dialogue with You. I may never become the great artist I would really like to be, but I am already secure in You, God. Sometimes I try my hand at turning

Etty Hillesum



out small profundities and uncertain short stories, but I always end up with just one single word: God. And that says everything, and there is no need for anything more. And all my creative powers are translated into inner dialogues with You. (EH, ; EHe, )

Auschwitz Knowing that she would probably end up in Auschwitz, Etty gave her diaries to a friend for safekeeping and asked her to pass them on to Klaas Smelik. Soon after the war, in  (or ), Maria Tuinzing would retrieve the diaries and give them to Klaas Smelik, as Etty had requested. He was a writer himself, and Hillesum felt sure that he would take care of her diaries. She was almost certain that she would not survive her captivity. On Tuesday, September , , Etty Hillesum was deported from Westerbork’s “Transport Boulevard” (“Boulevard des Misères”). This main street in Westerbork ran parallel to the railway platform from which the trains to the east departed. It cut through the camp from west to east. When the train due to leave on Tuesday morning stood waiting on Monday evening, this boulevard divided the camp in two (EHe, ). The transport train to Auschwitz contained  Jews, including  children. Only  survived. From the train Etty threw her last note, addressed to her teacher and friend Christine van Nooten, who lived at the Noordenbergsingel in Deventer: Christine, opening the Bible at random I find this: “The Lord is my high Tower.” I am sitting on my rucksack in the middle of a full freight car. Father, Mother, and Mischa are a few cars away. In the end, the departure came without warning. On sudden special orders from The Hague. We left the camp singing, Father and Mother firmly and calmly, Mischa, too. We shall be traveling for three days. Thank you for all your kindness and care. Friends left behind will still be writing to Amsterdam; perhaps you will hear something from them. Or from my last long letter from camp. Good-bye for now from the four of us. Etty (EH, ; EHe,  –) . J. C. van Nooten was born in Gouda in  and died in Deventer in . Beginning in April , Christine van Nooten taught Latin and Greek at the “grammar school” in Deventer where Hillesum’s father worked. When the Hillesum family was in Westerbork Camp, she was one of their trusted contacts outside. She regularly sent food parcels to them in Westerbork (EHe, ).



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

After three days and three nights, the train arrived in Auschwitz. On arrival, people had to stand in rows for a health check. All children, old men and women, and the sick were immediately sent to the gas chambers. The Jewish prisoners had to collect the bodies. After the rings and gold teeth had been removed, the bodies were burned in the crematorium. Father and mother Hillesum were gassed immediately when they arrived. The Red Cross registered their death on September , , three days after their departure from Westerbork. Etty and Mischa were among those who were healthy enough to work. The Jewish prisoners had to undress, and gold teeth were removed from the “healthy ones.” Then, prisoners had a number tattooed on their arms. When their hair had been removed in the bathhouse, they had to put on a camp uniform. Coming outside, they quickly became aware of the fate of the ones they had left behind. Some of the men were sent to clear up the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto. The women who were put to work were given such heavy tasks that their life expectancy was estimated at a maximum of two months (EHe, ). It would appear, however, from the date of arrival and the date given for her death that Etty spent around twelve weeks in the horrors of Auschwitz-Birkenau labor camp. Her death was registered on November  of the same year. She was twenty-nine years old when she died. Mischa died four months later on March , , also in Auschwitz. How they died is not known. Jaap was not sent to Auschwitz. He ended up in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. While being transferred by train after the partial clearance of that camp in , he died near Tröbitz (EHe, ). His death was registered on April , . How he died is not known (EHHBS,  –).



The Letters and Diaries Etty Hillesum’s Letters and Diaries record whatever touched her deeply on a day-to-day basis in the last few years of her life. She allowed herself to be susceptible to Beauty in the rubble and darkness of World War II. Despite her terrible surroundings, her feeling that “life is glorious and magnificent” breaks out and demands expression. Every new outrage and every fresh horror visited upon her called forth from her yet another act of love and goodness, drawing strength from within herself and expressing her empathy and love for the human person. Etty’s empathy and love is strikingly similar to that analyzed in the following passage from Edith Stein’s On the Problem of Empathy:1 Now, in the act of love we have a comprehending or an intending of the value of a person. This is not a valuing for any other sake. We do not love a person because he does good. His value is not that he does good, even if he perhaps comes to light for this reason. Rather, he himself is valuable and we love him “for his own sake.” And the ability to . Early in Edith’s Stein philosophical output stands her doctoral dissertation, On The Problem Of Empathy, defended in  at Freiburg-im-Breisgau, the fruit of several years’ work with Husserl, the director of the dissertation. Stein, having been a student of and assistant to Husserl, found herself unable to develop under his tutelage. She dissociated herself from him and became a Roman Catholic, entering the Carmelite Abbey in Echt in the Netherlands. Hillesum seems to have met Stein in Westerbork. She refers to the Stein sisters in her diary as “the two nuns from that rich, strictly orthodox and highly talented family in Breslau, with stars on their habits” (EH, ; EHe, ).





Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

love, evident in our loving, is rooted in another depth from the ability to value morally, experienced in the value of deeds.

Etty might not have immediately considered her empathy, love, or writings as eternal, but she did consider these qualities worth dedicating to “God.” More and more, she became fluent in the simple language that “flowed” (“stromen”) or “poured” out of her to symbolize her struggle between chaos and order. The flow of life that radiated from the commonplace, the everyday, from everything around and within her, carried her on a current in a state of wonder and mystery. It is difficult to write about Hillesum’s mysticism without doing her an injustice. Her biographers and commentators have adverted to paradoxes and “gray areas” in her short but courageous life. The Letters and Diaries are best approached through the language symbols chosen by Hillesum herself to symbolize her own experiences in the most difficult and horrific of circumstances. Hillesum was a modern woman who drew on Judaeo-Christian elements in her cultural and social upbringing to discover her humanity. The Letters and Diaries speak to the heart of every human being engaged in a similar search. She addresses the important spiritual experiences of her life, which articulate an area of reality encompassing God, herself, and other human beings. She expresses a love of life in danger of being despoiled by the alienated and deformed ways of living. Above all she was an individual voice of a people in danger of being obliterated by a hostile Nazi regime. Hillesum’s writings are animated by a strong sense of the “flow of life.” She felt she was born to be a writer, born to make a “spiritual” contribution to the generations that would come after her. She pursued her writing “mission” almost as a holy vocation. Sometimes she tried her hand at turning out “small profundities and uncertain short stories”; but as she herself put it, she always ended up with just one single word: “God.” She translated all her creative powers into an inner dialogue with “You” or “God.” “The beat of her heart” grew deeper, more active and yet more peaceful, as if she were “all the time storing up inner riches.” Her life became an uninterrupted dialogue with “God.” . Stein, Collected Works, .

Letters and Diaries



To identify the key constitutive experiences in Hillesum’s writings, we will present her search for order in terms of “closed existence,” “breakthrough,” and “open existence.” Some of Hillesum’s significant personal language symbols will be analyzed: “chaos” (chaos); “slecht ” (badness); “treurigheid ” (sadness); “hart ” (heart); “adem” (breath); “worstelen” (wrestle with); “erotiek” (the erotic); “centrum” (center); “bron” (source); “leven” (life); “kracht ” (strength); “de ander” (the other); “God ” (God), and “dankbaarheid ” (gratefulness). These symbols will be presented in such a way that they will be the grounding material for the final chapter of this book, in which Voegelin’s philosophical apparatus will illuminate Hillesum’s search for order.

  Social Disorder As the surrounding society was breaking down and as every new decree from the Germans increased the exclusion of Jews, Etty Hillesum was starting a war on paper. The National Socialist ideology had inculcated the German people with a virulent racial anti-Semitism, which led them to hate and despise the Jewish race. From March  to September , Hillesum kept a diary in an attempt to find meaning and order in her life; and she hoped that in so doing, she would overcome her depressions and other psychosomatic illnesses. In the midst of the mounting pressure on the Jews, whispers were coming from England that the Nazis were planning and carrying out the total extinction of the Jews. In this atmosphere of genocide, it is no wonder that so many Jews suffered from panic disorders and depressions. During , Hillesum suffered considerable emotional distress and turmoil. The thoughts in her head were sometimes painfully clear and sharp, and her feelings threateningly strong. Writing about these thoughts and feelings was exceedingly difficult. The main difficulty, I think, was her sense of shame. She experienced many inhibitions. She suffered from a fear of letting go, of allowing things to flow out of her, “te laten stromen” (stroom is “flow”; thus this phrase is literally “to pour out of ”) (EHe, ), and yet she felt that was precisely what she had to do if she were ever to give her life a reasonable and



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

satisfactory purpose. Although she felt blessed in many ways, at times she also felt deep down that something like a tightly wound ball of twine bound her relentlessly. At times, she was nothing more than a miserable, frightened “creature,” despite the clarity with which she could express herself (EH, ; EHe, ). Like Voegelin during the run up to World War II, Hillesum was moved by the “chaos” of the times and responded by entering into a search for order. Resisting the Zeitgeist of disorder and destruction, she looked for a way to deal with her depressive moods and her internal chaos and to give new meaning to a life that was in danger of becoming totally meaningless. As she became increasingly cut off from past and future, writing became evermore her only means of making the present chaos worth living. Writing was for her at once a way of resisting social disorder and a survival mechanism to fight her inner chaos. It was with the pen, rather than the sword, that Hillesum battled and searched for order (EHISS, ).

“Chaos” (Chaos) One of the earliest significant language symbols found in Hillesum’s Diaries is “chaos” (AAZZ,  –; EH, , , ). For Hillesum, this word symbolized her experience of her own consciousness, of what she later described as “mortal fear in every fiber. Complete collapse. Lack of self-confidence. Aversion. Panic . . . I have been relapsing into my own ‘Dark Ages’”(EH, ; EHe, ). People around her often attributed this so-called “chaos” (the oscillation between high exaltation and the deep gloom of depression) to her Slavic temperament. In a letter to Spier at the beginning of her diaries, Hillesum points out her inner chaos to him: “A small slice of chaos was suddenly staring at me from deep down inside my soul” (EH, ; EHe, ). She felt the threat and fear that is evoked through this overwhelming “chaos.” A “costive feeling” (“verstopte gevoel ”) (EH, ; EHe, ), a “constrictive feeling,” a “feeling of tightness” made it difficult for her to express her emotions. She experiences a “spiritual constipation” (“seelische Verstopfung”) (EH, ; EHe, ) and an “intensity” (“innerlijke hevigheden”) (EH, ; EHe, ). She “flounders” helplessly in the “ocean” (“machteloos spartelen in de Oceaan”) (EH, ; EHe, ). She struggles with “inner turmoil” and “that hunted feeling” (“innerlijke onrust en opgejaagdheid ”) (EH, ; EHe, ).

Letters and Diaries



The various symbols that Hillesum uses for a particular experience of “chaos” are not definitions in themselves. They have to be read within the context of her search for order. She was hoping that Spier would bring order to her inner “chaos” and “harness the forces now at loggerheads” (EH, ; EHe, ) within her. This inner “chaos” she also symbolized as “floundering” (“gefladder ”): “What I mean is that I no longer fill every moment, but confront a space in which I flounder about, and from that space I look across into other spaces, and everything seems utterly chaotic and there is a void behind everything and the question looms: What is this all about and is life really worth living?” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum believed in the importance of dealing with “chaos” proactively: “chaos will have to make way for order” (EH, ; EHe, ). Although she described herself as “chaotic” and she was convinced that “a lot of solid ground will have to be reclaimed from the raging waves” (EH, ; EHe, ), her emotional unbalance, according to Spier, never managed to quench her will to live, because of her keen intelligence and her determination to reflect relentlessly on her thoughts and feelings. Unlike her brothers, Etty Hillesum did not need psychiatric care. For Spier, she was simply too luminously conscious to be taken totally adrift by her emotions: “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. I always think that you are highly concentrated” (EH, ; EHe, ). She was aware that this search for order had to start with an examination of the chaos within her: “I am back on form, to say the very least, and I shall have to bring some clarity in this murky chaos” (EH, ; EHe, ). Although this observation shows she was determined to take responsibility for her life, she had to admit that living more “flowingly” (“fließender”)(EHe, ; EH, ) was not an immediate success. A phrase slightly misremembered from Verwey, “Melodiously rolls the world from God’s hand” (EH, ; EHe, ), re-

. “Melodisch rolt de wereld uit Gods hand” (EH, ; EHe, ). This slightly incorrect quotation used by Hillesum is a verse from “Honestum petimus usque,” a song written by the Dutch poet Albert Verwey ( –) for the anniversary concert of the Amsterdam Students Society held on June , . Henk Badings composed the music. The song was pub-



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

mained in her mind and inspired her, but the struggle with the chaos of her emotions was very difficult. Reality did not chime harmoniously with Hillesum’s imagination, because her imagination tended to run riot. She lived in emotional unbalance, what she called an “unruly individualism” (“onordelijk individualisme”) (EHe, ; EH, ). She tried to organize things a little, “exercise some mental hygiene” (“bedrijf wat mentale hygiëne”) (EHe, ; EH, ), in the chaos. Her imagination and emotions, however, were like “a vast ocean” (“grote Oceaan”) (EHe, ; EH, ), from which one wrests small pieces of land that may well be flooded again. She tried to cope with floundering helplessly in this wide and elemental ocean (“machteloos spartelen in de Oceaan”)(EHe, ; EH, ). What mattered to her were the small pieces of land one reclaims from it. In the chaos, she discovered that the subject before her was more important than those prodigious thoughts on Tolstoy and Napoleon that occurred to her in the middle of the night, and teaching another person became more important than all her vague philosophizing. What mattered for her was trying to abandon that “little ego” of hers in order to work and help other people: “I am once more most dissatisfied with you. You are again overindulging yourself with your soul. Once again you have lost control of yourself. Your depression has lifted, and you have taken enough time over it; another bit of order has been wrested from the chaos, but you have forgotten everything else” (EH, ; EHe, – ). Perhaps Hillesum’s fear of chaos had its origin in her youth. Living in a lished in Albert Verwey, Oorspronkelijke Dichtwerk [Original Poems] (Amsterdam: Em. Querido, ), . The passage in question read: Do not you suffer? The world declines. It no longer rolls melodiously from God’s hand. Beautiful peoples have turned into hordes The intellect into a nightmare (EHe, ) . Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy ( –), Russian author. From his works, Hillesum mentions War and Peace, Childhood, and Folk Stories. In War and Peace (–), Tolstoy describes the history of Russia between  and , the period that included Napoleon’s invasion. In a note dated March , , Hillesum writes: “or perhaps that essay on War and Peace” (see EHe, ), which would indicate that she was reading the work at the time (EHe, ).

Letters and Diaries



chaotic household, she “wrestled” with her parents, especially with her mother. Speaking to herself about her mother, Hillesum writes: She wears you out with all her unsolved problems and her quickly changing moods; she is in a chaotic and pitiful state, which is reflected about her in the utterly disorganized household. And yet she is convinced that she is an excellent housewife, driving everyone crazy with her perpetual fussing over the housekeeping. As the days go by here, my head feels more and more leaden. (EH, ; EHe, )

Some days later she heard her parents fighting and slamming doors. Hillesum exclaimed: “I always used to go to pieces in this madhouse”; “Life in this house is bogged down in petty details” (EHe, ). She was upset and cried, but quickly gathered herself and later wrote: “Anyhow, I sprang from this chaos, and it is my business to pull myself out of it” (EH, – ; EHe, ). She took very seriously this task of pulling herself out of the chaos to a “higher plane of existence” (a “hogere orde”). She saw the need for it, not only for herself, but also for others suffering from the same difficulties: “I am sure that it’s important for me to keep in close contact with myself and to give an account of myself. It is important, after all, for me to know how I manage to get over the various kinds of depression I have every time, so that I may perhaps show the way to others in the future” (EH,  – ; EHe, ). Here we see a strong self-analytic interest combined with a generous, therapeutic, humanitarian urge to help similar suffering in others by communicating the fruits of her struggles as recorded in the diaries. Hillesum gradually learned more about the dynamics of the chaos that lived within her. She suffered “terrible crises” and “mental confusion,” but even during “healthier” and less complicated periods she saw that “the germs of the crises are always there” (EH, ; EHe, ). It is in just those calmer periods that “the germs must be diagnosed, so that when chaos strikes later you can recognize them and recover more quickly” (EH, ; EHe, –). For Hillesum, to lose oneself in chaos was equivalent to losing oneself “in endless sadness” (“oeverloze treurigheid ”)(EHe, ; EH, ). Even in the throes of her inner chaos, however, she recognized something else in herself, something “strong and remorseless”: “Something that will help me express my ideas



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

and put them in order and will teach me to judge things coolly one day” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum was aware of two dynamics in her life: depression and chaos, and order and one’s own “form” (“eigen vorm”). She oscillated between order and chaos in her search for self-understanding. This feeling of being torn in opposing directions, and the resistance that arose in her heart, were different moments in a process. It was not easy to have the courage to be oneself and to bring harmony into chaos: “That too is a form of suffering, this struggle to wrest some form out of the chaos inside, which I am not yet ready to tackle. Even though it is that alone which would give me real satisfaction, not a husband or a child” (EH, ; EHe, ). The victories of “form” or “order” over chaos had a downside. According to Hillesum, “every hotly championed philosophy hides a little lie. That it must fall short of the ‘the truth’” (EH, ; EHe, ). Still she had to search for some form or order: “And yet I myself will have to find a philosophy to live by, a fenced-in space of my own, violently seized and passionately defended. But then wouldn’t that be giving life short change? The alternative may well be floundering in uncertainty and chaos” (EH, ; EHe, ). Etty Hillesum knew that human beings try to form ideas about things around them in order to have some certainty in the confusion. In doing so, she wrote, “we sacrifice real life with all its nuances and elements of surprise, as well as selling it short” (EH, ; EHe, ). She was clear: “life cannot be forced into a system. Nor can people. Or literature” (EH, ; EHe, ). Her answer to coping with the apparent contradictions: “We do need some system, often to escape from the chaos. But we must also be able to let go of it again” (EH, ; EHe, ). Three months after the confrontation with her mother, Hillesum encountered her father, who had come to visit her in Amsterdam. They clashed, and she wrote afterward: “Completely numb, quite extraordinary. I was again all chaos and confusion inside. A few critical hours and the kind of relapse [German: Rückfall ] I used to have during the worst times” (EH, ; EHe,  –). She reexperienced how bad things sometimes had been, when she had crept into her bed in the middle of the day whenever life out there had once more become “a great tale of woe.” She felt then vividly how

Letters and Diaries



the chaos was overwhelming her, how her own powers diminished, and how she was blocked and closed to any natural flow of life. Hillesum analyzed the dynamics of the meeting with her father, and she felt that she grew in understanding and attained some clarity. In the earlier entries in the diaries, she expressed the thought that her father had been reluctant to face the depths of existence and had been hiding behind expressions of resignation and humor. He did not look the chaos in the eye; he escaped to the surface. Although Hillesum was conscious that this “chaos” also threatened her, she desired to make it her life’s task to shake it off instead of submerging in it time and time again. She saw the eruption of chaos as a process in her, which she knew she had inherited from her parents. She was determined to learn how to come to grips with it and take a definite standpoint: “When the realization dawned on me, my strength returned, and also my love, and the few hours of panic had vanished” (EH, ; EHe, ). Continuing, she wrote: But surely the problems and the real suffering that sometimes spring up from my attitude to my “ancestry” [German: Erbmasse] or, to put it more ponderously, to my chaotic “genetic make-up,” are part and parcel of the same thing? And that is something I refuse to accept, that I rebel against. Once again there were a few hours when I detested life and saw no escape from it, saw it as an endless Via Dolorosa stretching out before me. (EH, ; EHe, )

These key moments were part of a gradual breakthrough that connected different sections in Hillesum’s life. She was able to find form: “Such intensity of life, of becoming at the same time more and more conscious and dwelling more deeply within, becoming more and more divorced from the chaos and attaining one’s true form” (EH, ; EHe, ). The real sign of change and turning point from chaos to order came a few days later when she visited Deventer: No “Rückfall ” [relapse] after Deventer. More and more clearly aware of my real tasks. I still remember waking up those few times in the big, icy bathroom, just as chaotic and lacking in style and well loved as all the other rooms in that house. Revelling in the day so brave and



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

fresh, feeling the sharp contours of your own self. I am also beginning to understand something about my youth, about those recurring headaches and lethargic spells lasting for weeks on end, a succumbing to the chaos within. (EH,  –; EHe, )

With this realization, on December , , the symbol of inner “chaos,” which had been used consistently in the diaries, gradually disappeared from Hillesum’s vocabulary. Only around the end of July  does the symbol “chaos” appeared again, but now symbolized as external “chaos”: “In all this chaos and misery I follow my own rhythm, so much so that at any given moment between typing letters I can immerse myself in the things that matter to me. It is not that I am cutting myself off from all the suffering around me, nor is it a dulling of the senses. I take everything in and store it away, but go my own way” (EH, ; EHe, ). In the middle of chaos, Hillesum encouraged others to acknowledge the chaos, within and outside of themselves, since that is what gives strength to the human person: “If only people would listen a bit more to their inner voice, if only they would try to let it resound in themselves—there would be a great deal less chaos” (EH, ; EHe, ).

“Slecht” (Bad) A second symbol that Hillesum associated with her experience of “negativity” and “chaos” is the Dutch word slecht (bad) (AAZZ,  – ). “Slecht” symbolized specifically her experience of “a spiritual discontentment” (“geestelijk niet-welbevinden”). Sometimes she added to that the experience of “physical discontentment” (“lichamelijk niet-welbevinden”): “And then there are also those bad moments when my brain is being overworked, when my mind keeps searching for concise, comprehensive solutions to the many conflicts between body and soul, temporal and spiritual, finite and infinite—in short, to everything” (EH, ; EHe, ). If she started to worry and agonize about the sense of it all, it was a sign for her that things were “bad” (“slecht”) in her life. She would crawl into a corner with some books and poetry and escape from herself: “If this continues much longer, then I’m bound to start asking myself about the meaning of life all over again, and that never means plumbing philosophical

Letters and Diaries



depths but is proof positive that things are going badly with me” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum admitted that she was using her discontentment sometimes to seek attention: Take care, my little one, not to start toying with your depressions. I am catching you in the act of doing something very ugly. S. will be coming any moment, and you have decided not to put any make-up on, so that he can see how really awful you look. You want to draw attention to your dejection, and you want him to pay it due heed. At least I think I’ve caught you in the act. Honesty is the best policy. (EH, ; EHe,  –)

Hillesum learned to deal with her “bad” periods by trying not to disturb other people with her chaotic mindset: “We must not infect each other with our bad moods” (EH, ; EHe, ). She practiced patience to live through the “bad” times: “True, at the moment you feel awful and physically well below par, but that’s no reason for chucking it all in” (EH, ; EHe, ); but she also learned to put her “bad” days into perspective and kept contact with the better moments. On December , , Hillesum wrote in her diary: In the past—I feel more and more justified now in calling it the past, as a lasting change seems to have set in with me—when I was in a bad mood or depressed, I would completely lose touch with my other self. And that no longer happens. Now I carry my sadness and my gladness and everything else with me all the time. The one no longer excludes the other, and it’s like that as well with my relationships. (EH,  –; EHe, )

“Badness” in Hillesum’s vocabulary has not only to do with spiritual and physical discontentment; it has to do with something’s ethics as well. She continuously worked and struggled with herself to become a loving and “good” human being. For her, this meant that she wanted to be able to forgive others their “so-called wickedness” (“slechtheid ”): “And I believe that I will never be able to hate any human being for his so-called wickedness, that I shall only hate the evil that is within me, though hate is perhaps putting



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

it too strongly even then. In any case, we cannot be lax enough in what we demand of others and strict enough in what we demand of ourselves” (EH, ; EHe, ). Trying to forgive others did not mean that she passively accepted “evil” or “badness” (“slechtheid ”) in human beings and in this world. The acceptance of human sinfulness, the “badness” in herself, in other people, and in the world made a space free for her desires to flow freely to care and contribute to a better world. During research in the Etty Hillesum Centre in Deventer, it became clear to me that the following passage summed up the essence of Hillesum’s existential quest and personal philosophy: Yes, we carry everything within us, God and Heaven and Hell and Earth and Life and Death and all of history. The externals are simply so many props; everything we need is within us. And we have to take everything that comes: the bad with the good, which does not mean we cannot devote our life [to] curing the bad. But we must know what motives inspire our struggle, and we must begin with ourselves, every day anew. (EH, ; EHe, )

With Hillesum, the “I” (“ik”) and the “other” (“ander”) are hardly to be separated. The same is true of her experience with the inner and the outer worlds and “wickedness” (“slechtheid ”): One must live with oneself as if one lived with a whole nation of people. And in oneself one then comes to recognize all the good and bad qualities of mankind. And if one wants to forgive others, one must first learn to forgive one’s own bad qualities. That is probably the hardest thing a person can learn, as I so often find in others (in myself as well in the past, but no longer): to forgive one’s own mistakes and lapses. Which means accepting above all, and magnanimously, that one does make mistakes and does have lapses. (EH, ; EHe, )

Hillesum took this very seriously; she believed in the goodness of the human person. She tried to convince her friend Klaas Smelik, who was an antiFascist (he hated and feared the Nazi Germans), that he should look in his own heart first before hating “the enemy” outside of himself. Hillesum wrote: “We shan’t get anywhere with hatred, Klaas. Appearances are so of-

Letters and Diaries



ten deceptive” (EHe, ). In talking to him she said that there was still so much work to do on ourselves that we shouldn’t even be thinking of hating our so-called enemies: We are hurtful enough to one another as it is. And I don’t really know what I mean when I say that there are bullies and bad characters among our own people, for no one is really “bad” deep down [. . .] I see no alternative: each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others. And remember that every atom of hate we add to this world makes it still more inhospitable. (EH, ; EHe, )

Gradually, Hillesum put a greater emphasis on what “Is” rather than on her own experience, her value judgments, and her opinions. The acceptance of the good (“goede”) and the bad (“slechte”) dimensions in her life was more essential than the standing in judgment over what is “good” and “bad.” In one of her last letters from Westerbork she wrote: Had a stab at philosophy late at night, with eyes that kept closing with fatigue. People sometimes say, “You must try to make the best of things.” I find this such a feeble thing to say. Everywhere things are both very good and very bad at the same time. The two are in balance, everywhere and always. I never have the feeling that I have got to make the best of things; everything is fine just as it is. Every situation, however miserable, is complete in itself and contains the good as well as the bad. (EH, ; EHe, –)

“Treurigheid ” (Sadness) A third important symbol used by Hillesum to articulate her experience of closed existence is “sadness” (“treurigheid ”). Other terms for “sadness” are “dejection,” “melancholy,” “gloominess,” and “dolefulness” (AAZZ,  – ). In her first diaries she described “sadness” (“treurigheid ”) as the “root pain” (“grondpijn”) or wound that was an essential part of her. Her “sadness,” her sense of desolation, made her fear that she was not capable and hence filled her with aversion. These moods and feelings were sometimes so twisted and heavy that she saw death or insanity as a means of recovery or a deliverance from her “sickness”:



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

Yesterday I was ready to say to my friends, “Listen, if a tree should fall on top of me one of these days, don’t be upset but console yourself with the thought that I welcome my deliverance.” But this morning in the bathroom (something invariably happens in the early morning in that small bathroom with the brown coconut matting) I suddenly thought of patients in an institution. And all at once I could imagine that it would be a kind of liberation to be able to let yourself go, to retreat into your sadness and shed all responsibility, with the walls of the institution and the regimented care of the nursing staff providing a safe enclosure inside which you could unwind. (EH, ; EHe, )

Later, Hillesum looked at her “sadness” (“treurigheid ”) more positively: “for my sadness is part of me, something with which I am familiar and which is probably the most fruitful and most genuine part of me” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum began to alter the manner in which she dealt with her “depressions.” Throughout the diaries, from  until , she realized that this change was happening. She wrote about the differences between “the past and the present” (“vroeger en nu”). In the past, that is, in her youth and at the beginning of The Letters and Diaries, Hillesum’s “gloominess” had the tendency to run riot, while toward the end of The Letters and Diaries Hillesum had learned to deal with her sorrows. In the past, she had been convinced that she had the right to dwell on her “dolefulness” (“treurigheid ”), but later she fully disagreed with that tendency: One should try to stop being so egocentric as to let every mood run its full course. One need not conceal one’s disquiet and sadness, one should bear them and forbear them, but not surrender to them as unreservedly as if there were nothing else in the world. One should no longer consign one’s best endeavors to sadness, but save them—ultimately that is the least one can do—for the community, to use a big word. [. . .] No, sadness must not be allowed to gain such a hold over one. (EH,  –; EHe,  –)

Hillesum was healthily critical of her own “sadness” and the egocentric tendencies of the past, when her moods were setting her adrift. Toward the end of the diaries she believed that “self centeredness” (“ich haft”) was not the solution: “When one surrenders so completely to every sadness, one is still

Letters and Diaries



trying to feel oneself too much in it, to experience oneself too strongly, and that is not what counts in the long run” (EH, ; EHe, ). Instead of being self-centered, she wanted to develop her strength for the community, which in her case meant, for example, teaching Russian to fellow students. Hillesum felt that reaching out to others had something to do with being absorbed in a larger picture. Her personal moods had to be taken lightly and seen in proper perspective. She talked with Spier, and together they searched for greater understanding between “sadness” (“treurigheid ”) and what she called “the ‘cosmic soul’ making itself felt” (“die Weltenseele,” “die sich bemerkbar macht”) (EHe, ; EH, ). Hillesum wondered: “Ought we not, from time to time, open ourselves up to cosmic sadness?” (EHe, ) For Hillesum, this was not an excuse to give in to her “gloominess”: “Last night in the snow, suddenly (I experienced) such desperate sadness again that I had to speak soothing words to my heart.—‘One must provide temporary shelter for world-weariness now and again’—But this was no ‘worldweariness’ [‘Weltentraurigkeit’], this was my very own, personal sadness” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum’s “moodiness” often had to do with her relationship with Spier. She wondered from time to time if Spier really loved her, which made her sad: It isn’t a bad thing, though, to experience such sorrows again and to have to carry them to a favorable conclusion. Meanwhile, they weigh me down and cause me pain. One should never take them out on others, however, that’s immature; we shouldn’t make others suffer for our own sorrow. And that also goes for your childish tendency to feel wronged. Believing that no one has as hard a life as you have. Let me quote myself: “And my sorrows are amongst the most precious constituents of my own being, for they harbor a new creative element.” But that doesn’t sound convincing to me any longer. It is our lack of balance that causes us such pain, and equilibrium has first to be restored. (EH, ; EHe, )

After some time, Hillesum’s “dolefulness” seems to have become less severe, perhaps for the following reasons. First, she learned more about herself: recognizing her diversity, she taught herself not to deny the positive side in her gloomy moods, but to car-



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

ry both sadness and gladness and everything else with her all the time (EH, ; EHe, ). Second, Hillesum discovered a more objective and resolute side in herself, “something strong and remorseless,” a counter pull, “something very unsentimental and down-to-earth,” that acted against the “sadness” and prevented her from drowning in depression (EH, ; EHe, ). She developed that stronger dimension in her personality later on: “On top of that there is a powerful objective factor in my case, namely that I am interested in everything, interested with an all but undivided passion. Even in my own sadness. That I am, as it were, curious to discover what will happen to my moods, almost scientifically curious, and about myself” (EH, ; EHe, ). Third, Hillesum’s “depressions” diminished over time because of her natural capacity to enter relationships and her spontaneous ability to care for the other person. Through her encounters with others, she could learn to put her own moods into perspective: “If I see that somebody else is sad, I forget my own sadness and try to understand and help the other. Life is beautiful, even though I am again teetering dangerously on the verge of depression and chaos” (EH, ; EHe, ). Fourth, Hillesum learned to accept life in all its richness, with its joys as well as its sorrows. She became more and more capable of being sensitive to the beauty of life, even when she was living in moments of deep depression and “sadness” (“treurigheid ”). Hillesum was aware that the “gloominess” she was dealing with had to do mainly with her own physical and psychological well being—for example with conditions such as tiredness or menstruation—and not with the outer circumstances of the war. She did not want to project the moods and feelings that came from inside herself onto the “outer world”: It is never external events, it is always the feeling inside me—depression, uncertainty, or whatever—that lends these events their sad or menacing aspect. It always spreads from the inside outward with me, never the other way round. Generally the most ominous measures— and there are quite a few of those nowadays—have no power against my inner certainty and confidence and, once faced, lose much of their menace. (EH,  –; EHe, )

Letters and Diaries



Hillesum’s contact with the “outer world” (“buitenwereld ”) was not without struggle and “sadness,” but she desired to “face up to everything that happens” (EH, ; EHe, ). But “these brushes with the outside world still make me sad” (EH, ; EHe, ), which was not easy. Hillesum, however, expressed her experience as a “flow” (“stroom”) of “inner strength” (“innerlijke kracht”): “But I am not the slightest bit concerned about cutting a fine figure in the eyes of this persecutor or that. Let them see my sadness and my utter defenselessness, too. There is no need to put on a show; I have my inner strength and that is enough, the rest doesn’t matter” (EH, ; EHe, ). It is precisely this “flow” of “inner strength” that Hillesum experienced at the end of her life (especially in Westerbork), and this abiding inner power encouraged her to be of service to her fellow human beings. Her “sadness” now had a distinctly positive function in her life: I am now sad in quite a different way. I no longer plumb the depths of despair. My sadness has become a springboard. In the past I used to think that I would always be sad, but now I know that those moments too are part of life’s ebb and flow and that all is well. This is a sign of confidence, of very great confidence, even in myself. I have confidence in my own seriousness, and I have gradually come to realize that I am going to manage my life properly. (EH, ; EHe,  – )

Hillesum accepted “sadness” (“treurigheid ”) as an essential part of her being, but the depressive moods, after some time, did not affect her as much as they had done before when she started to write The Letters and Diaries. On May , , I had the opportunity to examine the manuscript “Cahier Six: March , –April , ” (Hillesum’s small reddish personal diary housed in the Jewish Historical Museum of Amsterdam). I realized . “Zo een kleine aanraking met de buitenwereld moet toch verwerkt worden” (EH, ). In Hillesum, Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, –, this sentence is rather loosely translated as: “These brushes with the outside world still make me sad” (EHe, ). A more accurate translation would be: “Such a small encounter with the ‘outer world’ has to be dealt with.”



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

what other scholars meant when they said her handwriting was difficult if not indecipherable. On Saturday, March , , Hillesum made a diary entry in which she used certain Dutch symbols that illustrate “the flow of presence”: Does that mean I am never sad, that I never rebel, always acquiesce, and love life no matter what the circumstances? No, far from it. I believe that I know and share the many sorrows and sad circumstances that a human being can experience, but I do not cling to them, I do not prolong such moments of agony. They pass through me, like life itself; as a broad, eternal stream, they become part of that stream, and life continues. And as a result all my strength is preserved, does not become tagged onto futile sorrow or rebelliousness. (EH, ; EHe, )

Efforts to translate the original text can be confusing. Sometimes the Dutch word stromen or stroom is translated as “flow,” other times as “stream.” Symbols that could arise from Hillesum’s diary text are “eeuwige stroom,” which means “eternal flow” (“eternal stream”); “het leven stroomt door me heen” (“life passes through me”) or “stroom van leven,” which refers to the “flow of life”; and “brede stroom,” which symbolizes a “wide flow” (“broad eternal stream”). Even when Hillesum was at her saddest or most tired, she no longer sank as deeply as before: “Life flows in a continuous and unbroken stream, at times a little more sluggishly, impeded by more obstacles, but nevertheless it flows on” (EH, ; EHe, ). She stopped telling herself, as she used to do, that she was so unhappy and did not know what to do: “In the past I honestly thought I was the unhappiest person in the world” (EH, ; EHe, ). Concerning “sadness,” she concluded: “Keep your eye on the right path and the main road. And do feel free to be sad, honest-to-goodness sad, but don’t make a big drama out of it. Even when sad, a person should remain simple, otherwise, he’s being nothing but hysterical” (EH, ; EHe, ). I have tried to analyze three major language symbols used by Etty Hillesum in The Letters and Diaries, expressing her experience of what could be

Letters and Diaries



called “closed” existence. I will now examine what I believe was Hillesum’s “breakthrough” and “turning point,” from “closed” to “open” existence. I am using Voegelin’s language symbols here to generate insight into Hillesum’s psyche.

 Spier as a Catalyst In the experience of “chaos” (“chaos”), “badness” (“slechtheid ”), and “sadness” (“treurigheid ”), Hillesum began to consult Julius Spier (see chapter one), who inspired her to search for a breakthrough within her own consciousness. At Spier’s suggestion, Hillesum started writing her diaries; at his urging, she was drawn into a search for a new order in her life: “I had done it now, me with my ‘spiritual constipation’ [German: Seelische Verstopfung]. He would bring order to my inner chaos, harness the forces now at loggerheads within me. He took me metaphorically by the hand and said, ‘Look, that’s how you should live’” (EH, ; EHe, ). As a result of her conversations with Spier, Hillesum learned to observe her own thoughts and feelings more attentively and more ruthlessly. Gradually, she made progress in her attempt to order her inner world. She began to believe that the desire for love reaches into the deepest recesses of the heart: And in just one week he worked wonders with me, almost in spite of myself. Gymnastics, breathing exercises, and illuminating, liberating words about my depression, my attitude to others, and the like. Suddenly I was living differently, more freely, more flowingly [German: fließender]; the costive feeling vanished, a little calm and order came into my life, at first entirely under the influence of his magical personality, but gradually with the assent of my own psyche, of my own awareness. (EH, ; EHe, )

Although Spier seemed to be of great help to her, the attempt to live more flowingly was not an immediate success. She suffered from several physical disturbances, such as headaches and intestinal disorders. Furthermore, the people around her often distracted her from her inner search for order. There was so much hate, distrust, and pessimism around her that she could



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

have easily been disillusioned. She chose not to give in, but it was extremely difficult for a Jew to attain peace of mind and heart in those persecuted days. The virulent hatred of Nazi Germans by the local population during that time tended to poison everyone’s mind. Hillesum, however, had a liberating thought that if there was one decent German among them (Spier, for instance, was a German), then it was wrong to extend one’s hatred to an entire people. Indiscriminate hatred is the worst thing there is, she believed. It was not truly in Hillesum’s nature to hate. To succumb to hate would amount to a sickness of the soul. Everything looked so clear-cut and ugly at the time, which is why she found it so unpleasant to discuss politics in such a climate. Maybe that is why she felt the sudden urge to fling herself at Spier. He seemed to her like an oasis in a desert. Under Spier’s influence, Hillesum’s priorities began to change. In the past, she liked to start the average day on an empty stomach with Dostoevsky or Hegel in hand, but during odd, jumpy moments she might also darn a stocking if she absolutely had to. Now she began her day with darning the stocking and gradually worked her way up to other chores of a higher plane, where she could meet poets and philosophers. But her own lifestyle was full of pathos. She became more and more immersed in the sensual. Under Spier’s influence, Hillesum discovered that she was writing more abundantly; she physically yearned for all that was beautiful. She wanted to own it, but the experience sapped all her energy. She gradually understood that this tendency had to change and that she had to make way for a more balanced and ordered way of writing. Despite the difficulties and drawbacks she experienced, something gradually changed within Hillesum. She began to accept life as a whole, some. Reading Hegel seemed to have had only a minor influence in Hillesum’s life. She mentions him only once in The Letters and Diaries (EHe, ). From Dostoevsky’s works Hillesum mentions The Idiot, Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov (especially a chapter in part : “Grand Inquisitor”), and Memoirs from the House of Dead. Hillesum found the Russian text of The Idiot () rather difficult to read. She had little practice in reading Russian literature, and there was no adequate dictionary or annotated edition available. Hillesum gave her friend Tide a German edition of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment for her birthday in . See Hillesum, Etty: The Letters and Diaries, , , . For Dostoyevsky see, for instance, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Constance Garnett (New York: Modern Library, ), and Letters from the Underworld, trans. C. J. Hogarth (New York: Everyman, ).

Letters and Diaries



thing which was also central to Spier’s teaching. She adopted his attitude: “the less one expects, the more one receives.” On March , , Hillesum copied a quotation from the philosopher Will Durant: Nowadays no one (except for Spengler) dares to look at life as a whole. [. . .] Everyone knows his part, but not its meaning in the play as a whole. Life is losing its purpose and is becoming empty just when it seemed so full of promise. [. . .] We shall define philosophy as a view of the whole, as the spirit, spread out over life and forging unity out of chaos. Knowledge is power, wisdom alone is freedom. (EH,  –; EHe, )

“Hart” (Heart) and “Adem” (Breath) The use of the symbols “heart” (“hart”) and “breath” (“adem”) were key steppingstones in Hillesum’s impending breakthrough of consciousness (AAZZ,  –,  –). Hillesum used these symbols to discuss her feelings and dealings with Spier and to capture the experience of two individual persons who reach such a union of breath that it flows through each one of them. Hillesum described how she longed to “breathe through his mouth” and “to drink from his breath”: “This afternoon, during the ‘Sixth Chapter,’ I looked at his expressive mouth and whispered to it, ‘Tonight you will be the beaker from which I will sip his breath’” (EH, ; EHe, ). A day later, after visiting Spier, she wrote: And then for a short hour we had shared one breath as I had been wanting to do for so many, many weeks. And I had rested so confidently and with so much surrender in his arms and yet full of sensual tension. But above everything else there was that shared breath. And in that short hour so much strength flowed into me that I believed I could live on it my whole life long. (EH,  –; EHe, ) . American philosopher and cultural historian William James Durant (–) wrote The Mansions of Philosophy (New York: Simon and Schuster, ), a critical introduction to the major philosophical questions of the age. It was translated into Dutch with an introduction by Helena C. Pos under the title In den hof der Wijsbegeerte (The Hague: L.J.C. Boucher, ). See , . Hillesum had a second, unrevised edition, which appeared in the same year; many more editions followed in quick succession. On March , , Hillesum wrote: “I really enjoyed Durant’s wonderful book” (EHe, ,  –).



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

Soon after beginning to consult Spier, Hillesum started a program of breathing exercises. She believed that the deepening of her breath was the result of a sort of breakthrough, and not a means to achieve this breakthrough. Although the changes within her were quite tentative at first, initially mere glimpses of a brighter future, she suddenly experienced a more pronounced if subtle change. The Letters and Diaries reveal clearly how her feelings of being immobilized gradually disappeared: “And this grasping attitude, which is the best way I have of describing it, suddenly fell away from me. A thousand tyrannical chains were broken, and I breathed freely again and felt strong and looked about with shining eyes. 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” (EH, ; EHe, ). She discovered that she was able to live and breathe through her “soul” (“ziel ”), although she apologized for using that “discredited word.” Her symbol “breathing through my ‘soul’” (“ademen door mijn ‘ziel ’”) (EHe, ; EH, ) was developed by Spier, who indicated how she should attune herself to this “flow”: “What’s in here (and he pointed to his head) must get down there (and he pointed to his heart)” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum slowly began to understand the importance of this process. Spier began to put all the pieces of her mixed-up puzzle back together again, and by doing so her life somehow received new meaning. A little later, after reading a text, Hillesum used the symbol “breathes with me” (“mee-ademen”) to express her experience of being more involved with what she was doing and what was happening around her: “In the past” I would probably have thought this a very nice passage to read, but the most important thing now is that it has truly migrated from my head to my heart, to my consciousness or to God knows where, in any case to where it breathes with me, and to where it has become a part of myself, and it is an almost overwhelming and continued source of amazed delight for me to know just how much inner power has been set free. (EH, ; EHe, –)

It seems that Hillesum was beginning to grasp the connection between “breathing” (“ademhaling”) and “mental attitude” (“geesteshouding”). This realization was happening in her conscious experience, where her “breath”

Letters and Diaries



(“adem”) connected to her innermost being: “As if every breath I take were filled with it and as if my smallest acts and words had a deeper source and a deeper meaning” (EH, ; EHe, ). Conversely, she had moments of not being able to breathe, which showed how much her breakthrough was linked to “heart,” “breath,” and “spirit.” In such a moment “what is still left is a cold, it’s as if my head cannot draw breath, not my lungs, but my head— everything inside my skull wants to stretch but can’t, the skull is too tight, there’s no space for any stretching” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum knew from her own experience that her gradual breakthrough was not a permanent state of eternal bliss but a movement in between head and heart. The diaries indicate clearly that such a breakthrough in consciousness was not without a pattern of “ebb and flow” (“eb en vloed ”), “hills and valleys” (“bergen en dalen”): “Two hours ago I thought I would go to pieces, I didn’t know how I was going to go on, and now I can breathe freely again” (EH, ; EHe, ). Although, she experienced these movements of “ebb” and “flow” mainly in her “heart,” she tried to abstract, articulate, and reason them out with her “head.” Her knowledge and analysis had to be lived to become wisdom, however; they were not always integrated in her life, in her body: “My head is the workshop, in which all worldly things must be thought through until they become clear. And my heart is the fiery furnace in which everything must be felt and suffered intensely” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum used her “head” to come to a clearer understanding of her experience, but what was most important to her was “the heart” (“het hart”). “The heart” had something to do with her very essence as a person; “the heart” (“het hart”) was intimately close to her: “Oh, yes, on Sunday afternoon when Glassner was being a teller of tales on the Grand Piano, I felt as if my heart were one great keyboard on which he was playing with his strong, gentle fingers—from so close by, from so deep down did the music come” (EH, ; EHe, ). The development and changes within Hillesum’s consciousness had something to do with “the heart” and its reaction to a variety of experiences stimulated, for instance, by music, poetry (i.e., Rilke), beauty, relationship, and writing. Music gave Hillesum a particularly acute awareness of her own inner being:



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

I experienced such a lot last night. First, the strains of a cello made off with my heart and then floated with it through the room. What a strange vision that was. Between them, the strains captured my heart and, holding it fast on all sides, lifted it high above my head. I watched it dancing through space, and it was a marvellous [sic] feeling. Your heart dancing away high above you in the sky, in the grip of the strains of a cello. (EH, ; EHe, –)

“The heart” brought Hillesum in touch with “honesty” and “integrity” and her desire to be ordered. She experienced the breakthrough in consciousness symbolically in “the heart” (“het hart”): “A strong straight pillar is growing in my heart, I can almost feel it growing, and around it all the rest revolves: I myself, the world, everything” (EH, ; EHe, ). “The heart,” for Hillesum, is the place of “love” (“liefde”) and compassion. “The heart” was so important to Hillesum because she desired to radiate the heart’s love to her fellow human beings: One must expand one’s heart to open up to a multitude. Most people have little room in their hearts—whenever they admit anyone new, the rest have to be pushed aside. You must make sure that one does not lose out because of another. To do that, you have to have a great deal of love. When your attention is drawn to a new face, you must not suddenly forget all the old faces. (EH, ; EHe,  – )

Hillesum gradually discovered that such a breakthrough had in fact already happened, because by then she had developed a great love in her heart: “My heart runs quite wild, but never for just one person. For all mankind. I believe this heart of mine is very rich indeed. In the past I used to dream of giving it to one person. But it was not to be” (EH, ; EHe, ). She described her loving heart, which had difficulties in committing itself to one person, as a “heart of a vagabond” or “wanderer’s heart” (“zwervershart”). As Hillesum prepared her “wanderer’s heart” for the suffering that was to come her way, she especially thought of her farewell to Spier: “But some. Russian-French artist Marc Chagall perhaps captures in his paintings what Etty is symbolizing here in words. Chagall took inspiration from Belarusian folk-life and portrayed many biblical themes reflecting his Jewish heritage.

Letters and Diaries



times I feel as if a layer of ashes were being sprinkled over my heart, as if his face were withering and decaying before my very eyes, and as if everything were falling apart in front of me and my heart were letting everything go” (EH, ; EHe, ). The intimate friendship, the affective moods and erotic relationship between Spier and Hillesum were so intense that in the middle of the fears and chaos of the disorder of the times, she could write: “What will be will be, and the only danger for me is that my heart might break with love for him” (EH, ; EHe, ). Shortly afterward, she copied a sentence from one of Rilke’s letters: “Thus everything comes and keeps on coming, and we have only to be there with all our heart” (EH, ; EHe, ). Two weeks later she wrote down: “Something else: I have learned one important thing today: wherever you happen to find yourself, be there with your whole heart” (EH, ; EHe, ). This showed how much Hillesum was open to receive life’s lessons, not only from Spier, through the way he showed her how to live, but also from Rilke, through his letters and poems.

“Worstelen” (Wrestle with) and “Erotiek ” (the Erotic) Hillesum’s breakthrough was what she termed a “worsteling,” a “wrestle” (AAZZ,  –,  –). She used this symbol literally in her “wrestlings” (“worstelingen”) with Spier, symbolizing her experience with him variously as: “door worstelen” (struggle through), “omhoogworstelen” (wrestling upward), “losworstelen” (wrestle loose), and “worstelpartij ” (wrestling match). Worstelen (wrestling) for Hillesum had mainly a physical and erotic connotation, but it also expressed something of her suffering. About her eroticism, Hillesum remarked: “I do have a strong erotic streak and great need for caresses and tenderness. And I have never had to go short of these” (EH, ; EHe, ). Before , eroticism had already become an important part of Hillesum’s life. She was, she claimed, “erotically refined” (“erotisch gerafineerd ”): “I am accomplished in bed, just about seasoned enough I should think to be counted among the better lovers, and love does indeed suit me to perfection, and yet it remains a mere trifle, set apart from what is truly essential, and deep inside me something is still locked away” (EH, ; EHe, ). But what was locked away had to find a way into the open. Ironically, Hillesum regarded the contact with Spier to be essential for this break-



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

through: “Ever since I met him, I have been experiencing a process of maturation, something I would never have thought possible at my age” (EH, ; EHe, ). From the beginning, a “wrestling match” (“worstelpartij ”) took place between the “therapist” Spier and the “patient” Hillesum, about which Spier said: “But to go back. ‘Body and soul are one’” (EH, ; EHe, ). In an erotic tension, Hillesum struggled with body and spirit: “But then we come to that confounded eroticism, with which he is bursting, as am I. As a result we are irresistibly driven towards each other physically, though neither of us wants it, as we both once said in so many words” (EH, ; EHe, ). Spier’s initial aim was to test and call forth Hillesum’s physical strength, and indeed it was a significant turning point for her when she became aware of the great strength she possessed: “Remarkably enough, I floored the man, big though he was. All my inner tensions, the bottled-up forces, broke free, and there he lay, physically and also mentally, as he told me later, thrown” (EH,  –; EHe, ). No one had ever been able to do that to him before, and Spier could not conceive how Hillesum had managed it. She was amazed with the effect the “wrestling” (“worsteling”) had on her: “It all seemed so innocent this wrestling, new and unexpected, and so liberating. It was not until later that it took hold of my fantasies” (EH, ; EHe, –). Through the sexual expression and the tensions that arose they encouraged each other to go beyond themselves. Hillesum learned new aspects of herself. She became aware of a longing for a greater expression of love, and she admitted: “Sex for me is not all that important, although sometimes I give the impression that it is” (EH, ; EHe, ). She discovered that her erotic curiosity for men was mere “messing or fooling around” (“spielerei ”), rather immature, and had to be fought: “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. Now that my inner forces have been concentrated, they have started to fight against my appetite for adventure and my far-ranging erotic curiosity” (EH, ; EHe, ). Eventually, Hillesum shared with Spier how the “wrestling match” (“worstelpartij ”) had affected her: the shame, the resistance, the eroticism, the disappointment, and all that they had brought to the surface. Spier suggested wrestling again, but now without the “erotic cloudiness” (“erotische

Letters and Diaries



vertroebeling”). Hillesum struggled with the tension between giving in to her erotic feelings and resisting them. Spier had a fiancée in London, Hertha Levi, in whom he was still interested, and Hillesum too had a relationship, with Han Wegerif. These circumstances encouraged her to search for a breakthrough in dealing with her erotic desire: But there is also the immediate danger of growing too attached to him, as well as the realization that I must struggle free of him, that I must live my own life—I am still at the beginning of mine while he has already entered upon his final stage. I have to cut through all the threads that keep growing between him and me every time we meet. It costs me a lot of pain and takes a great deal of strength, but if I can fight this fight to the end, I shall be stronger than ever before. (EH, ; EHe, )

She realized that if she could really win this struggle, she would have grown that much stronger and probably achieved “something worthwhile for the first time in my life” (EH, ; EHe, ). Thanks to Spier, this was indeed the first time that Hillesum fought against her erotic fantasies instead of “toying with them when I know in my heart that I don’t want to” (EH, ; EHe, ). Because she and Spier both struggled so much to order their erotic feelings, Hillesum became aware of a more essential and “primitive warmth” in her, and this helped her manage her eroticism: I am not really an earthy woman, at least not sexually. I am no tigress, and that sometimes gives me a feeling of inferiority. My primitive physical passion has been diverted in many different ways and weakened by all sorts of intellectualizations, which I am sometimes ashamed of. What is primitive in me is my warmth; I have a sort of primitive love and primitive sympathy for people, for all people. (EH, ; EHe, )

In Etty: De nagelaten geschriften van Etty Hillesum, –, the Dutch words that are used for “warmth” are “de menselijke gevoelens,” which translated literally mean “the human feelings.” What is primitive in Hillesum is the “warmth” of her natural human feeling and empathy toward others. Hillesum’s “wrestling” (“worsteling”) with her erotic self and the experienced tension arose not only from her erotic longings but also from the fact that



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

she was not entirely certain that she really wanted an affair with Spier; certainly there was always a part of her that did. The tension made her aware of her femininity and of her longings for this man, but her most prominent awareness was the interconnectedness and tension between “body” and “spirit” that was part of Hillesum’s constant suffering: “I am much too immersed in ‘art,’ in literature, realms in which everything has been crystallized out, often after a great deal of struggling and suffering” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum’s writing was a form of that suffering in the midst of the “wrestling” (“worsteling”). Through the use of language symbols, in an effort to articulate an erotic struggle, she wanted to wrest some form out of the chaos inside of her: “What I must strive to capture if I ever want to ‘write’ is the small everyday detail, the individual gesture. I keep going on about ‘life,’ ‘suffering,’ ‘the person.’ That strong, all-embracing feeling. The small details, the suddenly caught gestures, observed, studied and expressed with love and patience—etc., else I am merely being extravagant” (EH, ; EHe, ). Tension, erotic or not, was part of Hillesum’s daily life. She discovered that in order to change, it made sense to let herself be confused by everything that came to her. This was a method of arriving at truth in her life. She wrote that she would try to face it all as best she could: “I shall accept all the inevitable tumult and struggle. I delight in warmth and security, but I shall not rebel if I have to suffer cold, should You decree” (EH, ; EHe, ). Clearly, Hillesum’s erotic desire had found new form: it had become a more mature and ordered desire to spread lovingkindness: “I shall try to spread some warmth, of my genuine love for others, wherever I go. But we shouldn’t boast of our love for others. We cannot be sure that it really exists” (EH, ; EHe, ). This development in her consciousness was more likely to grow if she would remain “ordinary” and “true to that in me which seeks to fulfill its promise” (EH, ; EHe, ), true to the “Menschheitsliebelinie” (EH, ), “the love of humanity line” (EHe, ). The tensions, the erotic struggle, the weariness, the dislike, and the suffering became a catalyst for Hillesum to embrace life: I vow to live my life out there to the full. Sometimes I think that my life is only just beginning. That the real difficulties are still to come,

Letters and Diaries



although at times I feel that I have struggled through so many already. I shall study and try to comprehend, I shall allow myself to become thoroughly perplexed by whatever comes my way and apparently diverts me, yes, I shall allow myself to be perplexed time and again perhaps, in order to arrive at greater certainty. Until I am no longer perplexed and a state of balance has been achieved, but with all paths still open to me. (EH, ; EHe, )

Finally, after Spier’s death in September , Hillesum’s new awareness was coming into full focus. As a result of having been connected somehow to his spirit, she seemed to have been drawn into a stronger awareness of something timeless, beyond the turmoil of her inner chaos. In several places in the diaries she noted this experience of encountering a sort of “timelessness,” both in an abstract way, with Dutch symbols such as “centrum” (center), “hart” (heart), “bron” (source), “ziel ” (soul), and “geest” (spirit), and with more “concrete” symbols such as “God” and “Jou” (You): And talking to You, God. Is that all right? With the passing of people, I feel a growing need to speak to You alone. I love people so terribly, because in every human being I love something of You. And I seek You everywhere in them and often do find something of You. But now I need so much patience, patience and thought, and things will be very difficult. And now I have to do everything by myself. The best and the noblest part of my friend, of the man whose light You kindled in me, is now with You. What was left behind was a childish, worn-out husk in the two small rooms in which I experienced the greatest and deepest happiness of my life. I stood beside his bed and found myself standing before one of Your last mysteries, my God. Give me a whole life to comprehend it all. (EH, ; EHe, )

“Centrum” (Center) and “Bron” (Source) Etty Hillesum definitely experienced a conversion from a somewhat scattered past into a more unifying present and future. She discovered that her mind and heart worked more or less together, and she was amazed at how much strength she found within herself. This experience of a new inner focus she symbolized as “center” (“centrum”) or “source” (“bron”) (AAZZ,  – ,  –). In the past Hillesum would have had the wildest fantasies and



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

dreams, which were crushed once they encountered reality. Through her inner change, Hillesum was unable to project fantasies any longer, but she was able to accept whatever would come onto her horizon (EH,  – ). Hillesum described what she was doing as “hineinhorchen,” “to do some soul-searching” or “try to grasp the meaning of.” In other words, she was trying to listen with her whole being to the depths of her existence. She now found a “centre” (“centrum”) within herself, rather than seeing herself as centered by clinging to someone else as the focus of attention. Inspired by Spier she wrote: “Once a person has a centre, all external impressions can find an anchorage there (must call a halt there). Anyone who lacks a centre and is uncertain, is thrown off balance by the least impression, grows increasingly uncertain, while the centre of the former grows more constant with every impression” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum’s inner source, “mijn centrum” (“my centre”) (EH, ; EHe, ), became stronger day by day. The new strength that she found within her now, “a small, closed-in centre” (EH, ; EHe, ), became the place where she could retreat, especially when the world was in turmoil and the impressions were too much for her to take: “And now, deep inside me, there is a centre of strength which also radiates strength to the outside, as I can tell from the reactions of my fellow men” (EH, ; EHe, ). Now that the different “strengths” (“krachten”) were bundled together, Hillesum was able to fight against her lust for adventures, her erotic curiosity, and her desire to cling to other people. She experienced different movements: “Well, life is a struggle” (“het leven is een strijd ”) (EH, ; EHe, ). The “tensions” (“spanningen”) were always there in the background, making life very hard for her at times. Nevertheless, she began to enjoy the tensions; and through battling with them, she grew in inner strength. She understood that it was important to broaden her horizon, to be her own person, and to keep focus on the whole of a life. “I must bear this in mind at all times. If you are tied to another he will absorb your strength, with the result that you have less to give to him. One must be a world all of one’s own, with one’s own centre, and from that centre one can then transmit beams or forces or what have you to others” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum’s main focus of struggle, of course, was Spier. He often represented that “centre” quality for her: “The way he spoke of his work! I felt as

Letters and Diaries



if I were sitting beside a life-giving source, a source from which strength flowed into me” (EH, ; EHe, ). Her attention shifted then from her own “centre” (“centrum”) to the center of Spier. She said: “I am afraid of losing myself in space with a centre unknown to me. But my centre must lie in myself, deep in myself, that is the only thing that matters” (EH, ; EHe, ). With this awareness of the “centre” (“centrum”) of all her strengths within her, Hillesum discovered that her inner joy was increasing. She was beginning to overcome her fears and to live life to the full; consequently, she was less concerned about the future. She was now able to live every minute and appreciate it in each present moment. Hillesum was finding that she was at ease with herself, and the “source” (“bron”) of goodness within seemed to have won the battle. She was, for example, capable of appreciating the beauty of nature that she saw around her, despite the ugliness of the war. She also developed the conviction that one should not forget “God.” Although living in extremes, Hillesum chose to live nonetheless and to be open to what was going on inside her. Turning toward her “centre” or “source” she began to “meditate” every day: I think that I’ll do it anyway: I’ll “turn inward” for half an hour each morning before work, and listen to my inner voice. Lose myself. You could also call it meditation. I am still a bit wary of that word [. . .] So let this be the aim of meditation: to turn one’s innermost being into a vast empty plain, with none of that treacherous undergrowth to impede the view. So that something of “God” can enter you, and something of “Love,” too. Not the kind of love-de-luxe that you revel in deliciously for half an hour, taking pride in how sublime you can feel, but the love you can apply to small, everyday things. (EH,  –; EHe,  –)

It was still very hard for Hillesum not to be disturbed by fears and worries, but more and more she became attuned to her own consciousness and adjusted to it. In the course of the search, the personal Hillesum stepped more and more aside. She began to notice a more universal onlooker emerging within her psyche, and she adopted a more detached way of registering her inner and outer life. She now began to feel as if she was participating in a “flow” (“stroom”), becoming more of an “instrument.” She somehow felt



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

“chosen” to be a “battlefield” where all the big questions of her time could find a place to fight and come to rest: 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. You must come to grips with [“auseinandersetzen”] with these terrible times and try to find answers to the many questions they pose. And perhaps the answers will help not only yourself but also others. (EH, ; EHe, )

The big questions of Hillesum’s time included: Why do we suffer so much? Why is there so much hatred in the human heart? What is the reason for all the pain experienced? The answers, I think, she found in the course of writing her diary. She would find that “source” of ordering love in her own heart. That “source” was even cherished amid great distress. It was a “center” of love and a humanity that ennobled her heart to accept everything that came on her path. More and more, Hillesum was in touch with her “sources” naturally: “I seem to be achieving a state of complete equilibrium. I no longer have to creep into the corner beside the wardrobe in order to ‘hearken unto myself ’—I now listen all day long to what is within me, and even when I am with others I no longer have to withdraw but am able to draw strength from the most deeply hidden sources in myself” (EH, ; EHe, ). The “sources” in Hillesum were part of her “listening inside” (“Ahnungen”), that is, her intuition. Entering the “source,” intuiting, she desired to preserve human dignity in all circumstances. But in order to find this ordering center of love, the answer to all her questions, she had to embark on a philosophical and mystical quest into her heart. She discovered that her inner sources were often opposed to her thoughts. “One can’t control everything with the brain; must allow one’s emotions and intuitions free play as well” (EH, ; EHe, ). “And those inner sources, those clear, eternal sources, have been barricaded once more by the heavy millstones of thoughts” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum was clear: “You shouldn’t live on your brains alone but on deeper, more abiding sources, though you should

Letters and Diaries



gratefully accept your brains as a precious tool for delving into what problems your soul brings forth. To put it more soberly, what all of this means for me is probably that I should have greater trust in my intuition” (EH,  – ; EHe, ). Her inner security was certainly growing, and it seems apparent that her relationship with Spier released these inner sources in her. She learned to make her strength more and more available to others, drawing on an everdeeper inner certainty: “He has tapped sources within me that will never again run dry, and I shall always be bound to him because we increasingly draw on the same sources” (EH, ; EHe, ). Clearly, Spier had a talent for leading people back to their inner sources. Following in his footsteps, Hillesum’s breakthrough gave her a new task in life: to lead people back to themselves, to stop them from their flight, and to bring them back to their own resources. Life, according to Hillesum, was the “source” from which one drew strength. Earlier, she had found this life with Spier; later, she was to discover it in herself: “If only I listened to my own rhythm, and tried to live in accordance with it. Much of what I do is mere imitation, springs from a sense of duty or from preconceived notions of how people should behave. The only certainties about what is right and wrong are those that spring from sources deep inside oneself” (EH, ; EHe, ). Besides the relationship with Spier, written texts could also bring Hillesum into touch with her “inner sources” and advance her breakthrough. A poem by Rilke, for example, or a Bible text about love could serve as inspiration: “And when I read these words. I felt as if—yes, as if what? I cannot yet express it properly. They worked on me like a divining rod that touched the bottom of my heart, causing hidden sources to spring up suddenly within me. All at once I was down on my knees beside the little white table and all my released love coursed through me again, purged of desire, envy, spite, etc.” (EH, ; EHe, ). Although inspired by other writers and texts, Hillesum also wanted to find word symbols, to write and form words from her own inner sources: “I experience people, and I also experience the suffering of people. And from that experience, words may one day laboriously wrestle their way up to the surface, words I shall have to pronounce and that spring from so true a



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

source that they are bound to find their way. Perhaps they will be very clumsy words, but they will have to be said” (EH, ; EHe, ). Being in touch with her inner center, Hillesum wrote: “We are merely hollow veins, through which world-history is flowing [‘doorheen spoelt’].” She seemed to have become aware of a more universal and historical consciousness, for which she tried to find language symbols. By doing so, she found some answers to the many desperate questions she encountered within herself. In Dutch there are two terms that are quite similar but still distinct: zinloosheid (senselessness, meaninglessness, pointlessness) and zinneloosheid (insanity, madness). In Hillesum’s case, it was her sense of zinloosheid (meaninglessness) rather than zinneloosheid that had troubled her soul. “De grote zinloosheid,” “the great meaninglessness,” made space for order and togetherness again that helped her to move on. She learned that meaning and order are all about the “source” of life itself. Her breakthrough led her into a realm of silence, going beyond mere words: “We must only speak about the ultimate and most serious things in life when the words well up inside us as simply and as naturally as water from a spring” (EH, ; EHe, ). She suggested forgetting that all our big words “begin with God and end with Death” (EH, ; EHe, ). Her desire was to become a little less wordy and attain a mode of simplicity. Her noble desire, however, to go beyond the words did not always prevent her from trying to symbolize her experience. She had to write. At the end of her diaries, Hillesum explained that her inner sources, “source” and “centre,” referred to “God.” In September , when she was exhausted from all the impressions in Westerbork and in the middle of a grieving process at the death of her beloved Julius Spier, a doctor remarked to her that her inner life demanded far too much physical strength from her. She wrote in her diaries: I think what weakens people most is the fear of wasting their strength. If after a long and arduous process, day in, day out, you manage to come to grips with your inner sources, with God, in short, and if only you make certain that your path to God is unblocked—which you can do by “working on yourself”—then you can keep renewing yourself at these inner sources and need never again be afraid of wasting your strength. (EH, ; EHe, )

Letters and Diaries



This section has looked at key language symbols used by Etty Hillesum in The Letters and Diaries, expressing her experience of breakthrough. Next, we examine Hillesum’s experience and articulation of open existence.

  “Leven” (Life) and “Kracht” (Strength) Key language symbols that arose from Hillesum’s Letters and Diaries as an expression of open existence were “life” (“leven”) and “strength” (“kracht”) (AAZZ, –). An important theme that emerged in Hillesum’s writing was her positive attitude to life. Every time she experienced moments of breakthrough, she opened herself up to the beauty and richness of life, experiencing it as meaningful. Suddenly she was living differently; “more freely, more flowingly” (EH, ; EHe, ); the costive feelings vanished, and a little calm and order flowed into her life, with her own conscious ascent. Throughout The Letters and Diaries, she articulated her vision on life with a strong inner conviction: “het leven is goed, hoe dan ook” “life is good, come what may” (EH, ; EHe, ). Her words are modern and often witty and surprising. In relation to the symbol “life,” however, she used the oldfashioned adjective “schoon” (“beautiful,” “pure,” “neat,” or “fine”): “Life is very beautiful” (“zeer schoon”) (EH, ; EHe, ); “life is beautiful, even though . . .” (“tòch schoon”) (EH, , ; EHe, , ); “but life is beautiful for all that” (EHe, ); “At the end of each day I feel the need to say: Life is very good after all” (EH, ; EHe, ); “And I firmly believed that I would go on finding life beautiful, always, despite everything” (EH, ; EHe, ). This “despite everything” (“ondanks alles”) referred to Hillesum’s context of social and moral breakdown and of total war, but crucially as well to her approaching death in the ongoing genocidal mass murder. Despite the hatred and evil around her, Hillesum found life worth living. One might wonder how Hillesum could say that life was good while Nazi Germany was killing the Jewish people. I attribute this attitude in part to the inner breakthrough she had experienced. Her depression and her fears of death made way for an openness and search for the meaning of life. From very early on in The Letters and Diaries Hillesum was convinced that “one



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

should never feel depressed about a depression” (EH, ; EHe, ). These words had enormous importance for her. She fought all the way through the period in her life recorded in The Letters and Diaries not to be engulfed by depressions, whatever triggered them. She desired to live “flowingly,” more “freely,” in tune with life. Chaos and sadness, even the occasional desire not to live, diminished through her openness to the flow of life. Once again she found meaning, reconciling herself with life and with her own conscience. She had a sense of starting to live life to the full: “Your whole life lies before you, you are only just starting to live. Now that your inner forces are being organized, you must keep your gaze fixed on life as a whole” (EH, ; EHe, ); “I think my life is only just beginning” (EH, ; EHe, ); “And yet—and yet. My life is only just starting. I have lived all the life there was to be lived, and now my life is only just starting” (EH, ; EHe, ). This sensitivity to the flow of life pushed Hillesum’s desire for death into the background. The result of this openness was a new ability to broaden her horizon. She asked the philosophical question about the meaning of life and took a critical stance toward her attitudes: “I have my own philosophy now, one I’m prepared to speak up for” (EH, ; EHe, ). Instead of being in her brain all the time, she wanted to “be”; the quality of dwelling in her conscious experience became important to her: Sometimes I don’t want to know anything more, want to have no knowledge, just to be, filled with life and a little goodness. But not with knowledge. As it is, my studies are not so much a quest for knowledge as a search for what lies behind things—to put it very humbly and simply: the search for the riddle of life. Which is probably something every human being looks for in his own way. Yet the riddle of life does not exist [. . .] Life cannot be captured in a few axioms. And that is just what I keep trying to do. But it won’t work, for life is full of endless nuances and cannot be captured in just a few formulas. (EH, –; EHe, )

Hillesum embraced the flow of life in its richness and in its complexity, in the colorfulness and in the endless nuances she discovered daily. But still she wondered: “What do you mean by ‘this life’? The comfortable life you now

Letters and Diaries



lead?” (EH,  – ; EHe, ) Hillesum understood that she was not experiencing every aspect of life yet: “Whether you are truly attached to life in the raw, in whatever form it may come, is something the years alone will be able to tell” (EH, ; EHe, ). She took particular note of attachments: “There is also this: ‘Whether you spend your life laughing or crying, it is still your life.’ But I am still attached to Western notions of the good life: ‘being healthy, growing wiser and stronger, learning to stand on one’s own two feet’” (EH, ; EHe, ). It was not until later that Hillesum experienced her strength: “Yes Etty,” she wrote to herself, “life is very good, and it’s as if the outlines of your own personality are getting stronger and more powerful” (EH, ; EHe, ). The flow of life and the strength of life that Hillesum experienced were also partly evoked by a “mystical” breakthrough, which she described in The Letters and Diaries as renewing her vision on life: And there was a moment when all the heaviness had fallen away, when life was so indescribably good and light to bear, that it seemed sheer surface, a glittering, bright, wide plane under which nothing moved, there were no hidden depths. It was almost like a minor vision. And I suddenly knew once more that something that is sheer surface simply does not exist, and I also knew immediately that that was a good thing. The caves and caverns into which one has to descend every so often are also part of life. (EH, ; EHe, –)

Nevertheless, Hillesum began to experience her life as “ordinary”: “I feel so ‘normal,’ so terribly normal and nice, without any of those terribly profound and vexing thoughts and oppressive feelings” (EH, ; EHe, ). She felt normal, full of life and depth, “but a depth that also feels perfectly ‘normal’” (EH, ; EHe, ). The circumstances around her grew grimmer each day. The threat of deportation and death clouded the atmosphere. It was during this period that Hillesum was fully conscious of the flow of life that entered her experience as a stream, an inner process that transformed chaos into order. She described it as “such intensity of life, of becoming at the same time more and more conscious and dwelling more deeply within, becoming more and more divorced from the chaos and attaining one’s true form” (EH, ; EHe, ).



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

Her days seemed numbered, but she was able to experience each day as if each one encompassed a whole life span. It helped her put things into perspective: “And don’t we live an entire life each one of our days, and does it really matter if we live a few days more or less?” (EH, ; EHe, ). Death was coming closer, and Hillesum, paradoxically, was growing into the flow of life. At the end of May , she gave account of her connectedness, or attunement to life: I went to bed early last night, and from my bed I stared out through the large open window. And it was once more as if life with all its mysteries was close to me, as if I could touch it. I had the feeling that I was resting against the naked breast of life, and could feel her gentle and regular heartbeat. I felt safe and protected. And I thought, How strange. It is wartime. There are concentration camps. Small barbarity mounts upon small barbarity. (EH, ; EHe, )

Hillesum experienced for herself the persecution, oppression, and despotism, the impotent fury and the terrible sadism of the German occupation. She knew it all and continued to confront every shred of reality that thrust itself upon her, “despite all”; because for her, life was a precious flow, a regular heartbeat: And yet—at unguarded moments, when left to myself, I suddenly lie against the naked breast of life, and her arms round me are so gentle and so protective, and my own heartbeat is difficult to describe: so slow and so regular and so soft, almost muffled, but so constant, as if it would never stop, and so good and merciful as well.—That is also my attitude to life, and I believe that neither war nor any other senseless human atrocity will ever be able to change it. (EH, –; EHe, )

Hillesum developed a connectedness and love of life that seemingly was independent from the outer circumstances and breakdown in society. She experienced the flow of life as something mainly interior. The outer stage became less important for her, which did not mean that she could escape from her circumstances. While the Jews were more and more restricted in their freedom of movement and in what they own, Hillesum increased in

Letters and Diaries



strength and appreciated life as it presented itself to her. She observed people’s negative feelings and their reaction to the breakdown, and she tried to reflect on the suffering she witnessed. “Suffering is not beneath human dignity. I mean: it is possible to suffer with dignity and without. I mean: most of us in the West don’t understand the art of suffering and experience a thousand fears instead. We cease to be alive, being full of fear, bitterness, hatred, and despair. God knows, it’s only too easy to understand why” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum understood the option of despair, but she refused to take that route. Through writing and reflection she actively fought and resisted the breakdown in order to keep in tune with the flow of life and its positive presence. In the midst of increasing Nazi terror, Hillesum witnessed to the fullness of life. She opened her heart and embraced the suffering of others; she consciously saw herself as part of history, as part of all those people who had suffered through the ages. In a time of fear and of threatened deportations to Westerbork, she wrote: Then I thought, or rather I didn’t really think it, it welled up somewhere inside me: throughout the ages people have been tired and have worn their feet on God’s earth, in the cold and the heat, and that, too, is part of life. This sort of feeling has been growing much stronger in me: a hint of eternity steals through my smallest daily activities and perceptions. I am not alone in my tiredness or sickness or fears, but at one with million of others from many centuries, and it is all part of life, and yet life is beautiful and meaningful too. It is meaningful even in its meaninglessness, provided one makes room in one’s life for everything, and accepts life as one indivisible whole, for then one becomes whole in oneself. (EH, ; EHe, )

Hillesum saw it as her task to witness to the richness and beauty of the flow of life, to take responsibility for it: “I feel as if I were the guardian of a precious slice of life, with all the responsibility that that entails” (EH, ; EHe, ). She felt responsible for “that great and beautiful feeling for life” she carried now within her. She knew what she had to do: “I must try to shepherd it safe and sound through these times, towards better ones. That is all that really matters, and I am always conscious of it” (EH, ; EHe, ).



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

There were moments she felt like giving up or giving in, but she wanted to do her duty: “to keep the spark of life inside me ablaze” (EH, ; EHe, ). Further on she wrote: “And I want to add something: I believe I have gradually managed to attain the simplicity for which I have always longed” (EH, ; EHe, ). When Hillesum reflected upon her experiences in Westerbork, she made comparisons between her quiet life in Amsterdam and the chaotic life in the camp, “in surroundings best described as midway between hell and a madhouse” (EH, ; EHe, ). In the past, she had sat behind her desk with no idea of what to make of life, because she had not yet become acutely aware of the life within herself: she was still sitting at her desk. In Westerbork, she was suddenly flung into a stream of flashpoints of human suffering: “And there, in the faces of people, in a thousand gestures, small changes of expression, life stories, I was suddenly able to read our age—and much more than our age alone” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum was able to feel “the contours of these times” with her fingertips. She read the signs of the times, and they did not seem meaningless to her: Surrounded by my writers and poets and the flowers on my desk, I loved life. And there among the barracks, full of hunted and persecuted people, I found confirmation of my love of life. Life in those drafty barracks was no other than life in this protected, peaceful room. Not for one moment was I cut off from the life I was said to have left behind. There was simply one great, meaningful whole. (EH, –; EHe, )

Just before her deportation from Westerbork to Auschwitz, Hillesum tried to explain what was perhaps the impossible to her friends: her experience and love of the flow of life even in the anticipation of facing her journey to the gas chambers in Poland: It is the only way one can live nowadays, with unreserved love for one’s tortured fellow creature, no matter of what nation, race or creed. And when that struck me during a completely disconsolate moment, I knew that I could go on living, not merely a surrogate life in a Jewish transit camp during the Second World War, as most people here do,

Letters and Diaries



but genuinely with a good deal of zest and joy and conviction and an inkling of all the connections there are and that ultimately still make life a meaningful whole—but this is something about which one cannot really write for lack of the right words. You must not worry or even feel sad about me, you wouldn’t be helping me if you did. (EH, ; EHe, )

In Hillesum’s open existence, two elemental “strengths” flowed through her, namely, her love of life and her acceptance of suffering. She lived a passivity that nonetheless had an active dimension, developed from her strong inner world. Her strength, she discovered, had nothing to do with achieving things, but rather it involved a turning inward toward the flow of life, toward love, toward acceptance, and toward developing the courage to embrace suffering: This is something people refuse to admit to themselves: at a given point you can no longer do, but can only be and accept. And although that is something I learned a long time ago, I also know that one can only accept for oneself and not for others [. . .] I know we can’t do anything about it. I have never been able to “do” anything; I can only let things take their course and, if need be, suffer. This is where my strength lies, and it is great strength indeed. (EH, ; EHe, )

“De Ander” (the Other) and “God ” (God) Hillesum’s opening of soul gave her two important symbols: “the other” (“de ander”); and “God,” also addressed as “You” (AAZZ, – ,  – ). At the beginning of The Letters and Diaries, the notion of “the other” is used either in quite an abstract manner for her fellow human beings or more concretely when she addressed Spier. Gradually, she included the community as part of “the other,” at first theoretically and later more concretely in “Camp Westerbork” as a result of what she experienced there. The central concern in Hillesum’s use of the symbol “the other” (“de ander”) is reflected in the following passage: To carry the other with one, always and everywhere, privately within oneself, and to live with him there. And not just with one, but with many. To draw the other into one’s inner space and to let him go on



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

flourishing there, to assign him a place where he can grow and unfold. To live genuinely with another, to live with him even if you should not see him for years and allow him to go on living within you—that is the fundamental thing. And that way you can be with someone sheltered from the external vicissitudes of life. It makes for great responsibility. (EH, ; EHe, )

Hillesum’s aim and desire to be with the other contrasted with her small expectations or demands of the other. Her words are in many respects equivalent to the famous vision of Francis of Assisi: “Oh Master, let me not yearn so much to be consoled . . . but long to console, to be understood . . . but long to understand, to be loved . . . but long to love” (EH, ; EHe, ). She seemed to have demanded more help from Spier than from any other person she met. Spier, as her guide, helped her see that as human beings we need each other. He also became a vital connection between herself and the other (“de ander”), in the sense that from him she learned to be a guide for others. For Hillesum, living an open existence meant living a life with and for others. God also became an important part of that connection between herself and the other. She learned that the key to being always there for others lies in the courage one has to be oneself: Do you know that when it comes to “being true to themselves” most people are real amateurs? I, too. And if one lacks the courage to be oneself, then one also has no courage for others. One has no contact with one’s fellow beings, feels lonely, and around that loneliness one spins all sorts of interesting theories, for instance the one about the “misunderstood soul,” etc., but all that is nothing but false romanticism and a built in escape. And because you are someone who has the courage to live life to the full, which simply means living on one’s own original sources, you force any who grapple with you seriously to return to their sources, to themselves and thence to others. (EH,  –; EHe,  –)

Hillesum’s attempt to take courage and to be herself demanded a process of “learning to live.” She had to come to herself in order to go out to others: “As soon as I stop feeling clean inside I also cease being open to others” (EH, ; EHe, ). Coming to herself was related to what she called the “in-

Letters and Diaries



dwelling of God”: “God, I thank You. I thank You for wanting to dwell within me. I thank You for everything” (EH, ; EHe, ). She was convinced that before she could help anybody, she first had to “live” herself: You can only help others if you yourself live according to what you want to explain, and I feel that I am increasingly in a position to lend others a bit of a helping hand simply by making it clear to them that no one else can really help them and that they should accept that, not as something that makes one unhappy, but as something that may make one aware of one’s own strength and inner voice, to which one should listen patiently until one accrues certainties from within—but one must be patient. (EH, ; EHe, )

Hillesum’s path toward an open existence and toward life for others began with self-reflection, in which she engaged her inner self: “It is only right and proper that one should be able to work on one’s inner self for the purpose of improving human intercourse (how nauseatingly I keep putting things!), and that this is the only place where one can start, with oneself, in oneself, I can see no other way, and that way is becoming clearer and clearer to me” (EH, ; EHe, ). Her deepest and best part, her innermost self, was that area of her inner landscape in which the colloquium with God flared up in response to the Presence within her. She came to recognize this inner place as a dwelling space for God. After Spier’s death, it became apparent just how much God and Spier were connected in Hillesum’s experience. On the day Spier died, she wrote: “You taught me to speak the name of God without embarrassment. You were the mediator between God and me, and now you, the mediator, have gone, and my path leads straight to God. It is right that it should be so. And I shall be the mediator for any other soul I can reach” (EH,  – ; EHe, ). For Hillesum, God was the person to whom she spoke, to whom she . Hillesum spoke to God. Alphonsus de Liguori, in How to Converse Continually and Familiarly with God, put such a dialogue in the following words: “Acquire the habit of speaking to God as if you were alone with Him, familiarly and with confidence and love, as to the dearest and most loving of friends. Speak to Him often your business, your plans, your troubles, your fears—of everything that concerns you. Converse with him confidently and frankly; for



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

wrote and prayed in order to receive strength to deal with her situation. She also referred to God as “Lord”: “O Lord, let me dwell a little more in the spirit” (EH, ; EHe, ). Her cry for help in The Letters and Diaries ranged from a need for support in her own suffering to a request for comfort for her fellow human beings in pain. From Westerbork, Hillesum wrote in a letter to Maria Tuinzing: My prayers, too, aren’t going quite right. I know: you can pray God to give people the strength to bear whatever comes. But I keep repeating the same prayer: “Lord, make it as short as possible.” And as a result I am paralyzed. I would like to pack their cases with the best things I can lay my hands on, but I know perfectly well that they will be stripped of everything; about that we have been left in no doubt. So why bother? (EH, ; EHe, )

Hillesum sensed that God is the hidden source, the essence of goodness in every human being; and it was for him that Hillesum was searching in the depths of her heart. Having experienced a gradual breakthrough to a path of openness, she encountered God as a friend with whom she could work well “together”: God, I thank You for having given me so much strength: the inner centre regulating my life is becoming stronger and more pivotal all the time [. . .] I think I work well with You, God, that we work well together. I have assigned an ever larger dwelling space for You, and I am also beginning to become faithful to You. I hardly ever have to deny You any more. Nor, at frivolous and shallow moments, do I have to deny my own inner life any longer out of a sense of shame. The powerful centre spreads its rays to the outermost boundaries. (EH, – ; EHe, )

Hillesum tried to create a home for God within her inmost being: she wanted to give him a place in her heart and to offer him her own sources. She

God is not wont to speak to a soul that does not speak to Him.” Ignatius of Loyola used the term colloquy regarding conversation with God, meaning: “speaking as one friend speaks with another.” See Ivens, Understanding the Spiritual Exercises, .

Letters and Diaries



became aware that she was a lone but privileged person. She felt she was only at the beginning of her search. Now she had begun to experience a life with God: I am only at the beginning, but the beginning is there, that much I know for certain. It means gathering together all the strength one can, living one’s life with God and in God and having God dwell within. (I find the word “God” so primitive at times, it is only a metaphor after all, an approach to our greatest and most continuous inner adventure; I’m sure that I don’t even need the word “God,” which sometimes strikes me as a primitive, primordial sound. A makeshift construction.) (EH, ; EHe,  –)

This “primitive, primordial sound” was nonetheless very important to Hillesum for the way she experienced God. From the time she began to live a more open existence, she felt that God lived deep within her and that at the same time she lived in God. One of her important experiences was “to rest in herself”; she used the German word hineinhorchen: Even if one’s body aches, the spirit can continue to do its work, can it not? It can love and hineinhorchen—“hearken unto”—I so wish I could find a Dutch equivalent for that German word. Truly, my life is one long hearkening unto myself and unto others, unto God. And if I say that I hearken, it is really God who hearkens inside me. The most essential and the deepest in me hearkening unto the most essential and deepest in the other. God to God. (EH, ; EHe, )

Hillesum’s experience taught her that God was the Creator of the Universe as well as helpless and dependent on us. He created human beings, but we are responsible for what we do to one another: “God is not accountable to us, but we are to Him [. . .] And God is not accountable to us for the senseless harm we cause one another. We are accountable to Him” (EH, – ; EHe,  – ). The consciousness of a helpless God became stronger in Hillesum when she sensed that death was approaching. More and more she used her letters and diaries as a way to speak to God. Aware of her own possible departure to Auschwitz, she wrote: “And in spite of everything you always end up with the same conviction: Life is good after all, it’s not God’s



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

fault that things go awry sometimes, the cause lies in ourselves. And that’s what stays with me, even now, even when I’m about to be packed off to Poland with my whole family” (EH, ; EHe, ). From the summer of  until her deportation to Westerbork a year later, Hillesum wrote a number of letters to her friends in Amsterdam and to her friends in Westerbork. Although the letters are not specifically addressed to God, they illustrate her openness and trust in God. At the end of June , she confirmed that she believed in a presence named “God” who “is love” (“is liefde”) and “merciful enough”: I got a letter from Leguyt that touched me very much. He is another one of those people who make you want to survive just so you can see them again later on. He enclosed a quotation from Dr. Korff: “And yet God is love.” I completely agree, and it is truer now than ever [. . .] I have noticed that in every situation, even in the most difficult, man generates new faculties that help him go on living. As far as that is concerned, God is merciful enough. (EH, ; EHe, )

On Thursday, September , , five days before her departure to Auschwitz, Hillesum wrote to her friend Maria Tuinzing. She described the situation in Westerbork: “Everything here has an indescribably clownish madness and sadness” (EH, ; EHe, ). In the midst of all this madness, she still believed God was in good hands: “We hardly realize it ourselves: we have become marked by the suffering for a whole lifetime. And yet life in its unfathomable depths is so wonderfully good, Maria—I have come back to that time and again. And if we just care enough, God is in safe hands with us despite everything, Maria” (EH, ; EHe, ).

“Dankbaarheid ” (Gratefulness) The experience of “gratefulness” (“dankbaarheid ”) is a quality that Hillesum carried within her, and it grew, ironically enough, as the violence increased around her (AAZZ,  –). How could a Jewish woman, whose life was continually in danger, be grateful? With her growing awareness of Nazi Germany’s attempt to eliminate all Jews, Hillesum grew in gratitude and openness. She desired to live an open existence where love and life were

Letters and Diaries



predominantly present. Her gratefulness was directed to God: it became an essential part of her personal philosophy of life, even in the midst of Nazi terror: Suddenly, there were planes, ack-ack fire, shooting, bombs—much noisier than they have been for a long time. It seemed to go on right beside the house. And it suddenly came to me: there must be so many houses all over the world that are collapsing each day under just such bombs as these [. . .] And I thought to myself: any minute now a piece of shrapnel could come through that window. It’s quite possible. And it’s equally possible that there would be a lot of pain. And yet I felt so deeply peaceful and grateful, there in my bed, and meekly resigned to all the disasters and pains that might be in store for me. (EH, ; EHe, )

Hillesum’s paradoxical attitude toward life was a disposition always to be grateful for the experiences in her life, experiences for which it is hard to imagine anyone being grateful. She was, for example, grateful for her imprisonment in Westerbork. She believed that happiness was possible, despite the political breakdown and the moral collapse of society. She was “grateful” for Julius Spier, her friend and lover, even when he passed away. She was glad that “S.” had died a natural death the day before the Gestapo came to put him on a transport to Westerbork: “Friends, I am happy and grateful, and I find life very beautiful and meaningful. Yes, even as I stand here by the body of my dead companion, one who died much too soon, and just when I may be deported to some unknown destination. And yet, God, I am grateful for everything” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum learned to be grateful for the hardships of existence. She was “grateful” for suffering, for pain, and for sadness. One could ask, Why? Surely it was because she wanted to be full of life: she wanted to have the courage to carry her suffering. She wanted to live and to be united with humanity as a whole: The cry “All men shall be brothers” will only have a chance of becoming reality once copyright is abolished. When everybody can draw freely on the great communal reservoir created over the centuries by



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

all mankind. When everybody knows and admits that this reservoir is a communal possession and appreciates that it is an act of grace when something comes your way from that reservoir, and that it matters less whether it comes to you, Mr. or Miss So-and-So, than that you feel grateful for being allowed to absorb one of mankind’s thoughts and feelings. (EH, ; EHe, )

Hillesum was aware that she could be grateful for having been chosen by providence as the means, the medium, the link, in helping to express, to find a way of giving words to, “the spirit,” “the divine.” She said: “Call it what you will. And then it doesn’t really matter who one is” (EH, ; EHe, ). Through her openness to the world and her capacity to be one with humanity, she received deep insights, and she was grateful for that. She thanked God: “Oh God, I thank You for having created me as I am. I thank You for the sense of fulfillment I sometimes have; that fulfillment is after all nothing but being filled with You. I promise You to strive my whole life long for beauty and harmony and also humility and true love, whispers of which I hear inside me during my best moments” (EH, ; EHe, ). The relationship between God and “gratefulness” in The Letters and Diaries grew stronger, and the emphasis gradually changed. In the beginning, Hillesum wrote about a God who would be grateful to her: “Perhaps these words—God will thank you for it—will turn into my salvation” (EH, ; EHe, ). Later, she wrote only about her gratitude to God: “God has given me the strength to bear everything and to face up to it, and because with me, just as with you, gratitude will always be greater than sorrow” (EH, ; EHe, ). With gratitude, Hillesum was safe in God’s arms: I don’t feel in anybody’s clutches; I feel safe in God’s arms, to put it rhetorically, and no matter whether I am sitting at this beloved old desk now, or in a bare room in the Jewish district, or perhaps in a labor camp under  guards in a month’s time—I shall always feel safe in God’s arms. They may well succeed in breaking me physically, but no more than that. I may face cruelty and deprivation the likes of which I cannot imagine in even my wildest fantasies. Yet all this is as nothing to the immeasurable expanse of my faith in God and my inner receptiveness. I shall always be able to stand on my own two feet

Letters and Diaries



even when they are planted on the hardest soil of the harshest reality. (EH,  –; EHe, )

Finally, when Hillesum was sitting on her rucksack among dozens of others who shared her fate, in a packed train moving toward Auschwitz, she did not feel homeless. Throughout The Letters and Diaries she had learned to be grateful and to “create” a God who suited her and her circumstances. Now she had found herself a new “home”: “The Lord is my high tower” (EH, ; EHe, ). Her last messages tell us how successfully she entered her home in God. She did not leave him behind; he journeyed with her to Auschwitz, where her “gratefulness” was put to the final test. How she died, no one knows, except God.

. Hillesum seems to quote Psalm : (from an older translation): “But the Lord hath been my high tower, and my God the rock of my refuge.” The metaphor “high tower” for God, however, occurs several times in the book of Psalms. It is possible that Hillesum also would have thought of, for instance, Psalm : (KJV): “The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.”



Eric Voegelin  Erich Hermann Wilhelm Vögelin (later anglicized as “Voegelin”) was born in Cologne, Germany, on the third of January . Voegelin’s early years as a student and his later years as a philosopher were an extraordinary adventure in reflection, a philosophical reaction to a uniquely barbaric period of history.

Rise of Nazism Being a student throughout the s at Vienna University, Austria, opened an enormous intellectual horizon for Voegelin, as Vienna was at the forefront internationally in a number of scientific fields. It was only in the early s, when the effects of National Socialism made themselves felt, that things started to change. The development of Voegelin’s philosophy was prompted by the political events that surrounded him, namely, the rise of Fascism and National Socialism. Voegelin strongly rejected Hitler’s National Socialism. He studied the extreme ideological movements as they developed into enlarged social myths and diagnosed them as a manifestation of a disease of the spirit. Voegelin utilizes the Greek symbol nosos (nosema) as used by Aeschylus and Plato to symbolize the experience of “sickness,” “madness”; “nosema tes adikias”: the “sickness of injustice” (CW, :). The cure for such disease lies, according to Voegelin, in the rediscovery of the order of the soul. 

Eric Voegelin



Between  and , Voegelin published several books that brought him into increasingly open opposition to the Nazi regime. He challenged, for example, the biological theories that were implied in the National Social race conception. Two books, published in , were the result of this preoccupation with biological theory: Rasse und Staat (Race and State), in which Voegelin strongly criticizes the leading German race-biologists, maintaining a position of theoretical objectivity; and Die Rassenidee in der Geistesgeschichte von Ray bis Carus (The History of the Race Idea), in which he argues in favor of the human person, in the Greek and Christian traditions, as a composite of matter and form, body and soul. Voegelin asserted the claim that there are no superior or inferior races, nor are there good or bad ones. His results were anathema to the National Socialists, and by the end of the year, both books had been withdrawn from circulation by the publishers, and the remainder of the editions were destroyed. Another of Voegelin’s responses to the rise of Nazism after  was Der Autoritäre Staat, published in , a study of the authoritarian state in Austria. In this work, Voegelin developed a critical treatment of the key language symbols of political theory and their distinction from other language symbols and from the deformed symbols of ideological politics. Der Autoritäre Staat was banned when the Nazis occupied Austria on March , . Voegelin showed great courage in writing and publishing these books and became an intellectual threat to the Nazi regime.

Shock and Emigration The  Anschluss of Austria came as a profound shock to Voegelin. On the basis of his political knowledge, he had considered it impossible that the Western democracies would allow the annexation of Austria by Hitler. Because of Voegelin’s attitude to the Nazis in particular and to ideological politics in general, he was under investigation by the Nazis. In his writings, his opposition to Nazism was quite blatant, and he was immediately fired from his position as Extraordinary Professor in the university. Although Voegelin had been appointed to the position of Extraordinary Professor only a few months previously, he was forced to leave the country and escaped to Switzerland. A temporary academic post at Harvard University offered by a former



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

colleague enabled Voegelin to enter the United States on an immigrant visa and to seek permanent employment, residence, and eventually American citizenship. He worked initially in Harvard University; then in Bennington College, Vermont; next (briefly) in Alabama; and for most of his life, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Voegelin finally settled as a research scholar at the Hoover Institution in Stanford University, California. Voegelin, having fled out of Austria to escape the National Socialists, wanted to make the break with Austria complete: he would be an American. He gradually became aware of how he could achieve a moderately tolerable English, free from ideological jargon and from the idiosyncrasies of the different cultural levels in the academic community. He was naturalized as an American citizen in . Thereafter, he used the anglicized spelling of his name, Voegelin, throughout his bibliography.

Reflection on Nazi Germany The reflections on what had happened to him during the period of Nazi Germany were the beginning of a dawning inner philosophical conviction that Western society can only withstand the temptation and the overwhelming threat of totalitarian ideology by regaining an authentic consciousness of transcendent “reality.” After witnessing the outrageous crimes of National Socialism, Voegelin faced the challenge of grappling with them by developing an elaborate and outspoken analysis of the spiritual level of contemporary German intellectual life, German political culture and the Germans’ complicity in Nazi rule, and their then-current lack of critical awareness of these experiences. He questioned whether they had adequately responded to their Nazi past by passing through a revolution of the spirit. He wondered if the mentality that had made possible Hitler’s rise to power were not still evident in the German intellectual, cultural, and religious elites and fashions of postwar Germany. Voegelin was conscious of the spiritual failure, especially on the part of the German elite during the Nazi period, to actualize their essential human capacity to participate in the timeless (that is to say the transcendent) “reality.” While most of his lectures have to do with what he calls the descent into the depths of the moral and spiritual abyss of Nazism and its aftermath in postwar German society, they also point toward the restoration of order.

Eric Voegelin



For Voegelin, it is precisely the revolution of the Spirit, what he will refer to as the Platonic periagogé, the turning round or conversion of the soul, that he upholds as an answer to the aversion from truth and justice that characterized the totalitarian ideology (CW, ). For Voegelin, the most important challenge for Germany in the latter half of the twentieth century was not a descriptive “mastering of the past” (CW, : –) but rather a critical “mastering of the present” flowing from a profoundly altered spirit. Since the past cannot be altered after the event, the “mastering of the present,” according to Voegelin, was a problem of moral consciousness and therefore demanded of the Germans a relentless spiritual self-examination of their past and present. As a native German philosopher he had to come to terms with his own German past and whether he, although consistently rejecting National Socialism, shared any individual guilt for crimes committed in the name of the German people. He struggled with the underlying questions: whether guilt was collective or individual; what the psychological involvement and the personal contributions of Germans had been in the past; and what efforts at self-critique they had made to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. Voegelin developed a philosophy of history in which he made an attempt to restore the order of existence through an evocation of an experience of radical conversion to transcendent order.

The Last Years In , Voegelin accepted an invitation to return to Germany to establish an Institute for Political Science within the framework of the University of Munich. His major work during this period embodied his knowledge that the foundational work of political philosophy must be done afresh amid the crises of a war-torn generation. Voegelin analyzed the situation in his lecture on the German university (published in German in  and in English, ) and concluded that the damage of National Socialism had been enormous (CW, ). The finest scholars had vanished (some were actually murdered during the war), so that the kind of professors whom Voegelin met in  in Heidelberg had simply disappeared in the postwar period without leaving a younger generation trained by them. Voegelin left Munich in . He was Henry Salvatori Distinguished Fel-



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

low at the Hoover Institution from  to  and Senior Research Fellow there from  until his death, in . This latter research position enabled him to write, lecture, and teach at Stanford, as well as continue as visiting professor at Notre Dame, Harvard, the University of Dallas, and the University of Texas at Austin. Actively philosophizing up to the end of his life, Voegelin spent his last days dictating his final meditation, “Quod Deus Dicitur” (CW, :– ). In it, he returns again to the underlying theme of the entire body of his work, namely, that the source of order in human existence lies in man’s attunement to “the flow of presence”—to one’s relationship with “God”— who has revealed himself historically in different ways and in different degrees. Eric Voegelin died in Stanford, California, on January , , at the age of eighty-four.

 An initial encounter with the sweep of Voegelin’s scholarly projects, The History of Political Ideas and the even wider and ever-widening Order and History, prompts the description of him as a philosopher of history. And so indeed he is; but he is more than that term conventionally suggests. He is interested in every culture, every mode of human participation in reality in all its dimensions. The philosophical thrust underlying Voegelin’s writings led to his attempt to develop a philosophy of history and to restore the order of existence through an evocation of an experience of radical conversion to transcendent order. Voegelin’s meditative search for order, operated within the field of a multiplicity of experiences of order and disorder, layered and interrelated in complex ways, constituting what he called the “flow of presence.” This symbol became increasingly important for his understanding of . Sandoz, The Voegelinian Revolution, . . The first volume, Israel and Revelation, of Voegelin’s main work, Order and History, appeared in ; volumes II, The World of the Polis, and III, Plato and Aristotle, were published in ; volume IV, The Ecumenic Age, in . The fifth volume, In Search of Order, was published in , two years after Voegelin’s death.

Eric Voegelin



“reality” and for the way he began to understand history. Philosophy became an attempt to recapture the reality that, he felt, was increasingly getting lost to human experience. His philosophical path sought to access that reality through an analysis of the language symbols that were used in the process of history to articulate and symbolize the experience of reality. The simple fact that Voegelin acknowledged the plurality of symbolisms used to articulate this reality makes it impossible to position him into any category of classification. Politically, he has been categorized as conservative, a fascist, a National Socialist, and as liberal; in his theoretical position, as a Platonist, a Neo-Augustinian, a Thomist, a Hegelian, an existentialist, a historical relativist, and an empirical skeptic; religiously, he has been classified as a typical Jew, as anti-Semitic, as a Protestant, as a Catholic, and in recent years, it has even been suggested that he was a Christian. Somewhat amused about these labels people had given him, Voegelin was aware that it would probably be a long time before the full significance of his main philosophical work would be thoroughly appreciated. Nevertheless, he considered it a vital task to investigate the sources of order and of disorder (both on a personal as well as a social level) and to make the results of his research more accessible to everyone.

Order Order and History opens with this sentence: “The order of history emerges from the history of order.” The second word in the first sentence of Voegelin’s magnum opus is order. What does he mean by it? The aspect of Voegelin’s philosophy that most clearly and sharply distinguishes him from many other modern philosophers is surely his robust insistence on human orientation toward, and receptivity to, the divine as the principal source of the inner form, and this is what Voegelin means by “order,” of the life of each society and of each human being. Openness and attunement to the divine, however perceived, is the condition of existence in truth, or “order,” in that social form; closure to the divine, aversion from it, rebellion against it, is existence in untruth, “disorder” in Voegelin’s sense. For him “the order of history” is all that is going on in history as a whole.



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

It is the order of the wider reality that includes, in whatever way, all the different societies and individuals and their relationships that bind them into one humankind. If each of the societies has at its core a struggle for an order, a struggle, not just to survive, but to exist in truth, to live in the right way, then what does Voegelin mean by the “history of order” from which, he is saying, the overarching order of history emerges? Voegelin is saying that in addition to the intelligibility of each society, or of each individual human being’s life, there has to be recognized an inclusive meta-intelligibility, a network of relationships relating the different modes of existence in truth or untruth to one another. To be sure, this all-encompassing intelligibility is a mystery, an intelligibility we can only see from within, with the partial and limited perspective of participants. It is a limit of the human condition that we are never able exhaustively and finally to penetrate and possess this meta-intelligibility. But it is an intelligibility nonetheless, one which we recognize as such and are powerfully drawn to explore. What Voegelin expressed as “emergence” is emphatically not cultural, economic, or historical materialism. Later experiences are not, in his view, produced by earlier ones, determined by them, nor are they their epiphenomena. Rather, at each moment of significant change, individuals or societies return to the source from which earlier social forms and spiritual orders “emerged,” namely, the presence of the divine and human responsiveness to it; and these changes in social form or spiritual order are grasped to be significant precisely because they represent important breakthroughs or shifts in the mode of understanding and responding to the same divine presence. Order emerges into history from the human encounter with the “divine presence.”

Presence An important symbol in Voegelin’s writings is “divine presence,” “Presence,” or “flowing presence.” What Voegelin means by presence is primarily a man’s experiential sensitivity to and reflective acknowledgment of his consciousness’s responsiveness to its being drawn or moved or pulled by the di-

Eric Voegelin



vine. Here, the divine is recognized as transcendent, that is, not present in the same way as things in space and time. When the symbol “presence” is used of the divine, the accent can fall on different aspects. In Voegelin’s use, especially in relation to his analysis of the constitutive experiences of classical philosophy, the accent falls heavily on the responsiveness of the man to the presence in his soul of the divine. For Voegelin, the structure of time is open to the transcendent; or to be more exact, human consciousness, as well as being open horizontally to the world, also is openness to the divine, and is open in this vertical dimension, by its very nature, at every instant, and from each moment to the next. Voegelin’s approach, however, differs from contemporary psychology and philosophy, especially philosophy of society, culture, and history, since the latter typically operates with a closed idea of time. They presume (incorrectly, Voegelin would argue) that each present moment of each human being and society is intramundane, takes place within the world, because that is all there is, and the world is not open in any real or significant sense to the transcendent. Voegelin was convinced that what made a philosophical study of order necessary is one’s obligation as a human being to experience and understand one’s human condition in the present moment under the enlightening dimension of timeless “Presence.” This awareness of “presence” would need to include an adequate understanding of the social and political order and disorder in the world. Thus, Order and History should be read, not as an attempt to explore curiosities of a dead past, but as an inquiry into the structure of order in a living present, a present experienced as a human personal “presence” in an immediate attunement to the divine presence (CW, ). Living this experience of “presence,” Voegelin continued to write and publish on topics related to his concern for the disorder in the contemporary world. He saw the need to regain ever fuller openness to reality through a rediscovery of the elements of order. A recurring theme in Voegelin’s work is the experience of human tension toward the divine ground of existence. For him, philosophical existence is existence in awareness of one’s humanity as having been constituted by this tension toward the divine ground. This awareness, Voegelin argues, emerges in the context of an existence cen-



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

tered on a turning toward the “Ground” (“God”): it is a living attunement to the dimension of divine timeless “Presence” in each transient conscious present moment of time.

The Flow of Presence Why the centrality of the concept of “the flow of presence”? If each mode of experience springs ultimately from the response of particular human protagonists to a perceived divine presence, then, taken together and viewed in their historical interrelationships, the entire field of different modes of human responses to the divine constitute what Voegelin terms “the flow of presence.” The flow of presence, thus, is a theoretical concept, developed by Voegelin, to analyze processes occurring in history in which a marked change occurs in the mode of response to the divine. Voegelin uses this symbol, “the flow of presence,” to analyze such changing processes, whether they unfold (i) across a sequence of societies, such as the “leap in being” beyond cosmological experience prompted by the differentiation of the transcendence of the divine; or (ii) in a breakthrough in successive stages of the life of a particular society, as happened with the classical philosophers; or, as the present book proposes, (iii) in a period of rapid and intense change in the life of an individual, such as Etty Hillesum, who undergoes a striking growth in experiential sensitivity that finds dramatic expression in her life and writings. In our time as in every other present, the drama we are living through and our roles in it are only partially and imperfectly known to us, the actors. It is in this perennial situation of inescapable essential ignorance, Voegelin reminds us, that the history of order emerges from the flow of presence. To find a way ahead, we need always, in the first place, to turn inward and restore contact with the lost center of our consciousness and our culture, the flowing presence. From this we gain the dim but indispensable gleam of light it throws on the deepening mystery of human existence as it opens toward the horizon of the unknown and unknowable future. Voegelin’s symbol “the flow of presence” is first and foremost defined as the intersection of time with the timeless:

Eric Voegelin



If you think of consciousness with the tension between God and man and if, as is usually done (even by Plato and Aristotle), you call one pole the “timeless pole” and call the other a “pole of time,” then you get a peculiar problem. Existence in tension which is consciousness moves in two dimensions at the same time; it is eternal and mundanely timebound. So you can express this existence only by the term (I usually use it) the flow of presence, meaning thereby the intersection of time and the timeless. That is called the presence. (CW, :–)

To clarify this difference between open and closed views of time, Voegelin draws on T. S. Eliot’s famous phrase from the Four Quartets (CW, : – ), “the point of intersection of time with the timeless.” “If you have the problem of open time, you would always have to consider that at every point of presence on this line . . . we are not moving only on this line, but in openness toward divine reality, so that every point of presence is, as T. S. Eliot formulated it, a point of intersection of time with the timeless. That is the point of presence” (CW, :). A horizontal “flow” of present moments makes up man’s life in the world of space and time. But each of these present moments is also a moment of the presence of the divine to, and in, and with, the man, if only he adverts to it and acquires and practices the existential habits of responsiveness to It. So every instant in the ongoing horizontal flow of time in the world of space and time is also intersected vertically by the presence of the divine, always present in the eternal now, always present in each man’s soul, if only the man acknowledges It, orients himself toward It, and seeks to attune himself to It. In “The Drama of Humanity,” Voegelin stated very clearly: “I am operating with the conception of a flow of presence” and “Here I am using the concept of the flow of presence, to which I shall have to come back presently, in detail. That is the general position of history which I shall use here” (CW, :, ). “The flow of presence” for Voegelin has to do with the problem of time and the timeless and with the way we experience the tension between these two dimensions, which thus affects the way we reflect . See also Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays. Eliot himself recites the poems on the CD Reading The Waste Land, Four Quartets and Other Poems.



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

on or look at history. History, for Voegelin, is interconnected with this conception of the flow of presence. Voegelin sees history as an open field of existence. The “field,” so to speak, has three sectors: man, society, and history. The structure of the field is the tensions between an ordered existence in truth and the disorder of the deficient modes of reality in untruth. Voegelin’s notion of History as an open field of existence introduces the problem of open time. If one were to represent the late-eighteenth-century concept of time, one would have to draw something like a line going in one direction. With open time, however, one would have to consider that at every point of presence on this line, we are moving not only on the line but also in openness toward divine reality (CW, : –). Voegelin explains: Every point of presence is as T. S. Eliot formulated it, a point of intersection of time with the timeless. That is the point of presence. Thus, the whole series of time would not be a series on a line at all but a series of present points in which none is ever past, but only past in relation to their present, not really past. Ontologically, really, it is always in relation to the presence, which is the same presence that constitutes my present here and now. (CW, :)

Voegelin argues that on this conception of a divine presence, which is the presence on every point of the line, depends every conception of history that makes sense. Why should we worry about anything that happened two or three thousand years ago, or even three minutes ago, unless there was a reason perhaps to remember it? For Voegelin there would be no reason whatsoever, unless it is connected with our present situation, our present point. He realized that the so-called “past” is connected with our present point three minutes later because it has a presence just as our point has a presence. He concludes: “So a proper diagrammatic formulation would not be the line, but you would have to make it something like a flow of presence, as I call it, with a direction in which there is permanently a tension between immanent and transcendent poles. That would be a proper diagram of time, but not a straight line” (CW, :). . Voegelin discovered in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenologie de la Perception an amusing anal-

Eric Voegelin



Thus, as the opening sentence in Order and History implies, there is an order in history because the responses of individuals and societies to the divine presence do not all have the same form nor do they remain the same forever. There is variety and change, as well as decline and recovery, breakthroughs and encounters between the different social forms and spiritual orders. There is, in short, a history of order. Each of these orders, Voegelin would argue, emerges from a unique response to the divine presence, however differently experienced and symbolized. The divine is always present or “here” in Its eternal now. I suppose, however, it is true to say most of us become keenly responsive to it only fitfully. So, in addition to the smaller intelligibilities of the different social forms and spiritual orders that have originated from the innumerable and very different encounters of particular men with the divine presence, there is also the overarching intelligibility that comes into focus when an attempt is made to see how all encounters are related to one another. This metanarrative is what Voegelin refers to as “the flow of presence.”

Consciousness Voegelin was convinced that any serious inquiry into the reality of the flow of presence must be rooted in concrete human experience. If the foundations of human thought are neither congruent with, nor grounded in, concrete living human experience, then they are wholly inadequate. Voegelin’s method puts less emphasis on ideas and concepts than on the existential reality of personal experience, which grounds all symbolizations of reality. In this regard, Voegelin’s vision of the flow of presence is totally empirical. The reasons he was attracted by a “consciousness constituted by reality” and the “larger horizons,” as he put it, had not to be sought in a theory of consciousness, but “concretely in the constitution of the responding ogy of the problem of time. He makes the following paradoxical point: “Time is nothing but a relation between myself and what I imagine to be time. Therefore, if I have such a line here, now, I cannot talk about it in the abstract, but I have to have to place myself in relation to it. And if I imagine it to be a flow, and myself standing as a person here on the border of that river of time, it flows past me in this direction, a flow presumably ending in some sort of ocean. Therefore all past time lies here in the future and all future time comes back here from very late in the past. That’s a lovely concept!” (CW, :–).



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

and verifying consciousness. And that concrete consciousness was my own. A philosopher, it appeared, had to engage in an anamnetic exploration of his own consciousness in order to discover its constitution by his own experiences of reality if he wanted to be critically aware of what he was doing” (CW, :). Voegelin was convinced that one should develop a conception of time that is not a floating, empty dimension but, as in modern physics, a parameter of something that exists (CW, :). What exists for him is consciousness, and “consciousness has a peculiar parameter that is called the timeless in time” (CW, :): “when consciousness is a site in which the transcendent and immanent meet, then that consciousness, or [that] man with regard to his consciousness, neither quite belongs to one nor the other but is in that sphere of the ‘in-between,’ in-between the timeless or eternal and the time of immanent time” (CW, :). Consciousness, for Voegelin, symbolizes the experience of tension (tasis) toward the ground (arche) of one’s own existence. One should therefore not confuse consciousness with the merely psychological understanding of “awareness.” Consciousness is more than self-awareness in the immanent sense of “self ”; it has a direction and a focal point, God. In “Structures of Consciousness,” Voegelin defines his terminology: We have in consciousness, first of all, always the problem that consciousness is a consciousness of something. And now I have to be clear about terminology. I shall call consciousness the something that is conscious of something; and the something of which it is conscious I shall call reality. And this relation between consciousness and reality to which it refers, that I shall call, following Husserl’s terminology, intentionality of consciousness. So in relation to a consciousness of man, the concrete human being, reality moves into [the] position of an object, intended subjectively from the cognitive subject [. . .] the consciousness is something that man has, and man concretely, man in his bodily existence[. . . .] The man in his concrete bodily existence is the carrier of such a consciousness, which intends reality as its object. That is intentionality. (CW, :–)

So, Voegelin chooses to call “consciousness” the site in which participation in the ground of man’s existence is experienced. In this site of participa-

Eric Voegelin



tion itself one can now discover the flow of presence. He sees this as an important point for the interpretation of historical phenomena, because wherever there is man, this participation takes place. As the eye is able to see light, so the pneuma, or soul or consciousness, according to Voegelin, is able to feel the divine presence. As the eye’s conscious act of seeing discloses to the man who is seeing that light is present, so the being moved (helkein) that is experienced in the pneuma, soul, or consciousness discloses, to the man who is moved, the presence of the Unseen moving him. Thus, for Voegelin, consciousness becomes the center of all philosophy and speculation on problems of order, including “the breaking forth of language”: We have consciousness, first, in its intentionality and then as an event of luminosity in reality. And about all these things we would not know anything unless there were this consciousness [with] the peculiar gift of expressing itself in language. If all these experiences, which we may call intentionality and luminosity, were mute, we wouldn’t know anything about [them]; there would be nothing to be communicated. So language must be introduced as a further structural element into this complex, as the method by which the communication between human beings and various consciousness[es]—in itself a problem of consciousness—[is] constituted. (CW, :)

All language “breaks forth” in the process of consciousness, in the sense of consciousness being a luminosity in reality. When reality becomes luminous, “it becomes luminous by letting that man who has consciousness find language-terms to designate what he experiences” (CW, :). What is important from the point of view of this book is that Voegelin’s language-terms flow of presence and consciousness are correlative (CW, ): both symbolize a . Luminosity, for Voegelin, is one of the three structural aspects of consciousness, along with intentionality and reflective distance. Since Anamnesis, Voegelin had consistently used the symbol “luminosity” to refer to the identity-aspect of the simultaneous identity and nonidentity of knower and known, thought and being, and he names it as a second structural “dimension” of consciousness. This luminosity is the awareness of one’s own consciousness as an event in Being and of one’s consubstantiality with the Whole. “Luminosity” appears to be an equivalent symbol to Gabriel Marcel’s “secondary reflection” and to Martin Buber’s “I-Thou relationship” (CW, ). See also Hughes, Mystery and Myth in the Philosophy of Eric Voegelin.



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

process in being. In Voegelin’s analysis, consciousness and presence are correlative terms, as are differentiation of consciousness and flow of presence. As the response of consciousness to the presence generates order in soul and society, so the sequences of differentiation of consciousness generate the history of order in societies and, we are suggesting in this book, by extension, in souls. The basis for extending the meaning of “the flow of presence” in this way is Voegelin’s ready acknowledgment that the response to the presence brings about a growth in the soul of the person responding, so that repeated recourse to the presence brings about a sequence of moments of growth. Finally, consciousness, the flow of presence, cannot be conceptualized and “grasped” absolutely in rational categories and systems. For Voegelin, the ontological status of consciousness and the existence it transcends is not in doubt. He perceives the reality of the presence in its immediacy. The understanding of reality, however, is not immediate; but what is perceived and what is understood is “reality” or “truth” for him: I am using the term[s] reality and truth in the Greek sense of the aletheia, the term that has both meanings of “truth” and “reality.” So reality becoming luminous for its structure through a process in which man participates—that is the first conception of truth. And then this reality that becomes luminous is—insofar as it becomes luminous in the consciousness of man in the relation of intentionality—a “knowledge” of that reality. So truth does not refer only to a reality outside of man and confronting man, but also to the process of reality in which man himself becomes an event, the event of the carrier of consciousness. (CW, :)

Perhaps the most fundamental principle that Voegelin proposes concerning the flow of presence is his insistence on consciousness as the foundational starting point. It is by our consciousness and by our experience of flowing presence that we are able to participate in and know reality (aletheia). Voegelin was clear that the flow of presence in human consciousness is always an event within a historical context of language, community, world, and cosmos. The event character of the flow has an ultimate reference point, which is the radically transcendent ground of being (prote arche). So, the term consciousness, according to Voegelin, can no longer mean a merely hu-

Eric Voegelin



man consciousness that is conscious of a reality outside the flow of presence. Consciousness is part of an “In-Between” (metaxy ) reality.

Metaxy (In-Between) Voegelin translated the concept of the metaxy, developed by Plato in the Symposium and the Philebus (CW, :), as the “In-Between.” Plato’s symbol metaxy represents the experience of human existence as In-Between the poles of man and of the reality he experiences. This existence is In-Between lower and upper poles: man and the divine, imperfection and perfection, ignorance and knowledge. In “Reason: The Classic Experience” Voegelin explains: Man experiences himself as tending beyond his human imperfection toward the perfection of the divine ground that moves him. The spiritual man, the daimonios aner, as he is moved in his quest of the ground, moves somewhere between knowledge and ignorance (metaxy sophias kai amathias). “The whole realm of the spiritual (daimonion) is halfway indeed between (metaxy) god and man” (Symposium a). Thus, the In-Between—the metaxy—is not an empty space between the poles of the tension but the “realm of the spiritual”; it is the reality of “man’s converse with the gods” (–), the mutual participation (methexis, metalepsis) of human in divine, and divine in human, reality. The metaxy symbolizes the experience of the noetic quest as a transition of the psyche from mortality to immortality. (CW, :)

For Voegelin, the reality of the metaxy is “the fundamental structure in existence” or “the self-recognizing structure of reality” (CW, :). The InBetween nature of experience becomes of particular importance in understanding the response to the flow of presence, for the experience of the movements of divine presence is not precisely located in man’s stream of consciousness, in the immanentist sense, but in the In-Between (metaxy) of the human and the divine, the “time” and the “timeless.” . Plato, Philebus and Symposium in Complete Works,  – and – , respectively. . Sandoz, The Voegelinian Revolution, . . Ibid., .



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

The experience of a reality intermediate between the two poles is excellently symbolized by two passages from T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets: “History is a pattern of timeless moments”; and “the point of intersection of the timeless with time.” To express the same experience of reality, Plato has developed the symbol of the metaxy, of the InBetween, in the sense of a reality that partakes both of time and eternity and, therefore, does not wholly belong to one or the other. There appears to be a flow of existence that is not existence in time. Since modern philosophy has not developed a vocabulary for describing the metaxy, I shall use the term presence to denote the point of intersection in man’s existence; and the term flow of presence to denote the dimension of existence that is, and is not, time. (CW, :)

Voegelin reflects on the Platonic-Aristotelian analysis and interprets it in his particular way. He develops a provocative principle for his own philosophical theory: consciousness is not exclusively human. For Voegelin, what is human about consciousness is precisely its possibility of transcending its mere humanity. This happens through conscious participation (metalepsis) in the ultimate formative origin of its own existence, its divine ground. Plato’s formulation of consciousness is something like a divine-human metaxy, or In-Between. One could see it as an intermediate area of reality, inbetween the temporal and the timeless. This area is found as a questioning and knowing awareness in-between ignorance (agnoia, amathia) and knowledge (episteme). The human and divine do not merge in this “site” but interplay. As a derived, created being, one suffers a degree of “participatory creativity,” insofar as one realizes and is united with the origin (arche) out of which one has emerged. For Voegelin, the In-Between of existence is a meeting ground of the human and the divine in a consciousness of their distinction and interpenetration (CW, : – ). Voegelin’s attempt, however, is not to divinize humanity but rather to emphasize the limitations of human knowledge and power. The movement in the In-Between is indeed an intelligible whole of question and answer, with the experience of the movement engen-

. Hughes, Mystery and Myth in the Philosophy of Eric Voegelin,  –.

Eric Voegelin



dering the language symbols for its expression. As far as the experiences are concerned, the movement has no “contents” other than its questioning, the pathe of pull and counterpull, the directional indices of the pulls, and the consciousness of itself that we have called its luminosity; as far as the symbols are concerned, they have nothing to express but the experiences enumerated, the placement of the reality experienced in the wider context of the reality in which the differentiated movement occurs, and the self-conscious movement as an event in man’s existence in society and history in which hitherto it has not occurred. (CW, :–)

In the movement of the In-Between, in the luminous process of consciousness, Voegelin argues that the present possesses both, past as well as future, as inner dimensions. He rejected the metaphor of Augustine’s distentio animi, from which this understanding of time was derived, in order to account for the experience of consciousness as the non-objective reality of the inbetween. Voegelin introduces the symbol “the flow of presence” not to confuse the past, present, and the future of the external world with the luminosity of consciousness in which immanence and transcendence interpenetrate. This temporal flow of experience in which eternity is present “cannot be dissected into past, present, and future of the world’s time, for at every point of the flow there is the tension toward transcending, eternal being” (CW, ). Voegelin highlights that this more refined viewpoint indicates that there are processes in reality which do not occur in world-time. The flow of presence, the process of the ground, occurs in the metaxy. Since the experiences of the flow in the metaxy are encounters between God and human beings, history then consists not of concrete happenings in world-time but of the divine-human encounters in the flowing presence. As a result, Voegelin claimed that the only constant in human history is the structure of human existence understood as a process in the mode of presence (and not as

. See also, for instance, Paul Ricoeur, “The Aporias of the Experience of Time: Book II of Augustine’s Confessions,” in Time and Narrative, vol. , trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer, –  (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ). . Morrissey, Consciousness and Transcendence, .



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

chronological progression). For him this process is known only in the engendering experiences and is formulated in his theory of “equivalences.”

Equivalence According to Voegelin’s theory of “equivalence,” no matter what symbolic form the participation of the human being in reality assumes, the engendering experiences are equivalent (not the same) insofar as they reveal the metaxic structure of existence. What is permanent in the history of mankind is not the symbols but the human being in search of his or her humanity and its order. The revelation of the divine beyond in the vision of the poet Hesiod, for example, and later in an equivalent vision of Plato, takes on the form of an “indelible present” that occurs not in the past or future but in the eternal now. Equivalent to that, with Parmenides, we find that eternal being “is,” not “was” or “shall be.” It is an ever-present comprehending reality that participates in its timeless presence in the time-full moments of existing beings. This experienced parousia of the beyond in time is equivalent to Voegelin’s symbol the “flow” or “flux” of divine presence, which includes all phases of time—past, present, and future. The Parousia of the Beyond, experienced in the present of the quest, thus, imposes on the dimension of external time, with its past, present, and future, the dimension of divine presence. The past is not simply the past, nor the future simply in the future, for both past and future participate in the presence of the same divine-immortal Beyond that is experienced in the present of the questioner’s participatory meditation. We have to speak, therefore, of a flux of presence endowing all the phases—past, present, and future—of external time with the structural dimension of an indelible present. (CW, : –)

Voegelin came to view this flow of presence as what philosophers of every age seek to articulate when they experience their souls moving toward their transcendent telos, which they recognize as the same movement in others who express in imaginative symbols their experience of the same divine mys-

. Ibid.,  –.

Eric Voegelin



tery. “The flux of presence is the experienced Parousia of the Beyond in time, the mode of time in which the It tells its tale through the events of the metaleptic quest by endowing it with the indelible present; it is the time of the It-tale that demands expression through the capitalized Beginning and End when the presence of the Beyond is to be symbolized in the questioner’s account of his quest” (CW, :). Although one might think that Heraclitus’s account of the experience of “flux” or “flow” would also have been used by Voegelin to symbolize the experience of the metaxy, Voegelin does not seem to make that link between these two for describing it. The Platonic symbol metaxy was not used in Heraclitus to describe the experience of flux. In the “Conversations with Eric Voegelin,” he explained: “I’m afraid I originated flux of presence. I had to get a term that is neutral toward fideistic separation of God from the world. Flux of presence is a very good term” (CW, :).

Reason (Nous) Voegelin believes that man, living in “flux,” always presents himself with a particular self-understanding. These self-understandings vary from society to society and from one mode of experience to another. They are like “roles,” and they shape how the people with those self-understandings live out their lives. To the story of these different ways of living out their selfunderstanding in history Voegelin gives the name “the drama of humanity.” When the cosmos dissociates under the impact of awakening consciousness, then the cosmic self-understanding of man is, Voegelin shows, replaced by a new self-understanding. This happens in the light of the consciousness of man’s participation (metalepsis) in the divine, and we have then a new type of humanity, a new type of man understanding himself. Man makes what Voegelin called in Order and History a “leap in being,” finding a new interior direction or movement toward the ground (arche), the divineimmortal Beyond, the epekeina of all being things (ta onta), including the gods. . By fideist Voegelin means “accepting the verbal formulation—‘I believe in God the creator’—without asking further any questions: ‘What do you mean by that?’ Fideistic acceptance is very frequent, among fundamentalists especially” (CW, :).



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

Drawing on Plato and Aristotle, Voegelin uses the term nous (reason) for the differentiated experience of consciousness. He spots some technical difficulties here, however: reason is used in classic philosophy with at least ten different meanings. They describe different aspects of the noetic experience, aspects that are interconnected to describe the whole complex that one calls reason. In order to understand the flow of presence, Voegelin presents these ten different meanings. (i) Reason (the Platonic and Aristotelian nous) is in the first place the consciousness of existing from a ground of existence. So reason has a content, which Voegelin holds to be very important, because as soon as one empties the content out of reason (i.e., the consciousness of having a ground), then reason becomes empty and an instrument for handling world-immanent things. And since man is still man, Voegelin sees the danger of substitution: one has to fill the missing substance with some other substance, and there are many types of content that could be used as substitutes. Voegelin thinks this is why the modern period, especially since the eighteenth century, is so unstable and irrational. Reason for him is consciousness of existing from a ground. Thus, for Voegelin, flowing presence, is only a flow in the noetic mode insofar as it is a flow in reason, with content (CW, :). (ii) Turning to the human pole of that consciousness, one says that reason refers to the transcendence of human existence toward its ground, the movement toward it, the zetesis. What Voegelin means is that reason is the seeking and searching that one can experience in response to flowing presence in one’s own consciousness; and by doing this seeking and searching one is drawn toward the ground (CW, :). (iii) Again, reason is the Creative Ground of existence that attracts man, the kinesis of Aristotle. For Aristotle and Voegelin, nous means that faculty in man which understands the problem of the ground, that force in man which is attracted by something that is consubstantial with itself, the divine Nous. These three meanings of reason are intimately connected: the consciousness as a whole, and its two poles, the immanent pole of human reason and the divine pole of reason (CW, : –). (iv) Reason is also man’s ability to understand himself as existing from a

Eric Voegelin



ground. For Voegelin, reason is the sensorium, the area of consciousness that is self-reflectively aware of existing from a ground Beyond (CW, :). (v) Reason, then, is man’s ability to articulate this understanding through the formation of ideas. The awareness, together with the ideas themselves, constitute reason in Voegelin’s understanding (CW, :). (vi) Reason is also constitutive of perseverance in concern about the relation to the ground. It prompts the serious question, how is one to live? It drives the man toward consistent attunement to its demands, leading to the formation of a specific existential virtue, which Plato and Aristotle called phronesis, the virtue of persevering in the search of the Ground throughout a lifetime (CW, :). (vii) As this attunement is expanded throughout all the dimensions of one’s life, reason is also the effort to order one’s existence by the insight gained as one discovers how to live. Voegelin sees that this becomes a major intellectual concern, once one has understood one’s true nature as consciously existing out of a ground. It has consequences for the formation of habits in one’s daily life in relation to other people, in order to form one’s life in accordance with that newly understood nature of one’s self. Ethics, as in Aristotle, is seen by Voegelin as ultimately impelled by the mystical awareness of the ground, the flow of presence (CW, :). (viii) Reason expands further from the noetic individual into the society through the persuasive effort to induce other people’s participation in reason. Plato’s dialogues are a vast exercise in persuasion, in this sense, which he would call peitho (persuasion). Once reason is discovered, it is attended by the obligation to communicate and to persuade other people about this new kind of reality that one has discovered. One enters then into a community of this reality. This persuasive effort, for Voegelin, is also reason (CW, :). (iv) Reason is realized to be the constituent of man through his participation in the reason of the ground. Man is discovered to be constituted by reason as a form. This is a very special problem in Aristotle as well as in scholasticism. Reason is seen as the substantial form of man. What animates man is a rational soul (CW, : –). (x) And finally, Voegelin shows that reason is also the constituent of so-



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

ciety. Every man participates in nous. Aristotle speaks of homonoia, and Voegelin shows that it remains a fundamental category even in modern social science. Classical political science, politike episteme, founded by Plato and Aristotle as an effort to discover or invent the true order of the soul and society, rests on the assumption that there is one common nous for all human beings (CW, : Science, Politics, and Gnosticism). Through participating in that one common nous, everyone is ordered in orientation toward the same divine Nous. The resulting order in the relations between us constitutes the order of society. So the common nous, the common reason, is the substance that makes society (as an ordered society) possible. If one agrees that the order in one’s personal existence and in one’s relation to others is constituted by reason, then one has society. So society’s substance is called the “like-mindedness,” homonoia. Its members have the likeness of reason. If one does not share in a common reason, if the love within the community is not based on the divinity of reason in the other man, one does not have the philia politike. For Aristotle, the love in society holds together in that common reason that is the fundamental virtue of any political community. So love among us, love from one to the other, is the basis of all political theory, because we are all the same in the divine reason (CW, :). Voegelin notes Nietzsche’s exploration of this theme for modernity. David Walsh, in The Growth of the Liberal Soul, reflects thoroughly on Nietzsche’s understanding of the breakdown of Western society: Nietzsche understood the enormity of the modern secular experiment, the creation of a human order in which the question of God had become obsolete, because he realized the degree to which our whole moral tradition had depended on divine authorization. In contrast to the glibness with which the idea of a rational moral order was endorsed by liberal intellectuals, he was among the very few who foresaw the crisis of morality that would unfold. The death of God meant the advent of nihilism. All of Nietzsche’s efforts were directed to awakening his contemporaries to this realization and struggling courageously, if tragically, to find a means of confronting it. He understood that the abandonment of faith in God would put all the greater pressure on morality. It would soon collapse. “Every purely moral value system (that of Buddhism, for example) ends in nihilism: this is to be expected in Europe. One still hopes to get along with a moralism

Eric Voegelin



without religious background: but that necessarily leads to nihilism.—In religion the constraint is lacking to consider ourselves as value-positing.”

Voegelin was aware that as soon as you surrender the classical basis of the common reason, there is no particular reason to love anybody (CW, :). A common constitution of social character by a similar mode of response to flowing presence is not possible. One could observe social needs and relationships quite well empirically and yet see no reason why one should love anybody, just looking at these physical entities, unless one considers them to be the same in the divine spirit, sharing in the same flow of presence. Voegelin refers to the divinity of the spirit that is present in all as a flow of presence, which constitutes man with dignity and carries the obligation to have respect for all other human beings. The shared orientation to divinity is articulated in philosophy as homonoia (like-mindedness).

Presence under God Having thoroughly reflected on, for him, burning issues such as Order, History, flowing presence, consciousness, metaxy, reason, and equivalence, Voegelin formulated his personal answer to the central German experiential problem: to eliminate the first cliché, the so-called “unmastered past,” and acknowledge one’s presence under God. For Voegelin, what is past, is past. There is no “unmastered past.” So we must, according to Voegelin, open ourselves to the flow of presence and thus address the problem of the mastering of the present. Rather than mastering the present, what is called for from us is an attunement to the divine presence, allowing it, in the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins, to master us. Thou mastering me God! Giver of breath and bread:

. Walsh, The Growth of the Liberal Soul, ; Nietzsche, The Will to Power, . . This opening verse from Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “The Wreck of the Deutschland” is a meditation on why God allows good people to suffer and die. See Hopkins, Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins: Selected and with an Introduction and Notes by W. H. Gardner (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, ), .



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

World’s strand, sway of the sea; Lord of living and dead; Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh, And after it almost unmade, what with dread, Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh? Over again I feel thy finger and find thee.

There are for Voegelin only unmastered presents. There can indeed have been unmastered presents in the past, too; and inasmuch as the past, being the present in its time, was unmastered, this not being mastered reaches into the unmastered present, in historical continuity. By the “present” he refers to two things: “First, the present in the sense of transition from the past to the future on the line of time in the world; and second, the present in the sense of presence under God. That means that action is always to be judged as action in the world under the orientation of its presence to God” (CW, :). Where that does not happen, the present is unmastered; and even if it sinks into the past, it remains still unmastered. If this worldly past influences the present in historical continuity, then also the contemporary present remains unmastered. In Hitler and the Germans, Voegelin discusses “The Cliché of the ‘Unmastered Past’ versus the ‘Presence under God.’” He explains that the problem of the (German) unmastered past is really all about an unmastered present. The present, for Voegelin, can mean two things. In the first place, one can speak of the ideologically and socially usual idea of the present as a point in the present (Gegenwartspunkt) lying between past and future. “So the time of history is represented as going in a line from the past to the future through a point in the present, and from this viewpoint one understands the present” (CW, :). Thus, contemporary events are events that occur in the year ; past events occurred in the year , for example. Against this linear conception of the present (which, as I have said, Voegelin claims has existed only since the eighteenth century in this form as a thoroughly ideological notion), Voegelin presents another meaning of the present, in which the present is always related to the existence of man in his presence (Präsenz) under God. “Insofar as—while existing and acting in immanent time—man exists under God, he has presence. And the meaning of the past

Eric Voegelin



and the future will become generally interpretable only when starting out from this presence. For otherwise everything would proceed irrelevantly in an external stream of time” (CW, :). What does Voegelin mean by mastering the present? When he speaks of mastering the present, Voegelin has in mind placing the present of immanent time under the judgment of the presence under God. This kind of “mastering,” or attunement to “the flow,” is a general human problem, not something of the modern era, but for every human being: “to place the immanent present within the immanent process under the judgment of the presence” (CW, :). In his study of classic politics, especially as articulated by Plato in the Politeia and in the Gorgias, Voegelin discovered a clarification of his questions. To attune oneself to the flow of presence, or to place oneself under the presence of God, in relation to what one does as a human person and how one forms the order of one’s own existence and the existence of society—this placing of oneself, for Voegelin, is an “act of Judgment.” Thus, the human person is always under judgment; and hence the myths of judgment in Plato’s Gorgias and the Politeia. Because the human person is always under judgment, under the presence of God, in the sense of this “being-underjudgment” one must adjudicate how one acts and how others act and how this action brings about an order in society. For Plato, “judgment” is above all the investigation of the not-being-present of the sophists as individual persons, and a not-being-present in the sense of the presence of the entire society insofar as it allows itself to be led and ordered—that means disordered—by sophistic ideas. Voegelin in his turn would criticize any empirically immanent society that does not place itself under “judgment” in the presence of God, that is to say, when a science of the order of man in society arises from a reaction against not existing in the present. Plato was able to master the past of sophistry, insofar as it reached into his time. In this manner Plato also mastered his own present and highlighted what the present, in the sense of what this presence under God, meant. For Voegelin, understanding the flow of presence is always this mastering of the past, which is always a mastering of the present in that intersection of the time with the timeless.



Etty Hillesum in the Flow of Presence To bring the more intermediate setting of Hillesum’s life and writings into focus, we must not jump too quickly from the concrete events within Hillesum’s life experience to the transcendent categories so profoundly associated with Voegelin’s philosophical thought. In order to avoid a somewhat mechanical treatment of Hillesum’s Letters and Diaries by an attempt to fit it within the categories of Voegelin’s philosophical approach, a context closer to that of Hillesum’s own must be remembered first in order to properly assess the quality of her reflections. In applying a Voegelinian analysis to Etty Hillesum’s life and writings, we must keep in mind that there is a whole genre of prison camp memoirs, of accounts of suffering within the totalitarian abyss. The imaginative reenactment of Hillesum’s immediate context and experience, her shared suffering with millions of others, could not only help us feel with her but also evoke a deeper understanding in the light of Voegelin’s project. If we forget this context, we might get lost between the great theoretical sweep of Voegelin’s categories and the very concrete circumstances within which Hillesum lived and had to express herself. To have a fine study of Hillesum in her own right, one should locate her sympathetically within the spiritual and political setting in which she is most appropriately encountered. From there the context can be enlarged to include a wide array of confessional writings, along the lines of accounts of 

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



the interior life through which human beings undergo remarkable transformations. There are testimonies given by resisters who lived to tell the tale. Viktor Frankl, for example, survived Auschwitz and wrote about his experiences; his search for meaning tried to answer the question of whether an ultimate purpose exists. The meaning of Hillesum’s spiritual search, however, is found among those Holocaust diarists, chroniclers, and writers who did not survive. She is considered a significant figure precisely because she finds her place among those postwar stories about the heroism of the human heart. Hillesum’s conscious decision to write, her personal testimony and selfsacrifice, shares the legacy of resistance of Edith Stein, who was murdered in Auschwitz in ; Simone Weil, who starved herself in London in ; Anne Frank, who died of starvation and typhus in Bergen-Belsen in ; and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was hanged in  in Flossenbürg. They all call our attention to self-introspection, dialogue, and writing as a mode of resistance, charged with flowing presence. They share the divine-human struggle and determination to survive the dehumanization and destruction of the Holocaust. Some of the attempts to bear witness during the actual occurrence of horrific events failed, but this was not the case for the literary legacy of Stein, Weil, Frank, Bonhoeffer, and Hillesum. When we reflect on The Letters and Diaries, we do so from within the context and remembrance of the foresight, awareness, and comprehension of those mystics and thinkers who resisted the Nazi tyranny through the act of writing. We can attain preliminary understanding of the specific nature of Hillesum’s autobiographical response to terror by considering her work and actions in the context of other self-representational writers at the time of the Shoah. In many respects, Hillesum’s resistance and personal reflections anticipate the post-Holocaust views of Voegelin, Arendt, Buber, Levinas, Fackenheim, Tillich, Gilligan, Noddings, and others. Hillesum’s honest struggle to preserve the human, through writing and dialogue with a transcendent Other, God, demonstrated remarkable foresight into the ethical predicament and spiritual needs of postwar society. Her writings leave us with a significant but complex legacy of searching for the meaning of life . Brenner, Writing as Resistance: Four Women Confronting the Holocaust,  –.



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

in a reality of utmost horror. Hillesum’s diaries and other writings are a riveting account of how she affirmed values of empathy, caring, and connectedness in her real-life situations. Penetrating the personal, spiritual, and ethical dilemmas of her time, Hillesum revealed, with a rare historical vividness, how she attuned herself to the flow of life and chose to bear witness to its Beauty amid a nightmare of senseless brutality and doom.

 Awareness of Flow It is my contention that Voegelin’s philosophical reflection on “the flow of presence” is helpful in studying the life and writings of Etty Hillesum. As a symbol designed to “catch” changes and shifts in the mode of human responsiveness to the divine presence, especially within consciousness, “the flow of presence” is especially suited for clarifying what is taking place in a soul undergoing dramatic breakthroughs and rapid advances in the spiritual life in the midst of a social period of overwhelming collapse into lethal disorder. Toward the end of volume III of Order and History, Voegelin describes what Hillesum experienced, namely, that “Truth” is not a body of propositions about a world-immanent object; it is the world-transcendent summum bonum, the “greatest good,” experienced as an orienting force in the soul about which we can speak (as Hillesum did) solely in analogical symbols. The order of history has the form of a history of order, surging up in the souls of human beings like Voegelin and Hillesum. The varieties in which this experience and its expression occur make those who achieve them true representatives of the different modes of authentic human existence, whether they be mystic philosophers, prophets speaking truth to power, or a troubled young woman exploring her soul and struggling to put some order in her life under the threat of ideological genocide. They are representative exemplars of the modes of existence in truth that they have helped to craft. We who seek to follow in the footsteps of someone like Plato, Voegelin, or Hillesum know ourselves only in the degree of differentiation to which our experiences and their symbolization in the flow have reached. A searcher continuing along the lines of Voegelin and Hillesum needs to be

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



immersed in the real world while being aware of its deeper mystery, which is carried in and revealed by the flow. Voegelin made it clear that he saw it as his task to recover the insights and approach of the classic philosophers, the very antithesis of the systembuilder of modern philosophy. Like Hillesum, he was an investigator of problems—problems of human order in society and history. He investigated areas that had not been adequately analyzed, he believed, since Plato and Aristotle. Only in our time, he concluded, with obvious reference to his own search in Order and History, does the awareness of the flow of presence come into full focus again. Under the stress of the European crisis, through which contemporary society has lived, we are regaining an experiential understanding of the issues involved.

Resisting Disorder Just as Hillesum wrote about “love” (“liefde”), “God,” and “flowing” (“stromen”) as something that suddenly blazed up in her soul like a leaping flame, so Voegelin wrote with passion about the experience of the flow in “the metaxy.” Both Voegelin’s and Hillesum’s resistance to the disorder of the surrounding Nazi society led them to an attempt to restore the order within consciousness through love of wisdom. The experience of life for Voegelin and Hillesum became for each in their own way a dramatic affair, a hungering after reality, so intense that, in Hillesum’s case, it could only with difficulty be distinguished at times from erotic passion. But their deep and passionate love for reality made Voegelin and Hillesum like-minded searchers for Wisdom, who, in their different ways, aspired to a spiritual and political reawakening of humankind. Hillesum’s dialogues and her struggles with herself in the The Letters and Diaries created many vivid and memorable symbols of insight and wisdom, with representative power transcending all human barriers. As in Voegelin, so in Hillesum, there seemed to be a universal tension between the love of being and the love of existence. The love of being, for Hillesum, constantly drew her away from the Nazi terrors into the safe haven of her diary, a “place” of intersection between time and the timeless. The love of existence, however, brought her back to shed light on her fellow human beings who



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

were fighting for their life in the darkness of the concentration camp. Knowing that she could not escape her fate, she embraced her life in that place of the In-Between. She bore the problems of the everyday while keeping herself attuned to the flow of life. Through their own experiences, Voegelin and Hillesum were fully conscious of factors beyond human control. Reality for them was not a static order given to a human observer once and for all. They experienced life as a “flow,” moving toward the ground, in the direction of emergent truth. Hillesum’s existence and her ultimate fate in the movement of the flow were not solely matters of choice. The alienated Nazi context seemed to have speeded up the emergence of noetic consciousness. As in Hillesum, so in Voegelin, there was an urgency of presence that evoked a direct response to their immediate situation.

Exploring of the Quest Their participation in the flow of presence, within consciousness, was not an autonomous project of action but the response to a theophanic event, prompted by society’s breakdown. Their response to the event character of the flow was personal, not collective. Their ability to transcend their personal experience of breakdown did not abolish the horrific reality of Nazi terror within society. What became manifest to them was not a truth into which they could settle forever, but the tension of light and darkness in the process of reality. Voegelin and Hillesum were concerned with making the life of “love” and “reason” an ordering force within their consciousness. In this sense they were realists, not idealists; their forms of symbolization expressed, not “ideal states” in the abstract, but a real-life situation and the calling forth of an appropriate response. Unfortunately, we who read them today, living in a different climate of opinion, might be tempted to interpret Voegelin and Hillesum in a different manner. The truth of their reality was that they were living in their present, their souls participating in the ongoing drama of humanity. In volume V of Order and History (In Search of Order), Voegelin refers to the flow as the “exploring of the quest” for reality. He speaks of humandivine movements and countermovements, of the ascent to the height of

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



the Beyond (translation of the Greek epekeina) and the descent to the cosmic depth of the soul. Inspired by Plato’s work, Voegelin analyzed existence, discovering the tensions between life and death, between reason and the passions, between truth and opinionated dreams. Like Plato, Voegelin and Hillesum were aware of the overwhelming conscious drama of the quest. Voegelin saw that Plato melded philosophy and history when he founded political science in a time of crisis. One’s attunement to the flow of presence, Voegelin believes, expands to its greatest extent during such times of crisis. Living the crisis of World War II, the reality of consciousness and its luminous symbolization were inherent in Voegelin’s and Hillesum’s experiences.

Living Voegelin and Hillesum combined visionary and practical ways of living. They respected the life of action; but for both, the center of gravity in the formation of their characters was contemplative, responding to the reality of divine presence as a flow and as an action of transcendent significance. They were not interested in seeking an easy way out of their struggles. The primary meaning in the writings of Voegelin and Hillesum can be expressed in terms of “ascent” and “descent,” to use Plato’s symbols. They gained insight and put their wisdom into practice to be of service to their fellow human beings. Hillesum’s spiritual ascent, for example, through meditation and writing, evoked a response in her to the divine appeal that made her reach out to others. This accomplishment with divine help, this gradual inward conversion, or periagogé, a cognitive and moral reorientation toward the True and the Good as such, literally turned her around to a life fully committed to love for her fellow human beings. Her act of writing and her silent meditation helped her tap into an area within herself that in society had mainly vanished, Voegelin believed. He saw that “the practice of meditation” had disappeared as a “cultural factor,” resulting in a realm of practical ignorance in areas of reality such as “myth,” “philosophy,” “revelation,” and “mysticism” (CW, :). Voegelin, like Hillesum, practiced meditation: “I can quite definitely see that I got the practice of meditation by reading the Upanishads, by reading the Symposium of Plato, by reading the Confessions of



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

Saint Augustine. These are the classics of meditation to which one has to return” (CW, :). From Hillesum’s interior meditation of the Presence came her appreciation of life, a light of wisdom that fell on her struggle. Hillesum’s writing prevented her soul from being pulled down by those existential forces that would have led her to spiritual death. She knew she was living, not in a social vacuum, but in spiritual opposition to the Nazi regime. Her writing was not abstract but concrete: she had to “fight-write” against the “chaos” and “floundering” she experienced, and she passionately needed to create order in her life. Voegelin and Hillesum moved within the tensional field of a life of the spirit. They were actively engaged in an inquiry into the ascent of the soul toward what Plato would call the Agathon, or the Good. They both wrote, in their own particular way, a dramatic dialogue about human existence in society and history. In many ways, Voegelin and Hillesum share Plato’s own mystical experience of the periagogé and the ecstatic contemplation of divine presence in a moment of mystical insight. Perhaps initially the “vision” for Hillesum was merely private, while for Voegelin it was immediately something public. They discovered that the criteria of right order of human existence can be found nowhere but in their own “philosophizing” soul. The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin and The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum are, as such, not a call to direct action but an exercise in the contemplation of the reality of human existence in society and history.

Mysticism Both Voegelin and Hillesum could arguably be considered mystics, each in their own way. Hillesum’s mysticism emerged in the field of an intensely erotic and indeed sensuous character, disoriented by familial dysfunction, and the ladder of true eros began with the sensuous love for another human being. Hillesum’s eros, however, her experience of “desire,” “love,” and “longing,” did not primarily refer to sexual desire (in the manner made popular by Freud) but steadily grew to a desire for the summum bonum, “the greatest good,” which was already implicit in all her particular desires for limited goods. Although the public confirmation of such experiences of truth, love and compassion, goodness and beauty, had largely disappeared

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



from political society through Nazi terror, these experiences did not leave Voegelin and Hillesum. Those experiences lived on in the searching of Hillesum’s erotic soul and in Voegelin’s clarity of intellect. In the midst of the false order of totalitarianism, both were searching within themselves for an evocation of the transcendent source of the right order of human existence, “God,” through a commitment to the divine presence. Their mysticism grounded an attainment of interior spiritual order in resistance to an increasingly disordered external political world. Their awareness of the inevitable gap between the “paradigm of love” and its realization in a “NaziWorld” showed their realism—one might say, their “mysticism of the everyday.”

Mediators Voegelin and Hillesum became mediators of the divine reality of experiences of truth, love, and goodness to other people. They rejuvenated the order that had been eclipsed and distorted by Nazi rule and provided a fresh awareness of the transcendent ground. Having encountered Germany’s “spiritual closure” during World War II, Voegelin used terms such as eclipse, eclipsed, or closed existence for the experience of an often voluntary, but often also involuntarily absorbed, perverse closure of consciousness against reality. Martin Buber expressed this closure, which was pointed out by Voegelin, in equivalent symbols: Eclipse of the light of heaven, eclipse of God—such indeed is the character of the historic hour through which the world is passing. But it is not a process which can be adequately accounted for by instancing the changes that have taken place in man’s spirit. An eclipse of the sun is something that occurs between the sun and our eyes, not in the sun itself. Nor does philosophy consider us blind to God. Philosophy holds that we lack today only the spiritual orientation which can make possible a reappearance “of God and the gods,” a new procession of sublime images. But when, as in this instance, something is taking place between heaven and earth, one misses everything when one insists on discovering within earthly thought the power that unveils the mystery. He who refuses to submit himself to the effective reality of . For “mysticism of the everyday” see Marmion, A Spirituality of Everyday Faith.



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

transcendence as such—our vis-á-vis—contributes to the human responsibility for the eclipse.

As mediators of “the effective reality of transcendence,” Voegelin and Hillesum were creating a new spiritual community substance, homonoia. Their experience of homonoia, “likemindedness,” their authentic and spiritual search flowing from the heart, could be described in Aristotle’s sense of a friendship based on likeness in participation in nous: not the sharing of opinions or positions with those people around them, but sharing in the timeless nous as the dynamic movement elicited by the attraction to the transcendent ground. There are similarities between the philosophical evocation of Voegelin’s writings and Hillesum’s expression of what Voegelin calls “the flow of presence” in her Letters and Diaries. They both accepted the reality of the depth in their experiences as well as the dynamic thrust of their consciousness toward the ground of existence. Voegelin, in the spiritual passion of his philosophical quest, experienced the ground of being as the transformative force drawing his deeper self. “Reason” for him was not an independent force but was dependent for its direction on openness to the ground. Philosophy for Voegelin is one mode of self-orientation toward the divine in the “flow of presence.” Without the ordering of the whole personality by the truth experienced in the flow of presence, the intellectual and moral powers would, Voegelin considered, lose their direction. Voegelin and Hillesum both tried to live their lives in philosophic openness despite the confines or the threats of the closed Nazi society. Against a background of a social pathology, each moved toward a deeper understanding of the soul, where hatred was banned by love and lies made way for justice. Each experienced that the “truth” of the flow of presence arose from the depth of interior experience. Hillesum in particular was intuitively conscious of her “Centre” (“Centrum”), aware that her soul possessed an “omphalos,” or “navel,” through which the cosmic forces, or life, flowed (“stromen”) into her soul. . Buber, Eclipse of God,  –.

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



The “omphalos,” or in Hillesum’s symbolization, “Centre,” was both the source of the forces, which surged up from the depth of her psyche, and the subject matter of the stream of her writing. Parallel with her gradual attunement to the flow emerged the union with the transcendent reality that had been submerged in her experienced chaos and floundering. The flow of presence, as witnessed and symbolized by Hillesum, could hardly be “untrue” because it would not exist unless it had its experiential basis in the movements of the soul that it symbolizes.

Fidelity and Eagerness Although Voegelin was a baptized Christian, it was his philosophical fidelity (that is, his intellectual and moral attunement to the divine ground of existence) rather than his fidelity to his Lutheran upbringing that made his life so transparent for its rootedness in Mystery. Hillesum was an ethnic Jew, but it was her uncompromising eagerness to find meaning in the kaleidoscope of her daily life, rather than within the ethos of her Jewish background, that led her to grapple with the experience of Mystery. Both made an attempt to communicate that Mystery experienced during a difficult period in history. Their writings were a search for order, a visible “form” revealed through the invisible movements of the spirit. As participants in the divine mystery, both Voegelin and Hillesum entered the universal community of the Spirit. Much of volume III of Order and History has an implicit autobiographical dimension, representing as it does Voegelin’s personally achieved, highly individual meditative reenactment of the classical philosophical breakthrough, especially with respect to Plato. Where Hillesum drew on Rilke and Jung for part of her search, Voegelin was primarily interested in doing for our day what Plato had done for his. This involved appropriating the key insights of Plato, thereby enabling Voegelin to employ them in a diagnosis of the contemporary experience of order and disorder in the individual soul and European society. Voegelin discovered the “historicity of truth,” which meant for him that “transcendent reality,” the “flow of presence,” which, precisely because it is not an object of world-immanent knowledge, has a history of experience and symbolization. Voegelin’s analysis enables us to distinguish three different experiences



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

and so three different modes of self-understanding in the content of The Letters and Diaries, which we will now explore under the headings “Closed existence,” “Breakthrough,” and “Open existence.” The terms closure, breakthrough, and openness are used by Voegelin to symbolize the different experiences one can have in relation to the surrounding reality of God and man, world and society. Our focus will be on the presence of these three dimensions of human experience in The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum.

  Closure and Openness Experiencing “chaos” (“chaos”), “badness” (“slecht”), and “sadness” (“treurigheid ”) at the beginning of The Letters and Diaries, Hillesum struggled with the fluctuation of her moods (“stemmingen”) not to lose contact with reality. Her rich interior life expressed itself in the variety of moods (“stemmingen”) that moved her soul. She had to come to terms with them: “I believe that on the one hand I take myself too seriously with all my moods, and on the other hand that I take myself too lightly—a proper sense of my own growth, the centre, is still lacking. When I feel wretched, it is just as if I were feeling the misery of all mankind inside me. To what extent is that unwarranted Weltschmerz (world-pain)?” (EH, ; EHe, ). “I don’t know what all those twists in my mood mean. I go about with them, they’re with me all the time, and yet they are the most difficult thing in the world to fathom, to get to the bottom of. I don’t know why that should be” (EH, ; EHe, ). Floundering helplessly in the “ocean” (EH, ; EHe, ), she experienced a “spiritual constipation” (EH, ; EHe, ) that could have ended up in a form of “closed existence.” I am using Voegelin’s term closed existence to refer to the mode of “chaos” in Hillesum’s life (“leven”) in which there were internal impediments to a free flow of truth (aletheia) into consciousness and to the pull of the transcendent. Hillesum’s psychological, ethical, and spiritual distress was caused by the instability of her family environment. Her struggle to overcome and heal this unbalanced life was a primary motivation in her self-exploration. The real movement toward resolution only began with her interior breakthrough

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



experiencing flowing presence. Hillesum struggled to overcome emotional closure: “I know that I shall have to live my life to the full come what may. And my inner workshop must never be closed, I have to keep it at the ready” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum’s experience of “closure” or “chaos” was in contrast with her experience of “open existence” when she was living more “flowingly” (EHe, ), or “fließender” (EH, ), finding “order” and “form” in her chaos. She was conscious that the experience of an open “stream” differed among people: “One person happens to have a stronger and fiercer life-stream to force through his slender body than another” (EH, ; EHe, ). For Voegelin, “open existence” symbolized the mode of existence in which consciousness was consistently and unreservedly oriented toward truth (aletheia) and toward the transcendent pole of the tension of existence; in Hillesum’s terminology, when things would “melodiously” roll from “God’s hand” (EH, ; EHe, ). Voegelin used the term open self  to symbolize a person like Hillesum who fled from the isolation and loneliness of her merely private existence as an atomized individual to embrace the mysterious togetherness of reality disclosed in pure experience. For Hillesum, the term open self referred to the experience of “willingness” and “openness” (“bereidwilligheid ”). “To be willing” (“bereid zijn”), for her, is to be open and receptive to life (“leven”) (AAZZ, –), which means that one should actively participate in the flow of life. “Openness” (“bereid zijn”) is intimately linked with the “Other” (“Ander”) and with “love” (“liefde”): “I kneel once more on the rough coconut matting, my hands over my eyes, and pray: ‘Oh, Lord, let me feel at one with myself. Let me perform a thousand daily tasks with love, but let every one spring from a greater central core of devotion and love.’ Then it won’t really matter what I do and where I am” (EHe, ).

. On emotional and psychological “congruence,” that is, intrapersonal rightly flowing communication, see Rogers, On Becoming a Person. . For William James, “thoughts in the concrete are both fully real and made of the same stuff as things—pure experience. His insistence on the multifaceted intimacy of men’s normal sympathetic relationship to the universe led Voegelin in  to coin the term open self ” (Sandoz, The Voegelinian Revolution, ).



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

While struggling with the experience of political turmoil, fear, and the inner and outer chaos of the war, Hillesum fought against the “closure” of her soul through an ongoing writing (“schrijven”) toward truth (aletheia): With all the suffering there is, you begin to feel ashamed of taking yourself and your moods so seriously. [. . .] I want to live to see the future to become the chronicler of things that are happening now. [. . .] I notice that, over and above all my subjective suffering, I have an irrepressible objective curiosity, a passionate interest in everything that touches this world and its people and my own motives. Sometimes I believe that I have a task. Everything that happens around me is to be clarified in my mind and later in my writing. [. . .] Anyhow, I sprang from this chaos, and it is my business to pull myself out of it. (EH, ; EHe, )

Deformation In order to defend the reality of Reason (Nous) against the chaotic impact of the Nazi regime, Hillesum had to fall back on Spier and other writers like Rilke to keep on writing. Especially at the beginning of the diaries, Hillesum wrote down a lot of Spier’s notes, as for instance these passages: “A man at peace with himself [‘Der in sich ruhende Mensch ’] does not bother with time (nor does a child)” (EH, ; EHe, ); “One should never feel depressed about a depression” (EHe, ); “One cannot teach what one has not mastered oneself” (EHe, ). These sayings helped Hillesum in her daily experience of the flow of presence, which was marked by her fierce “struggle” (“strijd ”) with what Voegelin would call “deformed reality.” Hillesum’s “struggle” was so overwhelming at times that she began to experience her life more fully (AAZZ,  –). As a result, her depressions and “sadness” (“treurigheid ”) gradually disappeared. In the autumn of  she wrote: “To become clear in your mind about yourself and about this world and about a dozen or so thoughts and ideas is a never-ending struggle, but you know you have a liking for the struggle, don’t you?” (EHe, ). Voegelin’s term deformed reality or deformation symbolizes the destruction of the order of the soul (“ziel ”), or the order of society, which should be “formed” by (i.e., should receive its vital principle from) the love of the transcendent ground inherent in the fundamental tension (tasis) of exis-

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



tence. For Hillesum, the symbol “soul” (“ziel ”) referred to the experience of the primary life principle in her existence (AAZZ, – ). “Soul” for Hillesum is an experience of intuitive “attunement,” a “being attuned to” (“aanvoelen”), which could be expressed and symbolized in intellectual terminology but which started with personal experience. Her way of using the symbol “soul” is best captured as “a passionate [‘een hartstochtelijke’] interest in everything that touches this world and its people and my own motives” (EHe, ). The “soul,” for Hillesum, symbolizes the experience of a deep inner life that shines through the human person. She believed she had to care for her soul by keeping contact with the flow of presence, the “undercurrent” (“onderstroom”) in her being: “If I go in search of it outside of myself, let go of myself, of my soul as it were, then I am lost, unhappy, no longer in a position to grasp the meaning of things” (EHe, ). Thus, what Voegelin called “deformation,” the destruction of the order of the soul, was for Hillesum a state of alienation, disconnection, a losing of oneself in outer things, no longer in a position to grasp the meaning of life. On Saturday, July , , in Westerbork, Hillesum raised herself above the “Nazideformation” that had imprisoned her “soul”: I can’t help it, that’s just the way it is, like some elementary force— the feeling that life is glorious and magnificent, and that one day we shall be building a whole new world. Against every new outrage and every fresh horror, we shall put up one more piece of love and goodness, drawing strength from within ourselves. We may suffer, but we must not succumb. And if we should survive unhurt in body and soul, but above all in soul, without bitterness and without hatred, then we shall have a right to a say after the war. Maybe I am an ambitious woman: I would like to have just a tiny little bit of a say. (EH, ; EHe, )

She was very conscious of the spiritual path she was taking in a society characterized by forces such as Nazism, Communism, anti-Semitism, racism, and sexism. Voegelin analyzed these socially deformative processes in his es. “My own motives” is a very rough translation of zieleroerselen, which, in my opinion, is better translated as “soul-moving” or “soul-dynamics.”



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

say “The Eclipse of Reality.” He sets out a detailed analysis of the different ways in which man often shrinks or “contracts” himself into a “deformed” being out of touch with true humanity and the world: By an act of imagination man can shrink himself to a self that is “condemned to be free.” To this shrunken or contracted self, as we shall call it, God is dead, the past is dead, the present is the flight from the self’s non-essential facticity toward being what it is not, the future is the field of possibles among which the self must choose its project of being beyond mere facticity, and freedom is the necessity of making a choice that will determine the self’s own being. The freedom of the contracted self is the self ’s damnation not to be able not to be free. (CW, :)

Hillesum recognized areas in her life where she viewed reality with a fantasy perception, despite the complications that were thereby forged from such a perspective. She realized how much energy that fantasy consumed and how much it was bound to detract from any real connection: “Reality does not chime with my imagination, because my imagination tends to run riot” (EH, ; EHe, ). Her erotic fantasies in particular kept running as a film in her head: A few erotic fantasies about S., but those were easy to shut out. After all, I don’t want to possess the man; my fantasies about him are a bit sick, with an element of experimentation, of speculation, and if any were ever to come true I should shrink away like a frightened schoolgirl. And because I know that so clearly, I am also able to shut it out. [. . .] In God’s name away with those foul fantasies, they do nothing but obscure one’s inner life. (EH, ; EHe, )

Hillesum’s imagination, rather than being a permanent “disease” (nosos), was a more passing “event” of contraction. Her awareness, in relation to Spier, helped her gradually leave the prison of her selfhood in order to remove the frictions: “We tend to forget that not only must we gain inner freedom from one another, but we must also leave the other free and abandon any fixed concept we may have of him in our imagination. There is scope enough for

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



the imagination as it is, without our having to use it to shackle the people we love” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum acknowledges areas of immaturity in her life. She stopped surrounding her imaginary self with an imaginary reality. She saw the pretense of her own created “reality”: Yet if I hadn’t had those fantasies, everything would no doubt have been quite different. There was an immediate and mighty collision of my extravagant fantasy life with the sober reality. [. . .] Your imagination and your emotions are like a vast ocean from which you wrest small pieces of land that will be flooded again. [. . .] Keep your eye fixed on the mainland and don’t flounder helplessly in the ocean. And now to the job in hand! (EH, –; EHe, )

Reality Extravagant fantasy created by the imagination of a contracted self Voegelin would refer to as a “Second Reality.” This term was coined by the Austrian thinker Robert Musil and was used by Voegelin to explain how a person could create a fictitious imaginative world and could project it as “real” and use it to mask and thereby “eclipse” genuine reality. In an “eclipsed” consciousness, the images and representations of reality as something other than itself that are formed cover over or sometimes even substitute reality or, as Musil called it, create a “Second Reality.” Hillesum expressed her own struggle with imaginative reality: “By thinking and dreaming and imagining God knows what, I imagine that I am achieving who knows what. That unreal world is more real for me than the real world, and the more strength I devote to the first the more impotent I become in the second. And that must not be. It should all go hand in hand” (EH, ; EHe, ). Her imagination within her “Second Reality,” her “unreal world,” adopted a simplistic outlook on life, which she knew would not work in the end. Her thoughts could have become her obsession, a creed to screen the “First Reality” of common experience, which did not correspond with her per. Webb, Eric Voegelin: Philosopher of History, .



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

sonal created “system”: “Every moment of the day I catch you trying to force all those conflicting phenomena into one intellectual whole, into a single system. That seems to be an elemental instinct in me. But what is it really? I simply want to build myself a carefully staked field of certainty” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum’s honesty prevented her from creating some sort of ideological system. “Honesty” (“eerlijkheid ”), for Hillesum, was a matter of spiritual and mental hygiene, which meant that she faced half-truths about herself (AAZZ,  – ). Through the flow of writing she gradually refocused her grounding awareness, finding clarity instead of “murkiness” (“vertroebeldheid ”) and “vanity” (“ijdelheid ”) (EH, ). While creating a “single system,” she opened up the question to herself: “Does that reflect a sense of uncertainty, a feeling of being lost in the multiplicity of things?” (EH,  – ; EHe, ). She was convinced that in reality “one must simply accept that multiplicity.” She discovered her ultimate objective: to grow very simply in herself while accepting reality, the complications of others. “Growth” (“groei ”) or “growing” (“groeien”) mainly refer to Hillesum’s spiritual development, whereby her inner process evoked a “growing strength” (“groeiende kracht ”) that became socially effective, especially in Westerbork, where she lovingly turned to others. “I continue to grow [‘mijn groei ’] from day to day, even with the likelihood of destruction staring me in the face” (EH, ; EHe, ). She desired to “no longer see everything in so final, so fixed, so absolute a light” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum was rich in desire. “Desire” (“verlangen”) is a symbol that appears quite frequently in The Letters and Diaries (AAZZ,  – ). She had many desires, from wanting to go to Russia to finding a way to express herself adequately on paper. In meeting Spier, she struggled with her erotic desires, trying to keep her desire “pure” (“zuiver”). She wanted to find the courage to express her desire (EHe, ). On March , , she wrote: “My longing [‘verlangen’] is slowly but surely maturing towards fulfillment” (EHe, ). Approaching the end of her life, Etty seemed to have been able to relinquish most of her desires, attaining a state of complete inner freedom. In an entry dated Thursday morning, October , , Etty addressed herself: “Fool that you are! Stop racking your brains!

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



You try to draw yourself life-size in words, in colorful, sweeping words. But no words will ever be able to contain all of you. God’s world and God’s heaven are so wide. Yet are they wide enough?” (EH, ; EHe, ). The subsequent frictions and sadness (“treurigheid ”) in Hillesum, far from being removed, grew into a general conflict between the world of her imagination and the real world. She recognized that reality did not change even if she imagined being different, or in Voegelin’s words: “As neither the man who engages in deforming himself to a self ceases to be a man; nor the surrounding reality of God and man, world and society does change its structure; nor the relations between man and his surrounding reality can be abolished; frictions between the shrunken self and reality are bound to develop” (CW, :). Although Hillesum had moments when her shrunken self eclipsed reality, she rarely denied her humanity. She did not set her contracted self as a model for herself, nor did she seem to impose her findings on anybody else. Moreover, the lack of insistence on conformity and the absence of hatred and aggressive behavior would be a reason to say that despite her struggle with chaos and sadness (“treurigheid ”), she remained in tune with reality. Signs of “aggressiveness” in her writings would have been, for Voegelin, the signs of anxiety and alienation in a woman who had lost contact with reality (CW, :). Hillesum’s history of order, however, was somewhat different. To understand it, we need to recall Voegelin’s account of the origin of philosophy in an act of resistance by a strong, intellectual, and spiritually sensitive soul to socially compelling untruth sensed as existentially deformative. Hillesum grew up as a “passive inhaler” of the surrounding secularized middle-European culture’s closure to original experience to the divine. The strands of eclipse of reality she found in her character were acquired or culturally and educationally inherited rather than personally chosen. Hillesum recognized emotional wounds in herself and struggled hard to heal them. One could, perhaps, speculate a little further. The emotional and psychological disharmony and upheaval of her childhood and adolescent family life, which saw both of her brothers suffering psychiatric problems, left its marks also in her psyche. If her brothers’ identity difficulties could be traced to their inter-



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

nalization of negative parental influence, then we could speculate that the resistance of Hillesum’s stronger character to similar familial pressures prepared her to undertake a new search within her soul for an ultimate ground on which to build and rebuild her existence. Her brothers’ emotional fates may have prepared her to expect that what is breathed in from external sources may be toxic. This could have reinforced an already strong temperamental inclination to self-reflective interior self-exploration in search of a non-self-toxic source of self-identity and especially a source of emotional and psychological healing. As she worked to overcome her internal disharmony, now and then “a kind of miracle” happened to Hillesum: she thought “with a calm, deep love” (EH, ; EHe, ). She recaptured this experience of the “flow” with the following words: Heavens above, what a miserable wretch I used to be, compared with what I am now. Let me just try to recapture it clearly, for soon my present mood will have become my normal state. [. . .] It feels as if the savage hordes that used to chase one another across an immeasurable plain within me have been brought to heel, kept in order by a strong hand, and great strength now emanates from there, peaceful energy, something safe and strong, harmonious, organic, self-confident, it’s all suddenly there in me. (EH, ; EHe, )

Strands in her imagination were perhaps close to “neurotic distortion.” She was aware that these strands were unhealthy, which made her committed to resist and heal them. The manner in which she reflected on her life (“leven”) prevented her from manipulating reality in such a way that her more fragile, egocentric “pretence of reality” might have configured her life with only herself in mind. Being conscious of the “frictions” that threatened her (“social disorder,” “chaos, “badness,” and “sadness”) she persisted in trying to recapture reality through the flow of presence. Attuned to the “undercurrent” (“onderstroom”), everything began to move more “smoothly,” “mellifluously” (“zoetvloeiend ”), making her keenly aware of “the new attitude to life” (EH, ; EHe, ) that had taken hold of her. When I simply “live for the day,” things start to go wrong with me sooner or later. At such times the meaning of life escapes me. I must

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



not lose touch with the “undercurrent.” The highest and best I can hope for is that of “being at rest in oneself.” There is nothing else. If I go in search of it outside of myself, let go of myself, of my soul as it were, then I am lost, unhappy, no longer in a position to grasp the meaning of things. Yes, being at rest in oneself. But that is something one has to keep working at. (EH, ; EHe, )

Hillesum used the German “in sich ruhen,” to “rest in oneself ” and the Dutch symbol “onderstroom,” literally translated as “under-flow” or “undercurrent,” to express the experience of a “flow” beneath the surface of daily “appearances,” “opinions” (doxa), and “outer things.” One wonders, however, if Hillesum herself actually eclipsed reality. Clearly, she did not develop huge centers of resistance to participating (metalepsis) in reality; neither did she induce a state of revolt by cutting off her awareness of the transcendent pole of the tension (tasis). “Reality projected,” Voegelin explained, “obscures or eclipses First Reality” (CW, :). This was clear, for example, in the National Socialist ideology. Hillesum, on the contrary, gradually grew in her awareness of “First Reality.” As she stated, “If a person takes an objective look at himself, he can discover strange things” (EH, ; EHe, ). She knew that she was part of life (“leven”), part of a true objective reality. In Westerbork, this experience gave her some consolation: Yes, really, it’s true, there are compassionate laws in nature, if only we can keep a feeling for their rhythm. I notice that afresh each time in myself: When I am at the limits of despair, unable, I am sure, to go on, suddenly the balance shifts over to the other side, and I can laugh and take life as it comes. After feeling low for ages, you can suddenly rise so high above earthly misery that you feel lighter and more liberated than ever before in your life. (EH, ; EHe, –)

The “balance” (“evenwicht”) Hillesum sought was primarily between “thinking” and “feeling,” “mind” and “heart” (AAZZ, – ). Paradoxically, when Hillesum was in the midst of chaos, a countermovement (reason or nous) appeared within herself that reestablished her equilibrium. “I must not take in any more outside stimuli for a while but will have to open my inner floodgates if I am to recover my balance [‘evenwicht’]” (EH, ; EHe, ). By opening her “inner floodgates” and attuning herself to the flow of



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

presence, Hillesum attained “a complete balance” (“een volledig evenwicht ”). The temporary unbalancing factors, in the beginning of The Letters and Diaries, were gradually restored through writing. Toward the end of her life, Hillesum’s “balance” at the core of her being, even when she spoke of “unbalancing moments” (“onevenwichtige momenten”), had become rather organically immovable: “Had all of this happened to me only a year ago, I should certainly have collapsed within three days, committed suicide, or pretended to a false kind of cheerfulness. But now I am filled with such equanimity [‘evenwichtigheid ’], endurance, and calmness that I can see things very clearly and have an inkling of how they fit together” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum’s equanimity (“evenwichtigheid ”), endurance, and calmness are certainly not fruits of an experience Voegelin would refer to as “eclipse,” a closure of consciousness to reality, a state that could become habitual and unconscious. Hillesum’s search (zetesis) was a continuous attempt to open her consciousness to the whole of reality. Although she was never entirely free from the pressure of reality, her “sadness” (“treurigheid ”) and anxiety were not produced by the attempt to evade it, as would be the case in a “closed existence”; rather, they were among the experiences of disorder she was trying to address. Hillesum noticed “that in every situation, even the most difficult, man generates new faculties that help him go on living. As far as that is concerned, God is merciful enough” (EH, ; EHe, ). What was important for Voegelin was not that most people, such as Hillesum, find themselves eclipsing First Reality through human frailty or passively acquired habit; rather, what was important was how they responded to closure when they became aware of it. As Voegelin puts it in his analysis of Plato, philosophy originates as an act of social resistance to surrounding disorder sensed as existentially deformative. We saw in chapter two that when Hillesum first started keeping a diary, she wrote mostly about herself. At first, her observational skills were turned inward (“binnenwereld ”), aimed at solving the chaos of her psychological problems. Once she had sorted herself out, she began to focus on the outside world (“buitenwereld ”). The shift in emphasis from inner to outer world was attended by a change in writing. Hillesum’s “inner” (“binnen”-) and “outer world” (“buitenwereld ”) were pretty much disconnected in her

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



life (AAZZ, –). Either she was immersed in outer activity, leading a hectic and restless (student) life, or she tried to close herself off to reach a state of inner harmony. But that “harmony” was easily shattered once she came in touch with the outer world again. What she often lacked, in her own words, was an inner “Centre” (“Centrum”). The art of writing and Hillesum’s ongoing turning toward the ground (arche) of her existence changed the dynamics between the “inner” and “outer world.” On October , , she wrote: “I must no doubt, stop trying to find the answer outside. And, really, the outside world only interests me insofar as it is an impression [‘afdruk van’] of my inner one” (EHe, ). As such, the flow of her writing corresponded perfectly with the changes within her consciousness. This was particularly clear in her letters from and about Westerbork. The sky is full of birds, the purple lupins stand up so regally and peacefully, two little old women have sat down on the box for a chat, the sun is shining on my face—and right before our eyes, mass murder. The whole thing is simply beyond comprehension. I’m fine. [. . .] As I walk through the mud between the wooden barracks, I feel as if I am walking at the same time along the corridors of my six-year home, or sitting at a shaky table in the noisy little parlor, or working at my beloved, untidy desk. I talk to many people here who say, “We don’t want to remember anything from before; otherwise we couldn’t manage to live here.” But I can live here as well as I do just because I remember everything from “before” (it’s not really a “before” for me), and I go on living. (EH, –; EHe, –)

 Reason (Nous) When Etty Hillesum felt the urge to write (“schrijven”) and reflect, she chose to write a diary. As a uniquely private medium intended for her eyes alone, the diaries offered an opportunity and a forum for free-ranging reflection unconstrained by actual or imagined critics. This enabled her to open an inner space wide and secluded enough for her spirit to unwind and unknot itself, searching out its true interior dimensions and contours. Writing for hours, her words flowed freely onto the notebook paper and filled hundreds of pages.



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

Writing (“schrijven”) was her basic inner need that she often tended to ignore: “I have this ever-present need to write but not yet the courage to get on with it” (EH, ; EHe, ). When she did write, she was unconcerned with beginnings, endings, structure or style, but the light of reason (nous) was at work: “But if the moments when I feel that something inside me is trying hard to grow and when I resolve to use my time fruitfully are to be taken seriously and not considered as mere stray impulses, then I must carry on living and working even when I am feeling less inspired and more down-hearted, no matter how pointless it may seem at the time” (EH, ; EHe, ). The Letters and Diaries show what Voegelin would call the circumstances and consequences of the differentiation of the nous. When Hillesum discovered that which became both the force and the criterion of order in her life, something gradually changed in her. Anything she wanted to commit to paper, she wrote down in order to be in “the flow”: “I must make sure I keep up with my writing, that is, with myself, or else things will start to go wrong for me: I shall run the risk of losing my way” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum, not wanting to drift away, did not retreat from the emerging breakthrough in her consciousness. The differentiation, evoked through this new process of writing, gave structure to her personal history and was parallel to what Voegelin described as the “philosopher,” Plato’s spiritual man (daimonios aner) or Aristotle’s mature human being. Surprisingly enough, now that I have ordered myself to stop being worried, I have in fact stopped. [. . .] The only fulfillment for me now is to lose myself in a piece of prose or in a poem with each word of which I have to wrestle. [. . .] What matters is not to allow my whole life to be dominated by what is going on inside me. That has to be kept subordinate one way or another. What I mean is: one must not let oneself be completely disabled by just one thing, however bad; don’t let it impede the great stream of life that flows through you. (EH, ; EHe, )

Hillesum showed confusion and chaos at the beginning of The Letters and Diaries, but she changed toward the end of her life, calming under the influence of her emerging reflective consciousness. She had started the diary to square things with herself, to conquer the depressions and master her in-

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



ner chaos. Like Plato and Aristotle she realized intuitively that there was something within her, which the Greeks called nous, or reason, that evoked in her a search for order and clarity. She received “a greater awareness” and hence easier access to her inner (“innerlijke”) “sources” ([oer -]“bronnen”). On September , , Hillesum made the link between the “(oer -)bronnen” (“inner sources”) within her and “God.” The term oer was popular at the time in Dutch society, and Hillesum used it often. Also, Hillesum spoke German fluently, and the German ur is equivalent to the Dutch oer—as in “oeroud ” (“ancient”)—but also to oor —as in “oorzaak ” (“cause”) or “oorsprong” (“origin,” “source”). She used oer in different ways; central are: “oerbron” (“source”), “oerkracht” (“force,” “strength”), and “oergevoel ” (“feeling”). There is also a distinction in Dutch between oer in the sense of “primitive”—as “oer-vrouw” (“woman”), “oer-lichamelijk” (“physical”)— and as a development that reaches out to mankind in the experience of “oerliefde” (“love”) and “oer-medelijden” (“compassion,” “pity”) (AAZZ,  – ). This desire to love, to know from within, and to have compassion had been present to her before its further differentiation in writing had ever taken place. “In the past I, too, used to be one of those who occasionally exclaimed, ‘I really am religious, you know.’ Or something like that. But now I sometimes actually drop to my knees beside my bed, even on a cold winter night. And I listen in to myself; allow myself to be led, not by anything outside, but by what wells up from deep within” (EH, ; EHe, ). She had an ambition to become a writer but was very modest about the result: “And a diary, well now, a diary is really only there to help one come to terms with all one’s different kinds of moods, at least that’s how it is with me” (EH, ; EHe, ). Although her new discovery would not prevent disorder outside of herself, it gave her some comfort in times of great distress. It made her “glide smoothly” through the day: “Gliding forward smoothly, sliding forward smoothly, through the day, through the world, through life” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum tried to resist her disordering passions (pathos) through selfpersuasion (peitho) by letting her thoughts and feelings pour out onto the empty pages of her notebooks. The newly experienced force of the nous “advised” her to start keeping a diary: to structure her inner chaos. The tension Hillesum experienced between order and disorder were illuminated by dia-



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

logues and discourses she held with herself and Spier (and other friends), to whom she wrote letters. To her, writing letters and keeping a diary were a matter not only of language but also of the psyche, of “heart” (“hart”) and “breath” (“adem”): “The words that flowed from her pen were like the contractions preceding her rebirth” (EHISS, ). Hillesum’s self-reflection, Voegelin would say, existed and developed in the personal, political, and historical dimensions of her time, none of which is valid without the others. She was also keenly aware of the different levels in her being and the struggle to find a healthy order among them. In her diary, she clearly described the struggle with the “lower” realms of her own being. Hillesum’s “integral” nature comprised both her psyche with its three dimensions of order and her participation (metalepsis) in the hierarchy of being from nous down to matter, which was the “subject matter” of the study of things (“de dingen”) pertaining to her humanity. Her own study of “things” (“de dingen”) was a daily preoccupation in her meditation, writing, and reflections (AAZZ, –). Her understanding of “de dingen” concerning the meaning (“zin”) and value (“waarde”) of being human increased when she had openly attuned herself to the “under-flow” (the “onderstroom”). “I can only let things [‘de dingen’ (EH, )] take their course and if need be, suffer” (EHe, ). In Westerbork, she wrote the following reflection: “What I have gone through this year is really quite simple, but I believe of incisive bearing on my further life. The cosmos has moved from my head to my heart, or in my particular case, to my midriff—anyway from my head to another area. And once God had moved inside me to the space in which he still resides, well, I suddenly stopped having headaches and stomach aches!” (EH, ; EHe, ).

Unrest Hillesum constantly realized that she was not a divine causa sui: she lived in a continual state of unrest, lacking the meaning (“zin”) of her existence within herself. For Hillesum, “meaning” or “sense” (“zin”) was the interplay between the experience of “zinrijk” (“meaningfulness,” “full of sense”) and “zinloos” (“meaningless,” “senseless”) (AAZZ, –). She spoke of “sense” when she experienced a “cohesion,” “connection,” or “context” (“samenhang”) in herself. At the beginning of the diaries there is little “cohesion”

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



within Hillesum. She relied, for instance, on Spier to make that connection. On Saturday, June , , the question of the meaning of life (“zin des levens”) presented itself to Hillesum: More arrests, more terror, concentration camps, the arbitrary dragging off of fathers, sisters, brothers. We seek the meaning of life [‘Men zoekt naar de zin des levens’ (EH, )], wondering whether any meaning can be left. But that is something each one of us must settle with himself and with God. And perhaps life has its own meaning, even if it takes a lifetime to find it. I for one have ceased to cling to life and to things; I have the feeling that everything is accidental, that one must break one’s inner bonds with people and stand aside for all else. Everything seems so menacing and ominous, and always that feeling of total impotence. (EHe, )

One of Hillesum’s characteristics was that restive wondering, something Voegelin would see as the beginning of philosophy. She recognized and articulated the truth (aletheia) from the heart (“hart ”) as she found herself writing for “healing” purposes. The changes in her lifestyle, through that wondering unrest, were more visible than those in her prose. She remarked: “Though I probably have no talent for writing, I do have a talent, if one may call it that, for experiencing everything a human being can experience and feel and suffer, not just in my own way but also like many others [. . .] I cannot write, but I experience life, body and soul, from minute to minute, with all its twists and turns and colors and sounds” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum felt moved or drawn (“helkein”) not only by God and people but also by life (“leven”) itself. She had a desire (“verlangen”) to escape her ignorance (agnoia, amathia) by questioning (“vragen” ) her experience and using language to express it. For the many burning “questions” (“vragen”) concerning the “suffering of Mankind,” she endlessly searched for an answer: 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



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

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 splitting 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 one might go mad. One ought not to lose oneself forever in the great questions, one cannot always be a battlefield, one must, time and again, feel one’s own small boundaries within which one goes on living one’s own small life conscientiously and consciously, forever ripened and deepened by one’s experiences during the almost “impersonal” moments of contact with mankind as a whole. (EH, , EHe, )

The underlying experience of The Letters and Diaries was the key to an understanding of Hillesum’s nous in the classic sense. Hillesum’s writing brought her in touch with that noetic faculty in her soul (“ziel ”) that helped her apperceive the ground (arche) of existence. This flowing mode of writing she might not have identified in the Greek sense of nous, but she did experience a formative source (“bron,” “centrum,” “middelpunt”) of intelligible order in her life: “But the strange and important thing now is that the words have truly migrated from my head to my heart, to my consciousness or God knows where, in any case to where they breathe with me and have become part of myself. And it is an almost overwhelming and continuing source of amazed delight for me to see how much power has been, and continues to be, released in me” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum’s exploration, in the diaries, of her “soul” (“ziel ”) showed the dimension of a critical and intense female (“vrouwelijk”) consciousness. One characteristic of the beginning of The Letters and Diaries is Hillesum’s reflection on the relation between men (“mannen”) and women (“vrouwen”) (AAZZ,  – ). She opened her second diary on Monday, August , , with a reflection on the difference and “unrest” between men and women. “He [Spier] said that love of mankind is greater than love of one man. For when you love one person you are merely loving yourself. He is a mature fifty-five-year-old and has reached the stage where he can love

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



all mankind, having loved many individuals in the past. I am an ordinary twenty-seven-year-old girl, and I too am filled with love for all mankind, but for all I know I shall always continue to be in search of my one man. And I wonder to what extent that is a handicap, a woman’s handicap. Whether it is an ancient tradition from which she must liberate herself, or whether it is so much part of her very essence that she should be doing violence to herself if she bestowed her love on all mankind instead of on a single man. (I can’t yet see how the two can be combined.) Perhaps that’s why there are so few famous women scientists and artists: a woman always looks for the one man on whom she can bestow all her wisdom, warmth, love and creative powers. She longs for a man, not for mankind. It’s not at all simple, the role of women[. . . .] Perhaps the true, the essential emancipation of women still has to come. We are not yet full human beings; we are the “weaker sex.” We are still tied down and enmeshed in centuries-old traditions. We still have to be born as human beings; that is the great task that lies before us. (EHe, )

Throughout the diaries, Hillesum witnesses to a strong female consciousness (“vrouwelijk bewustzijn”) or awareness of her being a woman (“vrouw zijn”). Her female passions (pathos) and erotic (“erotische”) fantasies were challenged by a new mode of questioning. The ground (arche) of Hillesum’s existence, which was shaky in the beginning, became the flow of a divine presence that was manifested in her human unrest. Hillesum intuited that her questioning unrest carried an answer within itself: “They still do not realize, my God, that apart from You, everything here is quicksand. That just slipped out” (EH, ; EHe, ). As long as she was writing and moved (helkein) by her search (zetesis) of the ground (arche) and by her openness to be touched by that same divine ground of which she was in search, things were going well for her. Her pursuit required the articulation of the experience through language symbols in her diary; this effort lead to noetic insights into her psyche: There is ebb and there is flow [German: “Es gibt Ebbe und es gibt Flut ”], I once wrote to him in a wise and resigned moment. And since yesterday I have been thinking: now it is ebb-tide again. I no longer feel as resentful and sad about it as I used to; now I simply tell myself, so be it, it is ebb-tide, you must include ebb-tide, too, in the order of



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

things mustn’t you? And after that I am no longer as drastically cut off. (EH, ; EHe, )

Hillesum’s chaotic unrest became luminous to itself in her writing. Her philosophy of life, of accepting (“aanvaarden”) loss and enjoying what was left, tied in with her passion (pathos) for diary writing. She gradually mastered the art of dealing with her disappointments and accepting the difficulties in her life. “Accepting” (“aanvaarden”) is an existential theme in The Letters and Diaries (AAZZ, –). She believed that we can only live to the full when we accept life (“leven”) as it presents itself to us: “living and dying, sorrow and joy, the blisters on my feet and the jasmine behind the house, the persecution, the unspeakable horrors—it is all as one in me, and I accept it all as one mighty whole” (EHe, ). Something crystallized in her: “I have looked our destruction, our miserable end, which has already begun in so many small ways in our daily life, straight in the eye and accepted it into my life, and my love of life has not been diminished. I am not bitter or rebellious, or in any way discouraged. I continue to grow from day to day, even with the likelihood of destruction staring me in the face” (EHe, ). The structure of her psyche unfolded first by ascending from the existential unrest within and around her at the bottom of the “cave” of World War II, her daily struggle in an environment of Nazi terror, to the vision of the light through her writing and reflection. This was followed by a “descending” from her “enlightened” consciousness, which had gradually become luminous, down into the horrors of Westerbork and Auschwitz. Hillesum needed the fullness of language to accept (“aanvaarden”) the void and darkness that finally awaited her: “If I were to say that I was in hell that night, what would I really be telling you? I caught myself saying it aloud in the night, aloud to myself and quite soberly, ‘So that’s what hell is like’” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum experienced movements of a divine-human encounter wherever she was. While in search of an intelligible unit of meaning (“zin”), she drew both on her inner world (“binnenwereld ”) and on the outside world (“buitenwereld ”). Her inner world (“binnenwereld ”) was initially chaotic, shapeless, unstructured, and in need of order (taxis) and meaning (“zin”). This arose in the context of the tension (tasis) toward the divine ground

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



(arche), whom she addressed as “God”: “I thank You, God, peace and quiet now reign in my great inner Domain, thanks to the strong central authority You exert. The furthest flung boundaries sense Your authority and Your love and allow themselves to be guided by You” (EH, ; EHe, ). As Voegelin admits, classic philosophy does not speak of “tension” in the abstract. It refers to specific modes. Hillesum, too, refers to concrete modalities of being drawn, such as love (“liefde”), desire (“verlangen”), faith (“geloof ”), and hope (“hoop”). The various “nous symbols” in The Letters and Diaries expressed the reality of a woman attuned to the divine order in daily living. Hillesum’s experience of reason (nous) sprang from her experience of the love of “God” (“God,” “Heer,” “Jij,” “U ”), the love for “life” (“leven”) and not so much the love of “self” (“[zich]zelf ”). “Love” (“liefde”), for Hillesum, was a “primitive” or basic feeling. She was naturally drawn to “love.” She stood her ground, because of “love.” Where most people around her had fallen into despair and hatred, she focused on “love” (“de liefde”). She believed that “love” was the only effective “weapon” against Nazi violence. In Westerbork she wrote: “And there among the barracks, full of hunted and persecuted people, I found confirmation of my love of life” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum was open to wisdom (“wijsheid ”) wherever she could find it: “I have recently been picking odd sentences from the Bible and endowing them with what for me is a new, meaningful, and experiential significance. God created man in His own image. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Etcetera” (EH, ; EHe, ). Her reason (nous) had the existential content of openness toward reality, no matter how dark and difficult her situation was. The context, however, was sometimes lost. This caused her to suffer depressions and suicidal feelings. The bond between her reason (nous) and existential love (“liefde”) or openness to the ground (arche) had to be made explicit through writing. Meeting Spier also put her in a different state of mind. He advised her to start keeping a diary to understand (“te begrijpen”) herself and take responsibility for her life. Hillesum sought to penetrate the essence of things. She spoke to God that she would do her best not to withdraw from life: “Look, God, I will do my best. I shall not withdraw from life. I shall stay down here and try to develop any talents I may have. I shall not be a saboteur. But give me a sign now and then and let some music flow from



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

me, let what is within me be given expression, it longs so desperately for that” (EH, ; EHe, ). Spier encouraged her to develop her human urge to search for a deeper understanding (AAZZ,  – ). She wanted to understand (“begrijpen”) reality and in particular the human person. “I happen to be made in such a way that I am open to everything[. . . .] Sometimes I feel that things are too hard and that I make life too difficult for myself by letting everything affect me and by trying to understand everything, but at other times I am grateful for having been turned into so sensitive an instrument that no facet of this life, within or without, is alien to me or ever will be” (EHe, ). Toward the end of her life, in Westerbork, Hillesum used the Dutch symbol “onbegrijpelijk” (“mad,” “inconceivable,” “incomprehensible”): “Everything here is mad [‘alles even gek en onbegrijpelijk ’ (EH, )] and incredible and desperate and comical, all at the same time” (EHe, ).

Disorientation The moments of closure toward the ground (arche) in Hillesum’s life had an effect on the rational structure of her soul (“ziel ”). There was a distinction between the moments she lived in the one and “common world” that was under threat by Nazi terror, and those moments where she escaped by living in a private world of her passion (pathos) and imagination (“voorstelling”). In her earlier diaries, she was faced with the dilemma between Eros and Thanatos: “Back into darkness, into your mother’s womb, into the collective. Break free, find your own voice, vanquish the chaos within. I am pulled to and fro between these two poles” (EH, ; EHe, ). However chaotic she felt, Hillesum did not revolt against the divinity. She did not suffer from what Voegelin, following the classical philosophers, calls a spiritual disease or madness (nosos). The alienation she experienced had mainly to do with the era in which she was living and the family in which she had grown up. Her mental state of unease was caused, not by the rejection of reason (nous), but by the external pressure of the Nazi regime and the internal makeup of her family. Perhaps her anxiety partly came from ignorance (agnoia, amathia), but mostly it arose from the horrific perspective of being emerged in a total elimination of the Jewish race:

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



For we all know that we are yielding up our sick and defenseless brothers and sisters to hunger, heat, cold, exposure, and destruction, and yet we dress them and escort them to the bare cattle cars—and if they can’t walk, we carry them on stretchers. What is going on, what mysteries are these, in what sort of fatal mechanism have we become enmeshed? The answer cannot simply be that we are all cowards. We’re not that bad. We stand before a much deeper question. (EH, ; EHe,  –)

Hillesum’s questioning (“bevragende”) unrest was mainly fueled by the little time she had left, realizing the cruel intentions of the Nazi regime. Her decision was to follow the attraction of the ground (arche), dedicating her hand to God, and by so doing to unfold her writings into noetic consciousness. Her tendency was one of giving precedence of “being” (“zijn”) over “doing” (“doen”). The “flow” of writing and the choice to dedicate her hand to God, however, was an act of “doing.” The writing (“het doen”) helped her move toward a state of “being” (“zijn”); and by doing so, she gradually turned away from other attractions that could have led into a further pathological derailment: And so every night, with sure peace of mind, I lay down my many earthly cares at the feet of God Himself. They are often trivial cares— for instance, how I am going to finish the family wash. The big worries are worries no longer; they have all merged into a fate to which one has been joined. [. . .] Don’t in heaven’s name worry your head about it any longer. What tens and tens of thousands before us have borne, we can also bear. For us, I think, it is no longer a question of living, but of how one is equipped for one’s extinction. (EH, ; EHe, )

Etty Hillesum needed to write in order to live (“leven”). Little by little, she transcended the depressive components in her personality. Her accounts of coming to terms with those components is an equivalent symbolism to Cicero’s discussion of the symptoms of existential unrest. In “Reason: The Classic Experience,” Voegelin quotes Cicero’s list of typical symptoms: “restless moneymaking, status seeking, womanizing, overeating, addiction to deli-



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

cacies and snacks, wine tippling, irascibility, anxiety, desire for fame, stubbornness, rigidity of attitude, and such fears of contact with other human beings as misogyny and misanthropy” (CW, :). Hillesum believed, however, that there was nothing wrong with the passions (pathos) as such, nor with occasional indulgences or excesses. The problem for her was when her habitual passions (pathos) and erotic (“erotische”) fantasies imbalanced her rational ordered state of mind. Her inner (“innerlijke”) chaos bordered at times on mental disturbance. The sadness (“treurigheid ”) that such disorientation evoked then affected both her passions (pathos) and her reason (nous). On the other hand, language also arose from these places of lack, of absence. Her writing too was a reaction to this sadness (“treurigheid ”), this “paradise lost.” Her questioning (“bevragende”) unrest was partly a search (zetesis) to reestablish a connection with her truest self: “In fact that is my only problem: how to express myself. To find my own form.” (EH, ; EHe, ) Hillesum experienced in her writing the freedom (“vrijheid ”) to fulfill her potential. There she achieved inner (“innerlijke”) peace and quiet. She succeeded in battling her symptoms of disorientation by filling the void with words. Her experience of the search (zetesis) was equivalent to the classic experience of unrest where there was a distinct presence (parousia). Despite the “heaviness,” her questioning (“bevragende”) unrest had a direction toward God: Today, I suddenly realized that things can indeed weigh more heavily on me than ever I thought possible. And they were very, very heavy. “I was unfaithful to You, God, but not entirely.” It’s good to have such moments of despair and of temporary extinction; continuous calm would be superhuman. But now I know again that I shall always get the better of despair. [. . .] I know that I shall often lie broken and ruined, crushed against God’s earth, But I also believe I’m quite tough, and that I shall always be able to get up again. (EH, ; EHe, )

In-Between Apart from their therapeutic function, the diaries were also Hillesum’s refuge in her inner world (“binnenwereld ”). This part of her existence had an “in-between” (metaxic) dimension. Hillesum lived in the metaxy as sym-

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



bolized in Plato’s Symposium and Philebus. Poetically she wrote: “I slip through the grey Ocean of Eternity like a narrow boat” (EH, ; EHe, ). She was writing in-between life (“leven”) and death (“dood ”), knowledge (episteme, “kennis”) and ignorance (agnoia, amathia), God and herself. During her student years, Hillesum had experienced moments when she was chaotically fearful of “death” (“de dood ”). At other times, when apathetic, she expressed a desire not to cling to “life” (“het leven”) (AAZZ, – ). Through writing and reflection, Hillesum found why she had been so obnoxious in dealing with “death”: she had not been focused on the present moment, “the here and now” (“het hier en nu”). She had been living rather insensitively. In the course of The Letters and Diaries, Hillesum developed her inner life. She acquired the art of a “metaxy listening.” She finely attuned herself to the whole of reality, which, for her, incorporated “life” (“leven”) and “death” (“dood ”). At the beginning of the diaries, Hillesum philosophized rather comfortably about the relation between “life” and “death.” In Westerbork, however, there was no time left for pretentious philosophy; “death,” literally, was now all around: We are being hunted to death all through Europe[. . . .] I see a dying old man being carried away, reciting the Shema to himself. Saying Sheymess means saying a prayer over a dying person. It consists mainly of the constant invocation of the name of God in the Highest, and is done when the dying person himself is still able to join in the prayer. I see an old man being carried away on a stretcher to the train, saying Sheymess over himself[. . . .] Ah, I can’t begin to describe it all. (EHe, )

Although she was not able to describe it all, her inner “forces,” her “strength” (“kracht”), the changing powers within herself, did not leave her (AAZZ, – ). Initially, she had experienced these in-between “forces” (“krachten”) between Spier and herself. She mentioned that through him, strength flowed toward her. When she noticed that several women drew their strength from Spier, she desired to live more from her own resources, her . Plato, Philebus and Symposium in Complete Works,  –  and – , respectively.



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

own “Centre” (“Centrum”). She learned to recognize her “strengths” and the way they come and go. Toward the end of her life, she drew her strength from God. On Tuesday, June , , in Westerbork, Hillesum reported: “New and powerful forces [‘grote krachten’] enter into you. Accepting your own doom needs inner strength” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum felt two elementary strengths: the Love of live and the acceptance of suffering: “This is where my strength [‘kracht’] lies, and it is great strength indeed” (EH, ; EHe, ). In order to deepen this Love of live and acceptance of suffering, Hillesum had to withdraw, and writing fulfilled this need. In Voegelin’s terminology, it was her way of engaging in “the practice of dying” or the “activity of immortalizing” (athanatizein). Hillesum herself experienced this as an automatic “force” (“kracht”): Last night, shortly before going to bed, I suddenly went down on my knees in the middle of this large room, between the steel chairs and the matting. Almost automatically. Forced to the ground by something stronger than myself. Some time ago I said to myself, “I am a kneeler in training.” I was still embarrassed by this act, as intimate as gestures of love that cannot be put into words either, except by a poet. (EH, ; EHe, )

Hillesum’s experience of what Voegelin, following Aristotle, calls “immortalizing” (athanatizein) happened when she wrote or “knelt” and left behind the confusion, persecution, and destruction of her surroundings. For Hillesum, “kneeling” (“knielen”), “praying” (“bidden”), and “meditating” (“mediteren”) were inner and outer activities, in which she emerged herself to connect to her inner sources (AAZZ, –). For her, these spiritual activities were something very intimate, “more intimate even than sex” (EHe, ). It seems as if she recorded most of the times she was drawn to “kneeling” (“knielen”). Periods of “kneeling” (“knielen”) in The Letters and Diaries are followed by periods without “kneeling.” The urge to kneel came in “waves” to her: “Like a wave, the urge to kneel down sometimes floods through me, almost irresistibly, and then my head grows heavy, I sometimes think, heavy with devotion” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum built a wall of language symbols between her inner life (“binnenwereld ”) and the outside world (“buitenwereld ”), and withdrew into the

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



safety of herself. The diary was a survival mechanism, a wall erected to conquer her fear of dying. She gradually found the courage to write about the experiences she symbolized as “God”: “This phrase has been ringing in my ears for several weeks: you need courage to put that into words. The courage to speak God’s name” (EH, ; EHe, ). “Courage” (“moed ”) is a key symbol in terms of Hillesum’s search for the “courage” to be herself (“de moed hebben tot zichzelf ”). In the beginning of the diaries she found it difficult to be courageous. To let things pour out of her heart onto the page was not easy (AAZZ, –). “Having the courage to be oneself. A fine phrase, so often applied to mere trifles. For instance, to my having to force myself to spend an hour writing a few things down about yesterday” (EH, ; EHe,  –). Gradually, Hillesum experienced a development of and increase in “courage” (“moed ”). On July , , she stated: “Most people carry stereotyped ideas about life in their heads. We have to rid ourselves of all preconceptions, of all slogans, of all sense of security, find the courage to let go of everything, every standard, every conventional bulwark. Only then will life become infinitely rich and overflowing, even in the suffering it deals out to us” (EH, ; EHe, ). In order to find the courage to let go of everything, Hillesum drew strength from the silence (“stilte”). At the beginning of The Letters and Diaries, Hillesum did not make time free to literally be in “silence” (“stilte”), in “meditation.” Such a “quiet hour” (“Stille Stunde”) was not easy for her, but she found it to be very effective (AAZZ,  – ). Along the way, she discovered that this particular experience of “silence” is “in-between” and everywhere, which she began to appreciate more fully toward the end of her life. There was, however, another form of “silence” (“stilte”) in her experience, a “silence” she wanted to fill with words and needed to address. This “silence” was caused by the war. It was the “silence” of death and depression, fear and anxiety. By producing thousands, perhaps millions, of words, she tried to prevent this silence, this worldlessness of depression and death (de “dood ”) from overtaking her. Hillesum’s writing was concerned with what Voegelin described as “recapturing reality.” She symbolized her inner (“innerlijke”) reality in order to accept (“aanvaarden”) her fate and to find her voice (“stem”). Hillesum was writing on the brink of death (de “dood ”). There was no time for silence (“stilte”). Her texts displayed the flowing, giv-



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

ing, unstoppable stream (“stroom”) of words that carried a “presence” (parousia). Her Letters and Diaries, being full of little poems that were unfinished, illustrated the flow of presence as concretely lived: Yesterday afternoon I knelt down again on the golden matting (a floor covering like a cornfield), with my head hidden in the radiant blue of the cover on the divan and tried to entice my thoughts and feelings, which were raging before and all around me like wild hordes/herds, back into the confines of my innermost inner self. Sometimes the doors there suddenly blow open [. . .] and everything comes bursting out, and time after time one must gather oneself together again around one’s very centre. Herding together the disorderly flock of your thoughts, emotions, sensations, experiences, reactions—please let me for once hit upon the right word that expresses it all. (EH, ; EHe, )

The corresponding differentiation in Hillesum’s consciousness happened in-between forces of life (“leven”) and death (“dood ”). There were moving forces (“krachten”) in Hillesum’s life beyond reason (nous) and the passions (pathos). The mystery of her being took place between the poles of the “one” divine ground, “God,” and the “unlimited” distractions within and outside of her. The unfolding of her noetic consciousness was an event in her personal history. Hillesum’s quest for her relation to the divine ground, “God,” was part of the unrest that offered her answers to her questioning (“vragen”). The divine nous, “reason” or “God,” whom Hillesum encountered through writing, was the mover of her quest: “You have made me so rich, oh God, please let me share out Your beauty with open hands” (EH, ; EHe, ). She wanted to receive the mover of her search, “God,” with her open “hands.” “Hands” (“handen”) for Hillesum did not represent only the physical part of her body, but they were “ensouled” (“bezield ”), in the sense that they spoke the language of the searching heart (“hart”) (AAZZ, – ). In the beginning of The Letters and Diaries, she experienced the expressions of “hands” with Spier. His hands made a deep impression on her, both physically and spiritually. Gradually, she dedicated her own hands more and more to God, through writing and helping others in their needs. About her

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



hands she wrote: “And these two hands will go along with me [to Westerbork], their expressive fingers like strong young twigs. And these hands will keep protecting me in prayer and will not leave me till the end” (EH, ; EHe, ). Writing with “ensouled hands,” Hillesum’s life became more and more one great, uninterrupted dialogue “with You, oh God.” Sometimes when she stood in some corner in Westerbork, her feet planted on “Your earth,” her eyes raised toward “Your heaven,” tears ran down her face, tears of deep emotion and gratitude. “Things come and go in a deeper rhythm, and people must be taught to listen; it is the most important thing we have to learn in this life” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum learned to listen to the rhythm of her heart, the rhythm of life, the rhythm as experienced in the in-between. Hillesum, who usually writes in a modern fashion, spells rhythm in a more traditional form: “ritme.” The theme of “rhythm” (“ritme”) in The Letters and Diaries appears now and then (AAZZ, –). First, “rhythm” had to do with the ability to live according to her own “inner rhythm” (“innerlijk ritme”), the capacity to choose her own path. Instead of following norms and imaginative duties from outside, Hillesum maintained an awareness of her own inner “rhythm,” her personal “authority.” For her, the only security we have comes, not from outside, but from within. She gradually learned to listen to her inner “rhythm” and discerned her actions accordingly. The joy of living her own “rhythm” that she experienced in the face of the darkness closing in on her was evoked by her luminous participation (metalepsis) in response to the theophany, the manifestation of the divine in her life (“leven”). Hillesum’s existence became cognitively luminous and enabled her to find its meaning (“zin”) as a movement, or flow of presence, in the metaxy between mortality and immortality. And I believe that I could be, that I could lend a bit of strength to the lives of others as well, and that I could be truly happy, for true happiness is an achievement as well: to be truly, inwardly happy, to accept God’s world and to enjoy it without turning away from all the suffering there is. [. . .] Even if you live in an attic and have nothing but dry bread to eat, life is still worth living. [. . .] There is so much to relish, life is rich, even though it has to be conquered from minute to



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

minute—and now to work, and peace, and don’t forget God in the meantime. (EH, ; EHe, )

Just as the classic insights were gained through the exegesis of the philosophers’ resistance to the climate of opinion (doxa), so Hillesum gained her insights in response to the surrounding Nazi climate of destruction. For Voegelin and for Hillesum, reason (nous ) was not a treasure to be stored away. Hillesum embraced the struggle (“strijd ”) in the metaxy, battling for the immortalizing order of her psyche in resistance to the mortalizing forces of the Nazi regime and in opposition to her own lustful erotic playfulness (“erotische spielerei ”). Her existence in the in-between (metaxy) was not abolished when the realization became luminous to her in her writing that she would be murdered, but she attained a new level of critical consciousness concerning the order (taxis) of her existence. She taught herself to be humble and accepted (“aanvaarde”) death (“dood ”) as part of life (“leven”) and sought a new language in which to express this outlook: Yes, we carry everything within us, God and Heaven and Hell and Earth and Life and Death and all of history. The externals are simply so many props; everything we need is within us. And we have to take everything that comes: the bad with the good, which does not mean we cannot devote our life to curing the bad. But we must know what motives inspire our struggle, and we must begin with ourselves, every day anew. (EH, ; EHe, )

Voegelin pointed out that the classic philosophers resisted the decay of cosmological myth and the Sophistic revolt; Hillesum resisted the system of ideological Nazi thinkers in a state of gruesome alienation. More important than some of her personal insights perhaps was her resistance against the “climate of Nazi opinion.” Hillesum’s act of resistance shared an equivalent tactic as that of Voegelin: first she tried to restore the forgotten experiential context on which the meaning (“zin”) of her reason (“nous”) depended. Second, she established the inner (“innerlijke”) coherence of scattered pieces of analysis into one flow of writing. Third, she explored the psychopathology of her own moments of alienation and the contempt of reason (nous )

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



around her. Fourth, she was able to recognize and reject the Nazi ideology as the major source of the evil that was stalking her.

Principles of Completeness In Voegelin’s understanding, principles to be considered in the study of human affairs in general and in The Letters and Diaries are principles of completeness, of formation and foundation, and of metaxy reality. Voegelin, therefore, presented in “Reason: The Classic Experience” () a diagram of the points to be considered in any study of human affairs, of the peri ta anthropina in the Aristotelian sense: 





Divine Nous Psyche—Noetic Psyche—Passions Animal nature Vegetative nature Inorganic nature Apeiron—Depth

To counter the modern and postmodern ideological tendency to deny or misinterpret areas of reality, Voegelin closes “Reason: The Classic Experience” with a diagram, a grid that maps out schematically the full range of elements that need to be included in an account of reality if it is to qualify as non-ideological, open to reality, balanced and complete. In line with the classic understanding of man as the epitome of the hierarchy of being, the grid presents man as participating in all areas of reality. Voegelin lists seven areas, in descending order from divine to material, and in the three dimensions of human existence: personal, social, and historical. The most important elements in the grid are the three arrows, which have to be read in order of descending importance from left to right. First comes the arrow pointing downward, which represents the principle of formation, from the divine downward. Next comes the arrow pointing up-



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

ward, representing the principle of foundation, from matter upward. Finally, there is the horizontal arrow pointing from left to right, which represents the anthropological principle, that society, and history, are man written large. The purpose of the grid is to serve as an aide-mémoire to caution against excluding, misinterpreting, hypostatizing, or divinizing any area of reality at the expense of an adequate account of others. Voegelin’s grid has come to mind so often during my reflection on Hillesum’s writings and has pushed me to work ever harder to expand my view of the different dimensions of her life and how they were all touched and transformed by her multi-sourced meetings with the flowing presence. She is no mere “intellectual” toying with intellectual ideas. Hers is the robust struggle for order of a young woman battling serious emotional and psychological distress. She regains openness to experiences of the divine, at first interiorly, but also through the beauty of the world in her last few glimpses of it in Westerbork, and through the human demands of her fellow victims in the tragedy that was swallowing them up. More than I had expected, Hillesum’s life and writings pushed me to recognize the suppleness and appropriateness of Voegelin’s symbol “the flow of presence,” because once Hillesum was opened to the divine interiorly, she became even more sensitive to its pull on her through nature and through her neighbors. The inner congruence she had found so elusive was helped along by (i) the way in which the experience of flowing presence calmed the . Diagram from CW, :. The first, downward-pointing arrow on the far left represents the order of formation. It is the element of the grid that reflects the part of the Voegelinian analysis that is most out of step with much of contemporary philosophy: his insistence that the lower does not produce or generate or evolve into the higher. It cautions against reductionistic and deterministic explanations. Rather, the field of reality is open at each level to a new divine inflowing of formation, so that each level of reality is, in Voegelin’s view, strictly speaking, a mystery in terms of its “arrival” with regard to the preceding lower level. Of particular relevance for the present study is his insistence that the order of the soul is not something determined from below by the lower forces in the soul, nor can it be reduced to them. Rather, it emerges from the soul’s encounter with the divine presence that stirs within it. The history of order emerges, as we have said, from the flow of presence. The order of foundation works from both bottom to top and from left to right. This simply means that there is no life without atoms, no passions without animal life, etc. On the horizontal axis, there is no society without real people as its members, no history without society and people.

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



forces in her interior landscape, (ii) the sense of the goodness of life and the peace that she found in the face of the events that were overtaking her, and (iii) her turning outward with a new attitude toward her fellow prisoners. Voegelin’s grid highlights the complexity and richness of Hillesum’s person: a woman, a Jew, a mystic, a philosopher, and a writer. Hillesum’s noetic consciousness of flowing presence touched “objectively” the sphere of her being. There were, however, in the beginning of the diary a few problems with the structure of order in her psyche, which had to be transformed by the noetic movement: “Yet later on I shall write with such enjoyment about what is now vaguely maturing in me. It may yet turn into a stream that will suddenly rush ahead, having been held back in its course for far too long” (EH, ; EHe, ). The movement of the flow of presence originated in Hillesum’s existential tension (tasis) that drove her toward the noetic exegesis of her consciousness. When the movement of writing transcended the concrete experiences she wrote down, her self-interpreting consciousness expanded, resulting in a renewed interpretation of order in the realm of her being: That is really the worst that can happen: as if your inner light switch had been turned off, or, let us put it boldly, as if God had deserted you for a moment. But last night, driven by an unexpected welling up of inner plenitude, I had to kneel down again suddenly in the middle of the room, and when I woke up the grey dawn was no longer a piece of paper but had the spacious dimensions of old. (EH, ; EHe, )

While writing, she moved along certain “objective lines”: noting down her experience, reflecting, interpreting, and creating (“scheppen”) a display of a flowing, giving, and unstoppable stream (“stroom”) of symbolization. “Creating” (“scheppen”) for Hillesum meant making something out of nothing (AAZZ, –). She wanted to express herself creatively and desired to “give birth” or “give form” to the best that was within herself. Her role models were poets and thinkers. “Creating,” for her, however, was also connected to “pain” (“pijn”). This “pain,” caused by inner and outer movements, had a “creating” effect. Her desire for “creating” (“scheppen”) increased, along with her spiritual growth and maturing of her psyche. “I seem able to



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

see ever more clearly the gaping chasms that swallow up man’s creative powers and joie de vivre[. . . .] I know how to free my creative powers more and more from the snares of material concerns, from the idea of hunger and cold and danger” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum’s “creating,” her “symbols,” her “art,” echo the words of the Russian filmmaker Andrey Tarkovsky: Art affirms all that is best in man—hope, faith, love, beauty, prayer . . . What he dreams of and what he hopes for . . . When someone who doesn’t know how to swim is thrown into the water, instinct tells his body what movements will save him. The artist, too, is driven by a kind of instinct, and his work furthers man’s search for what is eternal, transcendent, divine—often in spite of the sinfulness of the poet himself.

Along these lines, Hillesum found certain “objective areas” that helped her to transform the inner chaos; and these areas, in turn, were related to each other in intelligible ways. The “objective lines,” “objective areas,” and their relations were parts of Hillesum’s “writing model,” which developed into an ongoing ordering dialogue (“dialoog”) with God: I am going to have to write again about the love, a truly higher sort of love, I have in me[. . . .] I have two great feelings deep inside: love, an inexplicable love, which perhaps cannot be analyzed because it is so primitive, for creatures and for God or for what I call God; and compassion, a boundless compassion that can sometimes cause tears to spring to my eyes. Yes, indeed, love and compassion. (EH, ; EHe, )

Hillesum’s search (zetesis) toward interpretation and symbolization of the drama in which she found herself was, first, the connection between herself and humankind and second, the active flow from her consciousness to her own corporeal existence. The existential tension toward the ground, “God,” was Hillesum’s center of order. Starting from her center (“het Centrum”) and moving with the flow of presence toward a love (“liefde”) for humankind,

. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, .

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



three objective areas can be distinguished: In the first place, the order of Hillesum’s concrete-human consciousness was formed by the flow of presence, from which the movement of order in her life (“leven”) originated; then, the order of Hillesum’s existence in a disorganized society, as well as the chaos of her non-organized self, opted for a radical search (zetesis) and gradual breakthrough; further, the order of Hillesum’s personal and social existence in history was a series of events that was not reversible: she could not have objectively changed her situation as a Jew and swapped places with another human being to escape her suffering, nor could any of her writings have protected her from being killed in Auschwitz. Despite her fate, she chose to love mankind. While writing in her diary, Hillesum moved on from a consciousness of existential tension into her synthetic nature: “I was suddenly overcome by the compelling urge to write something in my notebook, and there I stood, writing in the cold” (EH, ; EHe, ). In the Aristotelian sense, Hillesum became aware of the realms of her human-psychic, animalic, vegetative, and inanimate being within her own existence. These modes of the hierarchy of her being were all related to each other. Hillesum’s higher faculties were materially dependent on her lower ones, while her lower dimensions were organized and ordered by her higher modes of awareness and understanding. She used a wonderful symbol to describe this: “soul-landscape” or the German “Seelenlandschaft.” At the beginning of the diaries, Hillesum mentioned the term “landscape” (“landschap”) to describe the face of Spier and the faces of several other people she met. Gradually, she not only compared “the face” (“het gezicht”) of a person with “landscape” but used the Dutch “landschap” in relation to all the realms of her human-psychic—the psychochirology, the soul, the ups and downs of her moods—and literally for the landscapes she encountered in the outer-world (AAZZ, – ). She compared the inner landscape with the outer, and vice versa: The open skies, peaceful and also a little sad. I look out of the window, and it is as if I were riding through the landscape of my own soul. Soul-landscape [Seelenlandschaft]. I feel like that often: that the outer landscape is the reflection of the inner. Thursday afternoon along the river IJssel. A radiant, sweeping, bright landscape. And a feeling as if I were traveling through my own soul. (EH, ; EHe, )



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

Finally, when Hillesum was deported to Westerbork, she walked with her father through the camp and reflected on their conversation in a letter, using “landscape” in relation to Jewish history: “Westerbork really is nothing but desert, despite a few lupins and campions and decorative birds that look like seagulls. Jews in a desert, we know that sort of landscape from before” (EH, ; EHe, ). As she traveled through “the landscape of her soul,” Hillesum found that the relations between the modes of the hierarchy of her being were not reversible. Voegelin used Aristotle’s example that the “good life” is made possible by life itself, but life in general is not the cause of a “good life.” Hillesum’s “upper levels” were “caused” by the lower only in the sense that foundations were a necessary condition of what was above them. The order of her good life in the end did not emerge from her physical and corporeal (“lichamelijke”) foundation but originated from the center of her existential tension, “God” or “the flow of presence,” which ordered her “landscape,” her entire existence. More and more, she “hit” upon the right form (“vorm”) to express herself: “The sentences seemed to be just flowing out of me, which does happen sometimes” (EH, ; EHe, ). Inasmuch as neither Hillesum nor a distorted Nazi society nor the history of World War II occurred without a corporeal (“lichamelijke”) foundation, the objective areas, whether attuned or eclipsed, overlapped in the flow of presence. The Letters and Diaries showed this in the way Hillesum had symbolized the coming together of the heights and the depths, the positive and negative aspects of her reality, into a comprehensive structured story that symbolized the experience of her life (“leven”). The relationality between the variety of experiences, as symbolized in The Letters and Diaries, gave a trustworthy account of the mystery of life (“leven”) as lived in the flow of presence. Voegelin’s model did not concretize the multitude of problems that could arise in an investigation of Hillesum’s life, however. The model is limited; but in spite of its simplifying limitation, it is of considerable value, when applied to her life, in reflecting on all the dynamics within her existence. It draws attention to the different layers of her psychological, spiritual, and social makeup and points out the violations of the Nazi model as a socially dominant and destructive ideology in history. The Nazi violations broke

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



with all the rules of human relationships and went against the structure of humanity. On August , , Hillesum wrote to Han and others: So many exhausted, pale, and suffering faces. One more piece of our camp has been amputated. Next week yet another piece will follow. This is what has been happening now for over a year, week in, week out. We are left with just a few thousand. A hundred thousand Dutch members of our race are toiling away under an unknown sky or lie rotting in some unknown soil. We know nothing of their fate. It is only a short while, perhaps, before we find out, each one of us in his own time. For we are all marked down to share that fate, of that I have not a moment’s doubt. (EH, ; EHe, )

Nazism was par excellence an example of a violation of the dignity of the human person, especially in the interpersonal context: it was an ideological mass movement that set out to conquer the world and destroy the Jews. The Nazis reversed the series man-society-history so that under the title “Third Reich,” the National Socialists became the dominant factor of interpreting reality, a rearrangement that dislodges the existential center of order as well as the organized society that they attacked. Hillesum’s response: “One moment it is Hitler, the next it is Ivan the Terrible; one moment it is Inquisition and the next war, pestilence, earthquake, or famine. Ultimately what matters most is to bear the pain, to cope with it, and to keep a small corner of one’s soul unsullied, come what may” (EH, ; EHe, ). Voegelin would say that the life of Hillesum in this Universe, together with all things founded in it, still happened “in” God. The time-dimension of Hillesum’s life within the Whole also comprised the divine reality whose mode of lastingness she expressed by such symbols as “God” (“God,” “Heer,” “Jij,” “U ”), “love” (“liefde”), “centre” (“centrum”), “soul” (“ziel ”), and “flow” (“stroom”). In the final paragraphs of The Ecumenic Age, Voegelin mentions that there are strata in the hierarchy of being in which the “flow” or process of consciousness is founded: “Only because the strata of reality participate in one another, through the relations of foundation and organization, in the order of the cosmos, can and must the time dimensions of the strata be related to one another, with the time dimension of the universe furnishing the ultimately founding measure” (CW, : – ).



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

There is no “flux” or “flow of presence” in the metaxy of Hillesum’s life without its foundation in the biophysical existence of her being on this earth, located in this universe. By virtue of their founding character, the lower strata in Hillesum’s being reach into the stratum of her human consciousness, not as its cause but as its condition. Hillesum’s physical existence, however, as the ultimate foundation for the higher strata in the hierarchy of her being, cannot be identified as the ultimate reality of the “Whole,” since in the stratum of her consciousness she experienced the presence ( parousia) of divine reality as the constituent of her humanity. In Hillesum’s consciousness, the foundational movement within reality from the physical depth became luminous, through writing, for the creative (“scheppende”) construction of all her reality from the height of the divine ground, which she called “God.” In Voegelin’s words: As far as the modes of lasting are concerned we have to state therefore: In the order of foundation from the depth, the time dimension of the universe comprehends the time dimensions of the other strata in the hierarchy of being; in the order of creation from the height, the divine mode of lasting that we symbolize as eternity comprehends the time dimensions of the other strata of reality, including the universe. (CW, :)

The hierarchy of Hillesum’s being comes into view, not as a number of strata piled atop one another, but as movement of reality from her apeirontic depth up to her intellectual and spiritual faculties, which governed her writing. This flow moved through as many levels of the hierarchy of her being as can be discerned empirically. It is some sort of countermovement against her inner chaos of creative organization from the divine height down. The metaxy of Hillesum’s consciousness was the site where the movement or flow of presence of the Whole became luminous for its ultimate direction. The Mystery of the flow of presence, the historical process of Hillesum’s life was inseparable from the Mystery of a reality that brought forth the universe and the earth, plant and animal life on earth, and ultimately Hillesum’s own existence and consciousness. She expressed and symbolized the incomprehensibility of this mystery:

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



One thing I know for certain: I shall never be able to put down in writing what life itself has spelled out for me in living letters. I have read it all, with my own eyes and felt it with many senses. I shall never be able to repeat it. It would be enough to make me despair had I not learned to accept that one must work with the inadequate powers one has been given—but that one must really work with them. (EH, ; EHe, )

“To learn” (“leren”) to accept her inadequate powers, for Hillesum, meant to be open to life’s lessons. She taught Russian, but learning for her was more than being able to reproduce certain class material or being capable of speaking another language. “Learning” (“leren”) for Hillesum was to be immersed in life. “Life,” she believed, was always in the right. One’s goal is life itself, and people are mediators of “life.” According to her, we have to let “life” take its course and learn from “life” right in the middle of this flow (AAZZ, –). More explicitly, the flow of presence, her search (zetesis), her learning and questioning (“vragen”), was engendered in a concrete human situation where she chose a resistance to the distortion and destruction of humanity committed by the Nazi system. She was actively participating (metalepsis) in a gradual openness to the divine flow and its process both of history and the Whole. In Westerbork, the flow of presence for Hillesum was the concrete ability to love human beings despite their cruelty. Loving others became a basic “flow” out of which she lived: Many feel that their love of mankind languishes at Westerbork because it receives no nourishment—meaning that people here don’t give you much occasion to love them. “The mass is a hideous monster; individuals are pitiful,” someone said. But I keep discovering that there is no causal connection between people’s behavior and the love you feel for them. Love for one’s fellow man is like an elemental glow that sustains you. (EH,  –; EHe, )

This brings us back to the order of formation in Hillesum’s being, which operated from the top down: the upper strata “organized” the lower parts. Voegelin called this “creative construction.” When Hillesum wrote of a direction or tension (tasis) in her existence, of being attuned to a transcendent



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

order, she was attentive to an ordering flow (“stroom”) from Beyond. In a vivid image, Voegelin spoke of the metaxy as the site of countering movements: in Hillesum’s case, the movement of her reality was a flow up from the depths, and that of creative writing and organization from the divine height down. Her experience of writing and ordering her being as part of forming her consciousness might have been equivalent to the classic notion of “final cause,” whereby writing seemed to have been her “purpose” (“doel ”) or “end” (“bestemming”). The symbol “destination” or “destiny” (“bestemming”) refers to the overall direction of Hillesum’s life, which expressed itself on a daily basis in her writings (AAZZ,  –). The term “bestemming,” however, hardly appeared in The Letters and Diaries. Instead, she used these phrases, which for her had an equivalent meaning: “going one’s own path” (“de eigen weg gaan”) and “to follow one’s own inner voice” (“de innerlijke stem volgen”). “On a summer’s day like this you feel a thousand tender arms around you. It makes one feel so indolent and languid, but inside there lies a world in ferment as it moves to an unknown destination [‘bestemming’]” (EH, ; EHe, ). The diary kept Hillesum in touch with the unknown destination that lay ahead of her and helped her acknowledge that life (“leven”) was “good.” Going her own path, she accepted her “biological life” (indeed, all the strata of her being in which she participated) as ordered to an end from above in a stream (“stroom”) of divine presence. She needed strength (“kracht”) to allow this process to happen: “God give me strength, not only spiritual strength but physical strength as well. In a moment of weakness I must make You a candid confession: if I have to leave this house I shall be totally lost. But I don’t want to worry about that in advance. Take these worries from me, please, for if I have to bear them as well as all the others, I shall scarcely be able to go on living” (EH, –; EHe,  – ). At the beginning of The Letters and Diaries, Hillesum was still uncertain about the orders of “formation” and “foundation” in her life. She accepted them at the top and bottom of the hierarchy but was struggling in the middle. That her consciousness was not solely explained by a material foundation was obvious to Hillesum. Both the “top” (“God”) and “bottom” (“Chaos”) seemed believable venues for her to creatively construct a new order of love (“liefde”) out of her experienced “floundering” (“gefladder”). The

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



middle strata of the passions (pathos) were more troublesome. Where was the movement of “creative construction” (“scheppen”) in her chaotic, erotic, and passionate self ? I think Hillesum’s writing illuminates the fact that divinity operated also in this realm by virtue of the very existence of her erotic being. She was able to embrace her situation the way it came to her, and not otherwise. She surrendered herself to God as the main architect of her life. Creative construction (“scheppen”) for Hillesum simply meant, at this passionate level, that she gradually ordered her bodily (“lichamelijke”) existence, through prayer (“bidden,” “gebed ”), writing, and reflection. She tried to order not only the physical dimensions for a purpose but all of her experienced “reality” in the context of daily living: “Yes, God, I am faithful to You, through thick and thin, I shall not succumb, and I still believe in the deeper meaning of life. I know that I must go on living and that there are such great certainties in me, and . . . and you must think it incredible, but I find life so beautiful and feel so happy. Isn’t that strange?” (EH, ; EHe, ) One thing seems clear: unlike the Nazi ideology, Hillesum did not exclude various aspects of reality. She embraced the one item necessary that so often is excluded in the experience of the human person, namely, the tension (tasis) toward the divine ground (arche) of her existence (AR,  – ). Hillesum was self-sufficient at times, but she was not an individualist anarchist (in the Aristotelian sense). She was not a person who had a complete theory of life (het “leven”) while denying the reality of society and history. On the one hand, she did seem to have been a spiritually nomadic and autonomous person: a woman who could live without the support and mediation of her organized Jewish religion. On the other hand, she did need the support and attention (“aandacht”) of God, her friends, and family. This “attention” (“aandacht”) was important for her. In The Letters and Diaries, Hillesum refers to her need for the affection and attention of others. She also used the term to describe her appreciation of music and literature (AAZZ,  –). She was convinced that we should undergo life (“’t leven”) with a certain mindfulness, because the more attention (“aandacht”) we give to each moment the more attentive (“de aandachtiger”) we become. According to Hillesum, we have to endure our moods and sufferings and turn with the greatest compassion and mindfulness to others, rising above our



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

own “petty vanities” (EHe, ). In Westerbork, she wrote: “That’s to be expected; ever since that police-raid transport I haven’t been hungry, have had no sleep or anything. But I feel very well, all the same. One concentrates so much [‘men concentreert zozeer z’n aandacht’] on others that one forgets oneself; and that’s just as well” (EH, ; EHe, ). For Hillesum, “love” (“liefde”), “attention” (“aandacht”), and “God” are interconnected: God, You have entrusted me with so many precious gifts, let me guard them well and use them properly. [. . .] I so love being with people. It is as if my own intensity [“mijn intense aandacht”] draws what is best and deepest right out of them: they open up before me, every human being a new story, told to me by life itself. And my eyes simply read on joyfully. Life has confided so many stories to me, I shall have to retell them to people who cannot read the book of life itself (EH, ; EHe, ).

  “Just Be ” Hillesum had to reintroduce or restore the values (“waarde[n]”) that were under attack by Nazi terror. She faced her path (“weg”) with at least two sets of symbols: first, the language symbols that were part of her social reality, her upbringing, and her academic career; and second, the language symbols that arose in the course of her writing and reflection. The relation between the two sets was complex. The second was derived from the first, but the first set could contain symbols derived from the clarifying process of other writers, such as Rilke and Jung. She reminded herself, however, that in the end she desired (“verlangde”) to become “wordless” and just be, that is, to be the “flow”: Such words as “god” and “death” and “suffering” and “eternity” are best forgotten. We have to become as simple and as wordless as the growing corn or the falling rain. We must just be. [. . .] I cannot find the right words either for that radiant feeling inside me, which encompasses but is untouched by all the suffering and all the violence. But I am still talking in much too philosophical, much too bookish a way, as if I had thought it all up just to make life more pleasant for

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



myself. I had much better learn to keep silent for the time being and simply be. (EH, ; EHe, )

It is a common error to presume that the symbols of Hillesum’s reality were all clear concepts. Many of the things she described were not clear. The information produced by her direct environment was often contracted by what Plato would have called doxa (“opinion”; “knowledge of phenomena”) or Nazi “ideology.” Although she quoted extensively from other writers and tried to define certain concepts, Hillesum’s diary is not a warehouse of definitions. Defining the complexity of reality was simply not possible for her. She was going through life (het “leven”) as if there were, as she called it, “a photographic plate inside her” making a foolproof recording of everything around her down to the smallest detail. She was searching for her “tone”: “Must find a new tone to go with this new attitude to life. Silence ought to be kept until that tone is found. But I must try to find it even while I speak; complete silence won’t do, it’s just another form of escape. The transition from the old to the new tone must be observed in all its nuances” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum was aware that her surroundings where poisoned by Nazi ideology and ignorance. National Socialism reflected the type of men (“mannen”) and women (“vrouwen”) of whom it was composed. Being able to see through its distortion, Hillesum had the urge to rediscover the true order of her soul (“ziel ”) within such an environment. This led her to express the desire (“verlangen”) for order, which she describes as a harmonious flowingness, in a society that was breaking down. Very early on in The Letters and Diaries Hillesum wrote: “I am at a loss to understand myself right now. Only yesterday life was still one smoothly flowing whole for me, and I was flowing with it, if I may put it so impressively for once. But now everything has tensed up again. And I had such high hopes for my writing, but I can’t tear anything out of myself, it’s as if everything were crushed between blocks of granite” (EH, ; EHe, ). She encountered one type of true humanity within herself side by side with several types of disorder in her psyche, but she remained firmly convinced that the true order of her soul (“ziel ”) was dependent on the love (“liefde”) of divine wisdom (“wijsheid ”): “It is the only way one can live



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

nowadays, with unreserved love (“liefde”) for one’s tortured fellow creature, no matter of what nation, race or creed” (EH, ; EHe, ). The experiences of such love became predominant in her life (“leven”) and formed her character. The diary was an attempt to formulate the meaning (“zin”) of her existence by explicating the content of certain experiences. In the Aristotelian sense, she was a “mature woman” (spoudaios) maximally actualizing the potentialities of her human nature. Hillesum’s writings as such were a “flow study” of human life (“leven”) within her own existence. She developed herself under all conditions and among different kind of people and was capable of an imaginative reenactment of her experiences. Hillesum was intelligent in writing and open to parallel experiences of others, and she tested the truths she had discovered in her concrete daily living. Her openness to dialogue and her personal honesty (“eerlijkheid ”) showed a great sign of her maturity: Oh God, times are too hard for frail people like myself. I know that a new and kinder day will come. I would so much like to live on, if only to express all the love I carry within me; carry into that new age [with “new age” she does not mean “New Age,” as the dawning of a new spiritual age, but she uses the Dutch symbolisation of “nieuwe tijdperk” (new epoch)] all the humanity that survives in me, despite everything I go through every day. And there is only one way of preparing for the new age, by living it even now in our hearts. Somewhere in me I feel so light, without the least bitterness and so full of strength and love. I would so much like to help prepare for the new age and to carry that which is indestructible within me intact into the new age, which is bound to come, for I can feel it growing inside me, every day. (EH, ; EHe, )

To “grow inside,” to “go through” (“beleven”), for Hillesum, was happening in “the now” (“het nu”). Preparing for the new age is not something of the past (het verleden)—what happened before the experience (“belevenis”)— nor in the future (“de toekomst”)—what happened after the experience (“belevenis”). The process of attuning to the flow of presence, for Hillesum, was a gradual development in each moment of “the now” (“het nu”) (AAZZ,  –).

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



Let me make a brief catalogue of some of Hillesum’s experiences which, I believe, are equivalent to the classic experiences. She experienced a love (“liefde”) of wisdom (“wijsheid ”), an Eros toward the good and the beautiful; she desired (“verlangde”) justice and had the virtue to look for the right ordering of the forces of the soul (“ziel ”). She struggled with what Voegelin, following Plato, calls Thanatos, the cathartic purification of conduct by being placed in the perspective of an awful death (“dood ”). Through kneeling (“knielen”) and writing (“schrijven”), she experienced some sort of mystical ascent of the soul (“ziel ”) toward the border of transcendence, analogous to that presented in Plato’s Symposium. She was part of a collective descent into the depths of nothingness in the holocaust. Among her friends she experienced something equivalent to the Aristotelian philia (love, homonoia), the nucleus of true community (“gemeenschap”) between mature men and women. True “community” (“gemeenschap”) became more significant in Hillesum’s development when she was able to let go of her “Ich-haftigkeit,” a German symbol for “selfishness” or “self-centredness” (AAZZ, –). In the beginning of the diaries, she was rather a spectator, not fully participating in “community.” She observed the reality of “community” (“gemeenschap”) from a distance, as an outsider. When she gradually formulated a more positive approach to “community,” the fight with her “Ich-haftigkeit,” now as an “actor,” came to its climax: “It’s very shaming that you, Etty, have once again become entangled in wishes and longings which are not even genuine yearnings. I’ll have to reach clarity on this point first before I can count myself part of the wider community again, and that involves getting rid of one’s egocentricity [‘Ich-haftigkeit’]” (EH, ; EHe, ). What seemed to have been impossible happened: “I am so much of a social being, God, I never realised just how much. I want to be right in the midst of people, right in the midst of their fears. I want to see and comprehend everything for myself and retell it later” (EH, ; EHe, ). Since Hillesum desired to comprehend everything, to retell it and be right there in the midst of people, she was close to the reality of life. Did she become an authentic voice of experiential truth? Her experiences of love . Plato, Timaeus and Critias, in Complete Works,  –  and –, respectively.



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

(“liefde”) and goodness became the carriers of a truth to rival the Nazi ideology. Her opening of soul (“ziel ”) did not conquer any piece of land, nor did it prevent any of her fellow Jews being murdered, but through it, she discovered in her psyche a new center (“centrum”) of love in which she experienced herself as open toward divine reality, which she addressed as “You.” She wanted to carry “You” intact with her and be faithful to “You.” To “carry” (“dragen”) was a significant symbol for Hillesum in a variety of ways. Besides “You” or “God,” she carried (“draagt ”), for instance, “her inner moods,” “inner peace and balance” (EH, ), “the day,” “the other” (EHe, ), and “the suffering of the world” (AAZZ,  – ). “Still, I am grateful to You for driving me from my peaceful desk into the midst of the cares and sufferings of this age. It wouldn’t do, would it, to live an idyllic life with You in a sheltered study? Still I confess it truly is difficult to carry You intact with me and to remain faithful to You through everything, as I have always promised” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum’s psyche became the sensorium of transcendence with tremendous effect. The openness of her soul was experienced by others, since it encouraged the opening of their soul (“ziel ”), “cosmic soul” (or: world soul, “Welten Seele”) itself. It is hard indeed not to recognize Hillesum as a figure in her own way equivalent to those whom Voegelin calls mystic philosophers. She found herself in a new relation with “God” (“You”), discovering both her own psyche and transcendent divinity: As I walk through the streets I am forced to think a great deal about Your world. Think is not really the right word, it is more an attempt to plumb its mystery with a new sense. It often seems to me that I can already discern the beginning and the end of this one phase of history, already see it in perspective. And I am deeply grateful to You for leaving me so free of bitterness and hate, with so much acceptance, which is not at all the same as defeatism, and also with some understanding for our age, strange though that may sound. (EH, ; EHe, )

Hillesum actively tried to take the stance that one should banish “hate” (“haat”) from one’s heart (AAZZ,  –). She believed that we cannot

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



fight (the Nazi) hatred by means of hate. She especially reacted strongly to hatred against the Germans, radiated by people around her: “But indiscriminate hatred is the worst thing there is. It is a sickness of the soul. Hatred does not lie in my nature. If things were to come to such a pass that I began to hate people, then I would know that my soul was sick and I should have to look for a cure as quickly as possible” (EH, ; EHe, ). The true order of Hillesum’s soul (“ziel ”) represented what in Voegelin is called the truth (aletheia) of human existence in-between what Hillesum herself refers to as life (“leven”) and death (“dood ”), on the border of transcendence. It was possible for Hillesum to measure both her human type of order and its social relevance. Abandoning all forms of hatred, she made it her principle that God was the measure and reference point. As she herself recognized, she was a measure of society only in so far as she was able to love (“liefde”). In this way, she became the representative of the divine truth that streamed into her at the meditative center (“centrum”) within her. The survival, publication, and worldwide dissemination of The Letters and Diaries have ensured that just as Socrates’ dialogues survived his execution, so too Hillesum’s experiential truth has outlasted her murder and continues to speak to us from beyond. There is a sort of lamentation and loving-kindness as well as a little wisdom somewhere inside me that cry to be let out. Sometimes several different dialogues run through me at the same time, images and figures, moods, a sudden flash of something that must be my very own truth. Love for human beings that must be hard fought for. Not through politics or a party, but in myself. Still a lot of false shame to get rid of. And there is God. The girl who could not kneel but learned to do so on the rough coconut matting in an untidy bathroom. Such things are more intimate even than sex. The story of the girl who gradually learned to kneel is something I would love to write in the fullest possible way. (EH, ; EHe, )

There is a development in the types of symbolization that occur through her diary. She learned that exposure to unseemly symbolizations arising from the alienation around her could corrupt the souls of those who were trying to keep an openness to the transcendent. Hillesum’s life was a tragic



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

example of what can happen to an open human being in awful circumstances. She showed how difficult it was for love (“liefde”) and truth (aletheia) to be socially effective in a distorted environment. The Nazis’ murderous pseudo-reality provoked enormous distress in many Jews. Hillesum felt the responsibility of representing “life” (“leven”) and the truth of the soul (“ziel ”) to strengthen her people. She expressed this experience in her Letters and Diaries, and through the choice to be with her people even at the cost of her own life. Her appeal to justice was an act of will, defying the distorted Nazi law. In her writings we find a crystal clear ethical judgment against Nazi violations of her family and her people. Notwithstanding this, Hillesum went toward her death in Auschwitz with love and compassion in her heart (“hart”), and she also tried to persuade her friends not to give up on life but to cling to love in their hearts even as they faced death. Hillesum’s love and justice prevailed against the Nazi terror: She “left the camp singing” (EHe, ). Etty Hillesum felt that her decision to love rather than to hate represented the truth of God. She also represented her suffering (“lijden”) as the consequence of the choice for justice and love. The Letters and Diaries could be classified as a “history of suffering” (“lijdensgeschiedeis”) and “passion.” Hillesum was continually preoccupied with “suffering” (“lijden”) in her own life as well as with the suffering of mankind (AAZZ,  – ). She searched for meaning in suffering and discovered that by accepting suffering she actually received strength. It broadened her horizon and enlarged her capacity to be truly human. “There is much grievous suffering in Your World, God, I feel something of it time and again in my own life. And I am grateful for this too in the final analysis: the fact that a distant echo of that suffering should sound in me and help me time and again to understand and sympathize with my fellow men a little more” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum not only articulated the existential meaning of suffering but also had a sense that she was a representative of transcendent truth. Hillesum felt when she stood in the divine presence, she did so on behalf of her people. “To help” (“helpen”) and “help” (“hulp”) for Hillesum was directed both ways, toward others as well as toward herself (AAZZ,  – ). Working on herself, helping herself to mature, was essential if she ever wanted to be of any use in helping others, she believed. She was aware that

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



for helping others you need strength (“kracht”) and energy, which meant connecting herself to the “flow of life,” the “inner sources” or “undercurrent” (“onderstroom”). Through the persuasion of love (“liefde”), Hillesum helped (“helpen” and “hulp”) other men and women become active participants in the flow of presence. Her discovery of her psyche as a sensorium of transcendence led to a new discovery of the dignity of her fellow Jews as human beings. Others as well came into view with the discovery of the psyche as the sensorium of transcendence. By living the new truth she found within her, she brought it out into the small society around her; and with the publication and global availability of The Letters and Diaries, she has become the representative of this truth and the nucleus of an encouragement for a social order of love built on it.

Event Character of the Flow Voegelin uses the phrase “the event character of the flow” to express the fact that encounters with the divine take place on particular occasions and find expression in the different symbols that emerge in each encounter. With this phrase, Voegelin puts us on our guard against assuming that the symbols can be understood and interpreted without referring to the spiritual events that gave birth to them. There is flowing presence because while the same divine ground is met on each occasion, its impact on the human soul differs from one occasion to another. Recognition of this event character helps significantly in our understanding of The Letters and Diaries. What is taking place in them has many dimensions. On the surface, the writing is a chronological record of events over a number of years. On a deeper level, it is a story of a struggle for emotional healing. On another level, it tells the story of Hillesum’s coming to terms with the fate that awaited her. Underlying these levels, however, and increasingly driving them, is the sequence of encounters with the presence. In each of these encounters, Hillesum grew in spiritual stature, and it is this spiritual growth that enabled her to carry through the remarkable developments on each of these levels. The history of her own personal order emerged from the flowing presence. The Letters and Diaries symbolize the event character of the flow as well



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

as Hillesum’s reflective experience. Considering her life as an event, Hillesum recognized her existence as a “field” of historical tensions. As a reflective person, she cannot help exploring and articulating the meaning of her existence. The structures that became visible in The Letters and Diaries mirror the two main tensions in Hillesum’s soul (“ziel ”). First, she lived the tension in her soul between its chaos and order before and after the event of writing. Second, she experienced the tension of her soul between time and eternity. Her soul was, not an object, but rather the sensorium of the tensions of her being, particularly of transcendence: Later on I shall have a notebook in which I shall try to write. It will be something I shall have to come to terms with alone, my private front line, and it will at times be a desperate struggle. It will be like a bloody battlefield of words fighting and struggling with one another in that notebook. And then, here and there, something may perhaps rise over that battlefield, pure as the moon, a little short story that will occasionally hover over a troubled life like a soothing smile. (EH, ; EHe, )

“To be alone” (“alleenzijn”) with that “battlefield of words” and to come to terms with things alone was a characteristic of Hillesum throughout her life (AAZZ,  –). She drew a parallel between “to be alone” (“alleenzijn”) and “loneliness” or “solitude” (“eenzaamheid ”). Both have positive and negative connotations in The Letters and Diaries. Toward the end, however, she experienced her aloneness as something positive and integrated it in her daily life: “God and I have been left behind alone, and there is no one else left to help me[. . . .] It doesn’t make me feel impoverished at all, rather quite rich and peaceful: God and I have been left behind all alone” (EHe, ). Hillesum was deeply conscious of this immediate experience of “aloneness” with God. The content of her experience was a loving urge and a graceful call to write and surrender to life. From the pole of the experience of temporal being within herself, she experienced the tension as a loving and hopeful urge toward the divine eternity. From the pole of eternal being, she experienced the tension as a call and irruption of the divine pull. For Hillesum, the experience itself was not a psychologization of the divine as a projection of her soul. The poles of temporal and eternal being were represented

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



by the people in her life and the one God. The relations and interconnectedness among them all were mediated by Eros, the spirit of the in-between (metaxy). In Plato’s terms, Hillesum would have been “the mortal,” “the spiritual woman,” and from time to time perhaps “the spiritually dull woman.” The sequence of these different types within Hillesum revealed the field of her personal history, which was constituted by the events of writing (“schrijven”). After the experience of a gradual breakthrough, of dedicating herself to God, there was no way for Hillesum to return to the more “limited” experience of being an unaware “mortal.” Should she have closed herself to this new order in her life (“leven”), she would have become “spiritually dull” and disillusioned. By becoming a spiritual woman (“spirituele vrouw”) in the classical sense, she gained the criteria for judging and interpreting all that went on under the Presence. The tensions were in the structure of her being, not in God. The divine was not an object to Hillesum but a “personal connection” or pole of conscious response. However, she did not project her psyche beyond concrete human beings. She kept her feet on the ground. The field of her personal and historical tensions lay within her soul. She had a personal experience of being immersed in the flow of presence. In those moments, the immanence of the world and its temporality were not her primary experiences. They became evident when, through reflection and writing, she recognized the tension between time and eternity. Only when these poles are made into objects is there a problem of reconciling them. But as Hillesum experienced them, they did not exist as objects; rather, she experienced the tension in her being as a bi-polar process, which she creatively expressed in words. This process occurred in the metaxy. Since Hillesum, a human person, also existed in the world, she could relate mundane events to that process. For Hillesum, eternal being was not an object in time, and her temporal being was not transposable into eternity. What Voegelin called flowing presence became a reality to her. She experienced “Eternal being” in the temporal flow. Her experience of the temporal flow, in which eternity was made present in the metaxy, was what Voegelin calls the event of philosophy, or flowing presence. The permanent tension of flowing presence in Hillesum’s consciousness constituted her “history,” as symbolized in The Letters and



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

Diaries. As noted, the tension of her being was not reduced in her diaries to mere abstraction. It remained alive as Hillesum’s personal experience, and thus it influenced her outlook. This tension did not express itself in a disordered multiplicity of symbols but manifested itself by traits of order. The tensions within the flow exhibit a firm direction: Hillesum speaks of surrendering to life (“leven”). In weakness she found her strength: It still all comes down to the same thing: life is beautiful [“het leven is mooi ”]. And I believe in God. And I want to be there right in the thick of what people call “horror” and still be able to say: life is beautiful.” And now here I lie in some corner, dizzy and feverish and unable to do a thing. When I woke up just now I was parched, reached for my glass of water, and, grateful for that one sip, thought to myself, “If I could only be there to give some of those parched thousands just one sip of water.” [. . .] Sometimes I might sit down beside someone, put an arm round a shoulder, say very little and just look into their eyes. Nothing was alien to me, not one single expression of human sorrow. Everything seemed so familiar, as if I knew it all and had gone through it all before. People said to me, “You must have nerves of steel to stand up to it.” I don’t think I have nerves of steel, far from it, but I can certainly “stand up to things.” I am not afraid to look suffering straight in the eyes. And at the end of each day, there was always the feeling: I love people so much. Never any bitterness about what was done to them, but always love for those who knew how to bear so much although nothing had prepared them for such burdens. (EH, ; EHe,  –)

The focus by which Hillesum historically constituted her life’s purpose was her diary and its reflective experience. It was here that her eternal and temporal being encountered each other. This particular experience of writing (“schrijven”) was one among others that guided her in the field of flowing presence. She discovered, not new “objects,” but new ways of relating and ordering an already-known, distorted reality. What was known was the chaotic experience of her family and society. The context of writing replaced the older chaos with new clarity. She discovered “God” in the context of the new order dissociated from the chaos within. She developed an abiding concern with the transcendence of God, finding reassurance in reading Augustine and in the physical act of kneeling (“knielen”):

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



I am going to read Saint Augustine again. He is so austere and so fervent. And so full of simple devotion in his love letters to God. Truly those are the only love letters one ought to write: love letters to God[. . . .] I fold my hands in a gesture that I have come to love, and in the dark I tell you silly and serious things and implore blessings upon your honest sweet head. Yes, I pray for you. Goodnight, beloved[. . . .] I think that I can bear everything life and these times have in store for me. And when the turmoil becomes too great and I am completely at my wits’ end, then I still have my folded hands and bended knee. A posture that is not handed down from generation to generation with us Jews. I have had to learn it the hard way[. . . .] What a strange story it really is, my story: the girl who could not kneel. Or its variation: the girl who learned to pray. That is my most intimate gesture, more intimate even than being with a man. After all, one can’t pour the whole of one’s love out over a single man, can one? (EH,  –; EHe,  –)

Hillesum’s philosophical investigation received its impetus from the struggle (“strijd ”) with Nazi ideology. Her writing (“schrijven”) was not a onetime event but rather a continuing process of actualizing reflective potentialities for the investigation of events in her personal history. Barriers to this development did fall from time to time. Hillesum’s experience of the metaxy could not dwell exclusively on either the human or the divine pole. It would be a mistake to overemphasize the human pole of the divine-human tension (tasis) in The Letters and Diaries or to overconcentrate on her mystical side, as some have done by speaking of her “sainthood.” Hillesum and The Letters and Diaries have now and then been raised to the level of “sanctity.” Hillesum, however, had her feet firmly on the ground and did not claim any such notion for herself. She did mention Augustine as a saint (“de Heilige Augustinus”), but about herself she wrote: “You would actually be far better off as an out-and-out whore [‘straathoer’; literally, ‘street-prostitute’] or a real saint. You’d be at peace with yourself then because you’d know exactly what you were up to. My ambivalence is shocking” (EH, ; EHe, ). I believe that the truth is found in balancing the variety of passages to reach a portrait that catches the struggle between light and darkness that continued throughout her life. Making either attitude into an absolute does



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

Hillesum an injustice and hinders the investigation of her uniquely personal history of interaction with flowing presence. Current research on Hillesum’s life seems on the way to removing these obstacles. In my view, Plato’s symbol metaxy, the In-Between, is a suitable symbol to act as a tool of analysis of Hillesum’s writings. This In-Between conflict between the human and divine aspects in The Letters and Diaries is equivalently represented in the research work of Denise de Costa. She pays particular attention to the tension between time and eternity in terms of “inscribing spirituality and sexuality.” The center of Hillesum’s consciousness was the experience of participation (metalepsis). She was in contact with reality outside of herself, with which she was “consubstantial,” as Voegelin expresses it, but was also turned inward. Her experience of the flow of presence was In-Between the poles of her own being and the reality she experienced. The movements of divine presence were experienced in this In-Between as nudges of the spirit. Hillesum’s experience focused on the reality of both the divine and her own human presence. It is a fallacy to say that either pole of the participatory experience was self-contained. Reality became luminous (“intelligible”) to itself in Hillesum’s human consciousness. On Monday, October , , she reflects with greater awareness on the order of the soul (“ziel ”): The soul has a different age from that recorded in the register of births and deaths. At your birth, the soul already has an age that never changes. One can be born with a twelve-year-old-soul, and when one is eighty, that soul is still twelve years old and no older. One can also be born with a thousand-year-old soul, and one can tell that some twelve-year-old children have thousand-year-old souls. I believe the soul is that part of man that he is least aware of, particularly the West European, for I think that Orientals “live” their souls much more fully. We Westerners do not really know what to do with them; indeed, we are ashamed of our souls as if they were something immoral. “Soul” is quite different from what we call “heart.” There are plenty of people who have lot of “heart” but very little soul. (EH, ; EHe, )

For Hillesum, the discovery of “order” meant the attainment of insight into the overall ordered structure of reality as experienced through her writing

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



and through her attunement to that wider “cosmic” order. Her knowledge (“kennis”) of order went back to her early life history, as did the experiences of disorder and chaos (both in the family and later in the breakdown of society), which produced moments of extreme alienation. Her interior encounters with the flowing presence taught her to see the elements of disorder in herself as resulting from withdrawal from the tension toward the divine ground, a turning away from her reasonableness. Hillesum did not use her reasoning powers to justify those moments of alienation but tried to deal with them as they occurred. She avoided the possibility of taking her state of alienation as the basis for understanding her reality and kept away from such “creations” of the mind that could have usurped the place of the divine. Hillesum did not arrive at Nietzsche’s “death of God.” Her interpretations were no longer “despair” but were open to the reality of the ground (arche). She did not try to create a justifying system to falsify reality, as the Nazis did with their creed of National Socialism. Hillesum did not produce a set of doctrines that entailed the deformation of existence but instead compiled a collection of letters and diaries that expressed her experience. She did not lose contact with her surrounding reality, including the divine reality, nor as a writer did she become a victim of the degeneration of language. Hillesum had a basic urge to live simply (“eenvoudig”) (AAZZ, –). Although the attractions toward a simple life and “simplicity” (“de eenvoud ”) were wildly contradicted by her strong feelings and moods, she fought and struggled hard to fulfil her desire for “simplicity.” She would love “just to be alone, to live and breathe lying snugly in eternity, in total simplicity” (EHe, ). To reach “simplicity,” she had to maneuver through all the gray areas and complications she found within herself. “To live simply” (“eenvoudiger”) for her was to finally let go of words by going beyond them. According to her, we must forget our “big words,” beginning with “God” and ending with “Death.” Instead of talking too much about “God” with words, she desired to be immersed in the life of God, what she termed flowing “spring water”: “We must become as simple as pure spring water. Above all, a little less wordy” (EHe, ). Immersed in flowing “spring water,” Hillesum found that the subject matter for writing was the experience of her personal, social, historical, and cosmic reality. The method of her exploration was both simple (“een-



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

voudig”) and profound: the articulation of her experiences through language symbols in The Letters and Diaries. Here, Voegelin’s principle of the flow of presence is illustrated in action: the reality of Hillesum’s experience was a self-interpretive flow. Her writings were original and represent a new development within a collective Dutch consciousness that had been scarred by Nazi violence. Hillesum’s history became diversified, witnessing (“getuigen”) to many independent differentiating acts of her flowing consciousness. During the first year and half of the war, “witnessing” (“getuigen”), for Hillesum, was to make the “other” (“de ander”) part of her “inner riches” (“innerlijke rijkdom”) (AAZZ,  – ). Later, when the pressures on the Jews were intensified, she changed her use of the verb “to witness” (“getuigen”) to what was happening around her in the outer world. “Witnessing,” for Hillesum, then simply meant to reflect seriously and attentively on the elementary aspects of life (“leven”). She entered into a dialogue with God. She encountered others and formed a coherent reflection accordingly. Finally, she asked herself: “And yet there must be someone to live through it all and bear witness to the fact that God lived, even in these times. And why should I not be that witness?” (EH, ; EHe, ). On July , , she wrote: I am feeling so strange: so peaceful and earnest and resolute, and so filled with serious yet cheerful life. At this moment I know, more certainly than ever, that I have a task in this life, a small project [“Aufgabe”] specially for me. And I shall have to live through everything. I am grateful that fate has not got me in one of its many small clutches, for instance in prison for hiding silver, yes, that sort of thing happens—but that I shall be swept away with the great stream [“stroom”]. I shall become the chronicler of our adventures. I shall forge them into a new language and store them inside me should I have no chance to write things down. I shall grow dull and come to life again, fall down and rise up again, and one day I may perhaps discover a peaceful space round me that is mine alone, and then I shall sit there for as long as it takes, even if it should be a year, until life begins to bubble up in me again and I find the words that bear witness [“getuigen”] where witness needs to be borne. (EH, ; EHe, )

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



The corruption of language by Nazi ideology made debate impossible. In Hillesum’s case, the community of language had to be rediscovered and established in the midst of Nazi “idols”: deformed language symbols that had lost their contact with reality. The most important means of regaining reality for Hillesum was recourse to the thinkers of the past who had not lost reality or who were engaged in regaining it. She also drew upon those encounters with Spier that dealt with intact experiences, rather than their erotic (“erotische”) playfulness, as moments in which she reconnected with reality. It often happened that Hillesum’s spiritual ground was regained by the study of spiritual, artistic, and psychological masterpieces that rejected and challenged the dominant Nazi culture. For Hillesum, the most important of these sources were the Bible, Rilke, and Jung. To recapture reality, Hillesum wrote in her diary, addressing fundamental issues of existence, experience, consciousness, and reality. She explored the moods (“stemmingen”) and effects of personal and social deformations. She developed her own concepts by which the Nazi deformation and its symbolization could be categorized as opposing life (“leven”). She continually celebrated the goodness of life (“leven”) and by so doing became a defender of reality. Her methodological rule was, for example, to borrow words from Rilke to express experience. Like Voegelin, she would go back to the experiences that engendered Rilke’s symbols. In his Briefe an einen jungen Dichter, Rilke advises a young poet: “Geduld ist Alles! ” (Patience is all!). On June , , as on several other occasions, Hillesum recalled Rilke and wrote: I am copying it out once more, for the umpteenth time I must drum it firmly into my mind, over and over again: “There is no measuring of time then, a year does not matter then and ten years are as nothing. Being an artist means not calculating and counting; coming to maturity like a tree which does not force its sap, which continues to stand confidently throughout the spring storms, never doubting that summer will come. It will. But it comes only to the patient, who behave as if eternity lay before them, so carefree, still and spacious are they. Every day I keep learning it, learning it painfully, for which I am grateful: patience [“Geduld ”] is all! (EHe, )



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

Hillesum did not have an ideological ban on questioning (“vragen”). She asked herself important questions (“vragen”) and would realize what part of reality she had been excluding to make her dreamworld possible. She opened rather than excluded the experience of the divine ground (arche). Hillesum knew that her consciousness was the experience of a flow and of turning toward the divine ground. Although sense perception was often dominant in Hillesum’s experiences, she managed not to eclipse divine reality. Why did Hillesum persist in this attunement to the flow? The problem of alienation was the main reason she had to keep writing (“schrijven”). One could argue that turning toward or turning away from the divine ground (arche) were the fundamental categories descriptive of Hillesum’s human order and disorder. She became aware of the fundamental problems and rediscovered her sense of life (het “leven”). Her purpose was to justify the meaning of life in a state of utter alienation. After periods of chaos, periods of disintegration followed by order, Hillesum embraced reality and life (“leven”) to encourage the disoriented crowds of her fellow Jews in the concentration camp. She included in her writing both the Nazi degradation of values and norms and her personal attempt to restore order and love (“liefde”). During this increasingly barbaric period, the “location” for Hillesum’s encounters with the divine presence shifted more and more into the center (“centrum”) of her consciousness. The divine presence (parousia) she had found with men like Han and Spier shifted to her own psyche. Her experience found expression in symbols intimately tied to her own personal history, drawing partly from the world and partly from the transcendent. Her symbols were secondary insights; beneath them was an understanding that could not be expressed by any form of symbolization. This stratum of Hillesum’s experience was called, in Voegelin’s terms, “mysticism.” She was a mystic in search of order.

Life in the Flow Voegelin shocked many academic philosophers by describing thinkers such as Parmenides and Plato as mystic philosophers; later, the same term was applied to him. His term the flow of presence also points to the importance of personally experienced interior contact with the divine, not only in

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



philosophers but in most of the originating experiences in a wide range of societies and cultures. He also uses it as an explanatory symbol for spiritually sensitive individuals, such as T. S. Eliot. This last use of the term makes it a powerful tool for understanding The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum. Hillesum as a mystic and self-taught philosopher realized that she lived in a world caught dramatically between life and death. Her people seemed to face extinction. The world itself was going through another world war. She saw her own death coming and faced all of this unflinchingly. The reality itself seemed to be moving toward a state beyond its present structure. For Hillesum as an individual, this movement was consummated in death (“dood ”). She was, not a “mortal,” but a being engaged in a movement toward immortality. This movement introduced another tension in her: a concern that the manner in which she conducted her life (“leven”) would lead toward the state of imperishability. She did not dream, however, of a shortcut to imperishable perfection; neither did she share a Jewish apocalyptic expectation or a desire (“verlangen”) for direct action or change. Hillesum’s real experience of the flow of presence had a permanently motivating effect on her that was visible even in the midst of deformations of the concentration camp. Her personal history moved in the In-Between (metaxy ) and was experienced as a movement of love (“liefde”) or flowing presence that would end in a state beyond the InBetween (metaxy) and beyond time. Hillesum’s character was not fixed; rather, as she lived in the flow of presence, her life became luminous for its eschatological destiny. Her character would not be totally transformed during her life. Hillesum was a pilgrim with what Denise de Costa calls a “nomadic consciousness” journeying toward an eschatological perfection of love (“liefde”), but her progress was in this world. What continued throughout her engagement in the flow of presence was her continuing the writing, struggling to find solutions and sources of her chaos, and communicating the results. In the many entries in the diaries, Hillesum expressed different aspects of her awareness of being part of a comprehensive reality. She used a wide . Drawing on Rosi Braidotti, De Costa uses this term in her epilogue of her book Inscribing Spirituality and Sexuality. See p. .



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

range of symbols, such as birth (“geboren worden”) and death (“dood ”), to do this. With a wonderfully fertile symbolic imagination, she found striking images and phrases to explore some of the most difficult issues Voegelin analyzed under such headings as: a cosmic whole structured by realms of being; a world of external objects; the presence of divine reality in the cosmos; mortality and immortality; the origin of the cosmic order and salvation from its disorder; descent into the depth of the psyche; and meditative ascent toward its beyond. Hillesum accepted life (“leven”) in the concrete. There was an ongoing verification in her diaries that had to penetrate from the engendered symbols to the engendering experiences. Her experience of reality was articulated through language symbols. Her verification of, for example, Rilke’s poems or The Gospel of the Perfect Life required penetrating through the symbols to a responsive experience. The following is an example of things Hillesum tried to recapture out of that Gospel: Those who have love have all things, and without love there is nothing that has the least value. Let all of you keep what you recognize as truth in love, knowing that where there is no love, the truth is a dead letter, one without merit. [. . .] What prevails is goodness, truth and beauty; but the greatest of these is goodness. If any have hated their brothers and have hardened their hearts against the creatures shaped by God’s hand, how can they, their eyes being so blind and their hearts so hardened to God’s Creation, see the truth they need for their salvation? (EH,  –; EHe, )

She never analyzed her experiences or the symbols separately from each other. For Voegelin, a consciousness like Hillesum’s constituted by reality or “real life” was preferable to a second reality constituted by a “transcendental ego.” For Voegelin, the answers had to be sought in anamnetic analysis of a concrete consciousness, namely, one’s own. Recapturing her early and daily experiences, Hillesum started to explore the constitution of her consciousness. In writing and philosophizing about time and existence, she started to meditate (“mediteren”). She was aware, within her consciousness, of the problem that as a Jew in the midst of Nazi terror she had little time left. The

Hillesum in the Flow of Presence



struggle with her existence was part of her meditation. She experienced that she could not adequately describe her feelings and moods (“stemmingen”). There was no experience of a stream (“stroom”) of consciousness except in writing and observing a particular process of perception that she discovered. Hillesum experienced the flow of time, especially when she was with Spier, as a sensual awareness of “breathing” (“ademhaling”). The “fleetingness” of her writing (“schrijven”) and sense perception contrasted with the nonflowing moments within her consciousness. Her fascination with the stream (“stroom”) of consciousness seemed to be with the “flow” itself, something that she sensuously perceived. While Hillesum’s consciousness was in flow, she gained unity with the spaceless and timeless world of meaning and sense, regaining her soul’s order. “And between our eyes and hands and mouths there now flows a constant stream [‘een ononderbroken stroom’] of tenderness [‘zachtheid en tederheid ’], a stream in which all petty desires seem to have been extinguished. All that matters now is to be kind to each other with all the goodness that is in us. And every encounter is also a farewell” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum’s attention to her body (“lichaam”) balanced her personal view of consciousness. Sometimes she tended, however, to an exaggeration that made a battlefield of her consciousness: “It is difficult to be on equally good terms with God and your body [‘lichaam’]” (EH, ; EHe, ). Her body and her “spirit” (“geest”) were in ongoing “dialogue.” For Hillesum, “spirit” had initially to do with one of her main activities: thinking about her problems and those of mankind (AAZZ, –). In the beginning of The Letters and Diaries, “spirit” refers primordially to her rational intellect, without the intuitive quality of the nous. I still lack a basic tune; a steady undercurrent [“onderstroom”]; the inner source that feeds me keeps drying up, and worse still, I think much too much. My ideas hang on me like outside clothes into which I shall have to grow. My mind lags behind my intuition. This is not altogether a bad thing. But it means that my reason, or whatever you care to call it, must sometimes work overtime in order to seize the various premonitions by their coattails. A host of vague ideas keep clamouring for concrete formulation. I must stop and listen to myself, sound my own depths [“hineinhorchen”], eat well, and sleep properly if I am



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

to keep my balance, or it will turn into something altogether too Dostoevskian. (EH, ; EHe, )

Gradually, Hillesum incorporated the purely rational with the intuitive dimension of her psyche by surrendering to “life” (“leven”) and attuning “the under-flow” (“onderstroom”) to her rational mind. She now accumulated “intellectual” or “spiritual riches” (“geestelijke rijkdommen”), bearing in mind that she was not doing it for herself alone (EH, ; EHe, ). Although she struggled with spirit (“geest”) and body (“lichaam”), it would be an error to say that her consciousness was based on the body: “and my body hurts. But don’t delude yourself, Etty, it’s not really your body [‘lichaam’]; it’s your ravaged little soul [‘geteisterde zieltje’] that afflicts you” (EH, ; EHe, ). Hillesum’s body (“lichaam”) was not the cause of consciousness. It was not her awareness of the fleetingness of time that was constituted by the flow of presence; rather, the experience of this flow was constituted by her consciousness articulating itself through writing (“schrijven”). The activity of Hillesum’s writing was the stream (“stroom”) of her consciousness that was her unique form of meditation. It, too, led to the experience of transcendence; the writing process fulfilled the function of transcending her consciousness, reaching into her body (“lichaam”) as well as into the ground of being; both aspects of the process lead to her Center (“Centrum”) point. It was doubtful whether Hillesum’s consciousness always had the form of an “I.” On occasion, she speaks of a sort of oceanic feeling of unity with a “cosmic soul” (“Welten Seele”). The starting point for a description of her consciousness was her attention to the fullness of life (“leven”) and the ability to focus her attention. Hillesum’s consciousness was the experience of a finite process between her birth and an approaching death in the concentration camp. This was the only process that was really certain and she knew from within. It became her model to deal with the harshness of reality, and this habit of reflection brought her, over and over again, into the divine presence. She thus experienced the flow of presence in the tension between the finite process of “dying” (“doodgaan”) and living (“leven”) toward the Beyond. In the words of Goethe: “so, waiting, I have won from you the end: God’s presence in each element.”



This book presents the life and works of Etty Hillesum. Her writings, I believe, illuminate and illustrate the flow of presence through a passionate search for meaning and order. An enquiry concerning the ground of her existence is accommodated in this study and articulated in a careful analysis of The Letters and Diaries in chapters one and two. This is the point at which the presentation of Voegelin’s philosophy of consciousness sheds light on Hillesum’s writings, which is the essence of chapter four. The relationship between the life of Etty Hillesum and her writings is complex. The present book is an exploration of this relationship, drawing on the theoretical approach developed by Eric Voegelin. The symbol “the flow of presence” had its beginning in Voegelin’s empathy for and engagement with reality, in his lifelong meditative recovery and reenactment of major milestones in mankind’s millennial search for contact with the divine ground. Chapter three lays out his life and writings in a brief reflection on his scholarly search for order. I meditate along with him, as he expressed forcefully that any attempt to understand the full scope and complexity of the human condition will require that we grasp its core possibility: the ability to be human in transcending our immediate and simply given context through an attunement to the flow of presence. Voegelin grew to appreciate that the different societies and spiritual individuals in history were drawing from the same presence. The presence was equally present in each place and time. Every society and individual drew from it in a unique way. To express this reality, Voegelin created the phrase “the flow of presence.” In his analysis of causality, Aristotle says whatever is received is received according to the manner of the receiver. In the case of 



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

flowing presence, the divine is the same before every society and every man, but each responds to it according to one’s own particular inner stature and outer circumstances. Considering all these responses together, Voegelin recognises “the history of order” and correlatively describes the divine ground generating them as the flow of presence. This book tries to illustrate some of the virtualities of the flow of presence as a theoretical symbol. (i) It helps us to identify the sameness of the divine presence whether found in the soul, outside in nature, or in the neighbor. (ii) It provides a principle to explain the origin of the increase of meaning that occurs in history—for example, in the advance from compactness to differentiation. (iii) It provides a transcendent principle of unity in history, namely, that the different social and spiritual orders derive from the same presence and so have equivalent characteristics, but they are not exactly the same. (iv) It provides a transcendent principle to understand development in history. As contact with the Presence augments the soul, so repeated contact with the Presence brings about an ongoing growth of the soul. Something similar happens for social and historical forms. The history of order emerges from the flow of presence. (v) It applies the principle of development to the individual. Repeated contact with the Presence gradually brings about a growth in the soul of the individual so that just as society can have a history of its order, so the individual can have a history of order that emerges from the flow of their contacts with the presence. Etty Hillesum is one such individual who has a history of order that emerged from her attunement to the flow of presence. On the surface, The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum are a record of the events and feelings that especially moved her in her day-to-day life over the time they were written, until their interruption by her deportation from Westerbork to Auschwitz. The relationship between her life and writings is more intimate, more complicated, than that of an object and its linguistic description; more complicated, even, than a person describing her own life as it appeared to that person from within.

Conclusion



An attempt is made to indicate the implications of the flow of presence as articulated in The Letters and Diaries. The writings were part of Hillesum’s life; more, they were a central, indeed the central, part of her life, the part that changed the meaning and direction of her life and which she saw as giving meaning and purpose to her life, her very existence. Even more than that, her writings were a transformative experience, part of which she put herself through by reflecting upon her life habitually, part of which happened to her as she pursued the path of self-reflection. Her life emerged from this experience transformed at its core. Etty Hillesum put her very self through the fire of a transformative experience that was partly self-initiated, partly Other-initiated, and emerged changed: “All changed, changed utterly, a terrible beauty is born.” Even this description of the change that took place in her is too self-enclosed, as if she altered herself entirely by her own efforts. To leave that impression would be fundamentally to oversimplify and misinterpret in a reductionist manner the full range of the experiences she underwent in the flow of presence. To identify the complexity, the variety, in her experiences, this book identifies the different kinds of symbolic forms that are to be found in The Letters and Diaries. Within the parameters of the problem of articulating the experience of the flow of presence in terms of the symbolic forms in The Letters and Diaries, this study maintains that Voegelin’s philosophical apparatus is indeed a tenable solution for identifying the three kinds of symbolic forms in Hillesum’s writings, which I call (i) intramundane communications with other persons in letters, (ii) intramundane reflection in diary form, and (iii) “transcendent address.” There is also a final form of communication in relation to The Letters and Diaries, which elevates them onto a higher plane and gives them something of a representative status as historic spiritual documents of high rank.

Intramundane Communication with Other Persons in Letters One symbolic form found in Etty Hillesum’s writings that helped her attune to the flow of presence is the letter. Her letters are written communication from her to other people, such as her letter to Spier that stands at the . This sentence is taken from William Butler Yeats, “Easter .”



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

start of the diaries. Care is needed to avoid imposing a “flattened” meaning on letters. They are often shallow, gossipy accounts of events and feelings, but they are often much more than that. In Bernard Lonergan’s phrase, they can be significant acts of constitutive meaning. They can be acts of interpersonal communication, important interpersonal events in people’s lives and turning points in relationships in the lives of people, crises also in the lives of communities or even of whole peoples. And as in the case of the Gospel according to Luke and the Epistles of Paul in the New Testament, letters can be constitutive acts of meaning of historic religious, cultural, and civilizational importance. Letters may be direct self-disclosures, selfcommitments, and changes in the direction of one’s life. And indirectly, they can show that changes of this magnitude are taking place in the letterwriter’s life even though they are not the explicit focus of the letter’s content.

Intramundane Reflection in Diary Form Diaries are as intimate as letters, perhaps even more so, as on one level they may be begun by the writer for personal use alone and not intended for showing to anyone else. They may start as the private record of what someone considers personally important but intended for that person’s eyes only. As the writings continue, however, the diarist may change intentions and have other possible or actual readers in mind. This is especially likely to happen when a diary becomes an expression of a profound inner change, which the diarist may or may not wish to reveal to others. Etty Hillesum started to keep a diary as a therapeutic exercise suggested to her by Spier, who was acting as her psychotherapist. In the letter to Spier at the start of The Letters and Diaries, Hillesum showed him something of the reflective results of the exercises he had prescribed for her. Diaries, thus, can be somewhat self-enclosed. Hillesum came to intend hers, however, as something to be shared with “future generations,” thereby revealing the flow of presence as well as a surprising sense that what she discovered in her selfexploration has universal representative value. When she knew she was going to die in Auschwitz, Hillesum gave her diaries to a friend, who in turn was to give them to Klaas Smelik, a writer. How else can we interpret this other than as a hope on her part that the diaries would not only survive but

Conclusion



also be published and read by others? This final act of communication on her part, an act of communication with every future reader and so with us, turns the diaries from a piece of self-exploration into a public act of selfsharing, of self-disclosure, a gift of herself. More than this: quite consciously— for Etty Hillesum was an intelligent woman who knew the significance of what she had found within herself—the handing over of her diaries to Klaas Smelik turned them into her gift, not just of her story, but of her “adventure,” the story of the Presence that surprised her within herself.

“Transcendent Address” “Transcendent address” is the symbolic form of the soul’s response to the “flow” and transcendent irruption of the “Presence.” This unusual symbolic form is embedded in the diaries, and some attempt needs to be made to describe it. It is not unfair to say that the diaries started as a psychological exercise given to a young, emotionally distressed and wounded woman by the person acting as her therapist. Unexpectedly, however, the diaries start turning, in places, into something else. Within the “space” opened by her turning inward to listen to herself (“hineinhorchen”), to encounter a “stroom” (“flow”) and “Centrum” (“Centre”), she had an experience that broke with the ordinary diary. This experience prompted the creation of another symbolic form, which I propose to call “transcendent address”; and following Eric Voegelin, by taking seriously the inner contours of this new symbolic form, it may be hoped that this study has attained some understanding of the experience that engendered and shaped it. The obvious comparison is with Augustine’s Confessions, where he recounts how he turned inward and searched there and found God. But the difference is that Hillesum was not aware in any explicit way that she was searching for “God,” which makes what happened to her all the more astonishing. John Henry Newman said, Cor ad cor loquitur (heart speaks to heart). Those passages in Hillesum’s diaries that are in the symbolic form of “transcendent address” suggest that when she went into herself, she found within herself the presence of a transcendent Other. That which she found within her was “transcendent” in the sense that it was not “present” in the same way that things and people in the world are present to one another. Cor in cor loquitur: heart speaks within heart. When she went into her heart,



Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence

her soul, her self, a Presence was sometimes there and drew her into colloquium with It. We learn this from the outpouring of spiritually dense and profound, sometimes shocking words of transcendent beauty, most of which are in the symbolic form of transcendent address, addressing the Presence. It is hoped that this study shows that the flow of presence, when recognised as such, or rather when deeply experienced, not only provides the stability for the generation of philosophical thought but also allows for the intelligible reordering of human existence and experience. An attunement to the flow of presence allows the intelligible ordering of discordant events. It forges unity where perhaps, as in the case of Etty Hillesum’s horrific circumstances, it appears nonexistent. Her experience of the Presence, symbolized in The Letters and Diaries, provides an articulation of a human experience that was otherwise inexpressible. The flow of presence gave expression to a muted experience of the timeless in time, through the medium of Hillesum’s narrative, representing a major contribution to the contemporary search for meaning. The life of Etty Hillesum and the empirical studies of Eric Voegelin witness to the “open field of existence” in which every present moment is open to the divine and charged with flowing presence. Their empirical reflections show, each in its own unique way, that at every moment in history human consciousness is a “point of intersection of the timeless with time,” echoing the words of T. S. Eliot: The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation. Here the impossible union Of spheres of existence is actual, Here the past and future Are conquered and reconciled.

. Eliot, “Four Quartets,” in Complete Poems and Plays,  – .



Works by Etty Hillesum An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork. New York: Henry Holt, . An Interrupted Life: The Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum, –. Edited by Jan Geurt Gaarlandt. Translated by Arnold J. Pomerans. New York: Pantheon Books, . An Interrupted Life: The Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum. Preface by Eva Hoffman. London: Persephone Books, . “Dagboeken ( cahiers) van Etty Hillesum, – ” [Original handwritten letters and diaries of Etty Hillesum, –]. Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam. Etty: A Diary, –. Edited by Jan Geurt Gaarlandt. Translated by Arnold J. Pomerans. London: Johathan Cape, . Etty: De nagelaten geschriften van Etty Hillesum, –. Edited by Klaas A. D. Smelik. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Balans, . Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, –. Edited by Klaas A. D. Smelik. Translated by Arnold J. Pomerans. Ottawa, ON: Novalis Saint Paul University/William B. Eerdmans Publishing, . Het denkende hart van de barak: Brieven van Etty Hillesum. Edited by Jan Geurt Gaarlandt. Haarlem: De Haan, . Het Verstoorde leven: Dagboek van Etty Hillesum, –. Edited by Jan Geurt Gaarlandt. Haarlem: De Haan, . In duizend zoete armen: Nieuwe dagboekaantekeningen van Etty Hillesum. Edited by Jan Geurt Gaarlandt. Haarlem: De Haan, . Letters from Westerbork. Edited by Jan Geurt Gaarlandt. Translated by Arnold J. Pomerans. New York: Pantheon Books, . 



Bibliography

Letters from Westerbork. Edited by Jan Geurt Gaarlandt. Translated by Arnold J. Pomerans. London: Johathan Cape, . Twee brieven uit Westerbork van Etty. The Hague: Bert Bakker/Daamen N.V., .

Works on Etty Hillesum Allewijn, Herrianne, et al. “Een voorbeeld voor de eeuwigheid? Over de huidige waardering voor de dagboeken van Etty Hillesum.” Werkschrift voor Leerhuis & Liturgie  (November ):  –. Bakker, Sybe. “De innerlijke gebieden. Over het dagboek en de brieven van Etty Hillesum.” In Vuurproeven over literatuur, by Sybe Bakker. Barneveld: De Vuurbaak, . Barry, William A., S.J. “Mysticism in Hell.” Chap.  in God’s Passionate Desire and Our Response. Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, . Bendien, Hans. “Zelfverwerkelijking.” In Men zou een pleister op vele wonden willen zijn. Reacties op de dagboeken en brieven van Etty Hillesum, edited by Jan Geurt Gaarlandt, – . Amsterdam: Balans, . ———. “Mythe-vorming over de heiligheid van Etty Hillesum.” De Gids , no.  (): – . Bloom, Harold, ed. A Scholarly Look at The Diary of Anne Frank. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, . Boas, Henriëtte. “Etty Hillesum in niet-joodse en joodse ogen.” In Neveh Ya’Akov: Jubilee Volume Presented to Dr. Jaap Meijer on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, edited by Lea Dasberg and Jonathan N. Cohen,  –. Assen: Van Gorcum, . Brandt, Ria van den. Denken met Etty Hillesum. Zoetermeer: Uitgeverij Meinema, . ———. “‘Ik heb hem gebracht de schriften van Meister Eckhart.’ Het Eckhartbeeld van Etty Hillesum.” De Gids , no.  (): – . Brandt, Ria van den, and Klaas A. D. Smelik. Etty Hillesum in facetten. Nijmegen: Uitgeverij Damon, . ———. “Wachten jullie op mij?” Etty Hillesum in beeld. Nijmegen: Uitgeverij Balans, . Brenner, Rachel Feldhay. Writing as Resistance: Four Women Confronting the

Bibliography



Holocaust: Edith Stein, Simone Weil, Anne Frank, Etty Hillesum. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, . Burnier, Andreas. Mystiek en magie in de literatuur. Leiden: Martinus Nijhof, . Costa, Denise de. “Ceçi n’est pas une cigarette: een detaillistische lezing van Etty Hillesum.” Lover: literatuuroverzicht voor de vrouwenbeweging , no.  (): – . ———. Anne Frank and Etty Hillesum: Inscribing Spirituality and Sexuality. Translated by Mischa F. C. Hoyinck and Robert E. Chesal. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, . ———. Met Pen en Penseel: Levenskunst van Anne Frank, Etty Hillesum en Charlotte Salomon. Etty Hillesum lecture, November , . Deventer: Thieme Deventer, . Dongen, Marian van. “Tegenstelling in eenheid. Erotiek en mystiek in het werk van Etty Hillesum.” Lust & Gratie  (Summer ):  –. Downey, Michael. “A Balm for All Wounds: The Spiritual Legacy of Etty Hillesum.” Spirituality Today  (Spring ): – . Dresden, Sem. “Etty Hillesum: identiteit als opgave en oplossing.” De Gids , no.  (): – . Ergas, Y. “Growing Up Banished: A Reading of Anne Frank and Etty Hillesum.” In Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars, edited by M. Randolph Higonnet,  – . New Haven: Yale University Press, . Fens, Kees. “Naar een Woestijn van medemensen.” In Men zou een pleister op vele wonden willen zijn: Reacties op de dagboeken en brieven van Etty Hillesum, edited by J. Geurt Gaarlandt. Amsterdam: Balans, . Gaarlandt, J. Geurt, ed. Men zou een pleister op vele wonden willen zijn: Reacties op de dagboeken en brieven van Etty Hillesum. Amsterdam: Balans, . Gaillardetz, Richard R. “Etty Hillesum: Suffering and Sexuality, Reflections on Passionate Living.” Spirituality  (May–June ):  – . Hop-Dijkhuis, Siemy, ed. Etty Hillesum, ’–’. Teksten van lezingen gehouden in de Herdenkingsweek november  te Deventer. Deventer: Boekhandel Praamstra, .



Bibliography

Hulst, J. W. Van. Treinen naar de hel. Amsterdam, Westerbork, Auschwitz: een aantal beschouwingen die verband houden met het dagboek en de brieven van Etty Hillesum. Amsterdam: Buijten & Schipperheijn, . Jorna, Ton, and Denise de Costa. Van Aandacht en Adem tot Ziel en Zin: Honderd woorden uit het levenbeschouwend idioom van Etty Hillesum. Utrecht: Kwadraat, . Jorna, Ton, Denise de Costa, and Marijn ten Holt. De Moed hebben tot Zichzelf: Etty Hillesum als inspiratiebron bij levensvragen. Utrecht: Kwadraat, . King, Peter. Dark Night Spirituality: Thomas Merton, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Etty Hillesum: Contemplation and the New Paradigm. London: SPCK, . Lagrou, Els. “Etty Hillesum, –. Een historisch-biografische studie.” Master’s thesis, Catholic University of Leuven (Louvain), Belgium, . Maas, Frans. Spirituality as Insight: Mystical Texts and Theological Reflections. Louvain, Belgium: Peeters, . Meijer, Jaap. Als Maggied vergeten: Doctor Levie Hillesum, –: De vader van Etty. Heemstede: privately printed, . ———. De Odyssee van een joods docent. Dr Levie Hillesum, –. Heemstede: privately printed, . Minco, Marga. “De kroniekschrijfster van onze lotgevallen.” In Men zou een pleister op vele wonden willen zijn: Reacties op de dagboeken en brieven van Etty Hillesum, edited by J. Geurt Gaarlandt. Amsterdam: Balans, . O’Connor, Elizabeth. “The Thinking Heart.” Sojourners  (October ):  –. Okken, Riet. De kracht van de bestemming. Deventer: Ankh-Hermes, . Oord, Gerrit van, ed. L’esperienza dell’Altro: Studi su Etty Hillesum. Rome: Sant’Oreste, . Pleshoyano, Alexandra. “Etty Hillesum: A Theological Hermeneutic in the Midst of Evil.” Oxford Journals: Humanities, Literature, and Theology  (September ): – . Reitsma, Anneke. “Ik bloei van binnen met de dood to bloem.” In Men zou een pleister op vele wonden willen zijn: Reacties op de dagboeken en brieven

Bibliography



van Etty Hillesum, edited by J. Geurt Gaarlandt,  –. Amsterdam: Balans, . ———. “‘Men moet zichzelf het vaderland zijn’: Over Etty Hillesum en de innerlijke noodzaak van haar schrijverschap.” Periodiek Parodos  (April ):  – . Reve, Karel van het. “Het Korte Leven van Etty Hillesum.” In Men zou een pleister op vele wonden willen zijn: Reacties op de dagboeken en brieven van Etty Hillesum, edited by J. Geurt Gaarlandt, – . Amsterdam: Balans, . Scholtens, Wim R. “Søren Kierkegaard en Etty Hillesum, een vergelijking.” In Men zou een pleister op vele wonden willen zijn: Reacties op de dagboeken en brieven van Etty Hillesum, edited by J. Geurt Gaarlandt. Amsterdam: Balans, . Schrijvers, P. H. “Een filosoof in bezettingstijd: Over Seneca’s brieven en het dagboek van Etty Hillesum.” In De mens als toeschouwer: Essay over Romeinse literatuur en Westeuropese tradities. Amsterdam: Ambo, AtheneumPolak, . Sieves, Joseph. “‘Aiutare Dio’: riflessioni su vita e pensiero di Etty Hillesum.” Nuova Umanità / (May–August ): ‒. Smelik, Johanna F. “Het ‘zusje’ van Etty Hillesum.” Interview by Anke Manschot. Opzij (July/August ):  –. Smelik, Klaas A. D. “Etty Hillesum.” In The Blackwell Companion to Jewish Literature: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present, edited by G. Abramson,  –. Oxford: Blackwell, . ———. “Etty Hillesum.” In Bewogen grensgangers:  overwegingen, edited by A. Bakker,  –. Hilversum: Gooi & Sticht, . ———. “Etty Hillesum veertig jaar na de Bevrijding.” OJEC periodiek no.  (April ):  –. ———. “Geen heilige maar een begenadigd schrijfster.” Werkschrift , no.  (): –. ———. “Het godsbeeld bij Etty Hillesum.” Rondom het Woord , no.  (): –. ———. “Invalshoeken in het onderzoek naar de nagelaten werken van Etty Hillesum.” Praktische Humanistiek , no.  (): – . ———. “Le edizioni dell’di Etty Hillesum.” In L’esperienza dell’ Altro: Stu-



Bibliography

di su Etty Hillesum, edited by Gerrit Van Oord, –. Rome: Sant’ Oreste, . ———. “L’immagine di Dio in Etty Hillesum.” In L’esperienza dell’ Altro: Studi su Etty Hillesum, edited by Gerrit Van Oord, –,  – . Rome: Sant’ Oreste, . ———. “Nieuwe publicaties over Etty Hillesum in haar zestigste sterfjaar.” De Stem van het Boek , no.  (): – . ———. “Reacties op Etty Hillesum.” Rondom het Woord  ():  –. ———. “Reacties op Etty Hillesum.” In Men zou een pleister op vele wonden willen zijn: Reacties op de dagboeken en brieven van Etty Hillesum, edited by J. Geurt Gaarlandt, –, –. Amsterdam: Balans, . ———. “Una testimone in anticipo sui tempi.” In “La resistenza esistenziale di Etty Hillesum.” Alfazeta , no.  ():  –. ———. “Volledig leven tot de laatste ademtocht: Etty Hillesum, heilige of martelares?” VolZin , no.  (): – . Smelik, Klaas A. D., Manja Pach, and Ton Jorna. “‘Huiswerk voor de eigen werkplaats’: De actualiteit van Etty Hillesum.” Rondom het Woord , no.  (): –. Snijders, Jos. Ik heb zo lief: De menselijke en gelovige groei van Etty Hillesum. Den Bosch: KBS, . Steeg, Maria ter. “De verlokking van de liefde: De geestelijke ontwikkeling van Etty Hillesum.” Streven  (April ): –. Swart, Loet. “Een verzamelplaats voor het lijden van de mensheid.” In Tot op de bodem van het niets: Mystiek in een tijd van oorlog en crisis: – , edited by H. Blommenstijn. Kampen: Kok, . Taylor, Dennis. “Examined Lives.” Boston College Magazine  (Winter ): – . Tigchelaar, Herma. “Als zij spreekt is de ander veilig: Over de grenzen en mogelijkheden van taal: Een lezing van ‘Über Wahrheit und Lüge im Außermoralischen Sinn’ van Friedrich Nietzsche en ‘La venue à l’écriture’ van Hélène Cixous.” Master’s thesis, Utrecht University, . Ypma, Sytze. “Voorbij het verstoorde leven: Een zelfpsychologisch lezing van het zelf beeld en godsbeeld van de ik-persoon uit ‘Etty, De nagelaten geschriften van Etty Hillesum, –.’” Master’s thesis, Groningen University, .

Bibliography



Works by Eric Voegelin “Anxiety and Reason.” In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Vol. , “What Is History?” and Other Late Unpublished Writings, edited by Thomas A. Hollweck and Paul Caringella, –. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . “Autobiographical Statement at Age Eighty-Two.” In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Vol. , The Drama of Humanity and Other Miscellaneous Papers, –, edited by William Petropulos and Gilbert Weiss, –. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . “The Beginning and the Beyond: A Meditation on Truth.” In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Vol. , “What Is History?” and Other Late Unpublished Writings, edited by Thomas A. Hollweck and Paul Caringella, –. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. Vol. , On the Form of the American Mind, translated by Ruth Hein and edited by Barry Cooper and Jürgen Gebhardt. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. Vol. , Race and State, translated by Ruth Hein and edited by Klaus Vondung. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. Vol. , Anamnesis: On the Theory of History and Politics, edited by David Walsh and translated by M. J. Hanak. Based upon the abbreviated version originally translated by Gerhart Niemeyer. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. Vol. , Published Essays,  –, edited by Ellis Sandoz. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. Vol. , Published Essays,  –, edited by Ellis Sandoz. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. Vol. , Published Essays,  –, edited by Ellis Sandoz. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. Vol. , Order and History, vol. I, Israel and Revelation, edited by Maurice Hogan. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. Vol. , Order and History, vol. III, Plato and Aristotle, edited by Dante Germino. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, .



Bibliography

The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. Vol. , Order and History, vol. IV, The Ecumenic Age, edited by Michael Franz. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. Vol. , Order and History, vol. V, In Search of Order, edited by Ellis Sandoz. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. Vol. , What Is History? and Other Late Unpublished Writings, edited by Thomas A. Hollweck and Paul Caringella. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. Vol. , Hitler and the Germans, translated and edited by Detlev Clemens and Brendan Purcell. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. Vol. , The Theory of Governance and Other Miscellaneous Papers, –, translated by Sue Bollans, Jodi Cockerill, M. J. Hanak, Ingrid Heldt, Elisabeth Von Lochner, and William Petropulos, and edited by William Petropulos and Gilbert Weiss. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. Vol. , The Drama of Humanity and Other Miscellaneous Papers,  –, edited by William Petropulos and Gilbert Weiss. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. Vol. , Autobiographical Reflections: Revised Edition, with a Voegelin Glossary and Cumulative Index, edited by Ellis Sandoz. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . “The Drama of Humanity.” In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. , The Drama of Humanity and Other Miscellaneous Papers,  –, edited by William Petropulos and Gilbert Weiss,  –. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . “The Eclipse of Reality.” In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. , “What Is History?” and Other Late Unpublished Writings, edited by Thomas A. Hollweck and Paul Caringella, – . Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . “Equivalences of Experience and Symbolization in History.” In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. , Published Essays,  –, edited by Ellis Sandoz,  – . Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . “Eternal Being in Time.” In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. ,

Bibliography



Anamnesis: On the Theory of History and Politics, edited by David Walsh, translated by M. J. Hanak, and based upon the abbreviated version originally translated by Gerhart Niemeyer, – . Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . “The German University and the Order of German Society: A Reconsideration of the Nazi Era.” In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. , Published Essays, –, edited by Ellis Sandoz, – . Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . “The Gospel and Culture.” In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. , Published Essays,  –, edited by Ellis Sandoz, –. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . “The Growth of the Race Idea.” In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. , Published Essays,  –, edited by Ellis Sandoz, – . Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . “Immortality: Experience and Symbol.” In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. , Published Essays,  –, edited by Ellis Sandoz, – . Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . “The Irish Dialogue with Eric Voegelin.” Transcript of a tape-recorded conversation, edited by Joseph McCarroll. Participants: Ciaran Benson, John Dowling, Gerarld Hanratty, Andy Johnson, Colm Lyons, Joseph McCarroll, Brendan Purcell, and Eric Voegelin. Dublin, September . “A Letter to Alfred Schütz Concerning Edmund Husserl.” In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. , Anamnesis: On the Theory of History and Politics, edited by David Walsh, translated by M. J. Hanak, and based upon the abbreviated version originally translated by Gerhart Niemeyer,  –. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . “The Meditative Origin of the Philosophical Knowledge of Order.” In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. , The Drama of Humanity and Other Miscellaneous Papers,  –, edited by William Petropulos and Gilbert Weiss,  –. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . “Nietzsche, the Crisis, and the War.” In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. , Published Essays,  –, edited by Ellis Sandoz,  – . Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . “Notes on Augustine: Time and Memory.” In The Collected Works of Eric



Bibliography

Voegelin, vol. , The Theory of Governance and Other Miscellaneous Papers, –, translated by Sue Bollans, Jodi Cockerill, M. J. Hanak, Ingrid Heldt, Elisabeth Von Lochner, and William Petropulos, and edited by William Petropulos and Gilbert Weiss,  – . Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . “On Classical Studies.” In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. , Published Essays,  –, edited by Ellis Sandoz,  –. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . “On Debate and Existence.” In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. , Published Essays,  –, edited by Ellis Sandoz,  – . Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . “On Hegel: A Study in Sorcery.” In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. , Published Essays,  –, edited by Ellis Sandoz, –. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. , Published Essays, –, edited by Ellis Sandoz,  –. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . “Quod Deus Dicitur.” In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. , Published Essays, –, edited by Ellis Sandoz,  –. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . “Reason: The Classic Experience.” In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. , Published Essays, –, edited by Ellis Sandoz,  – . Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . “Remembrance of Things Past.” In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. , Published Essays, –, edited by Ellis Sandoz,  –. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . “Response to Professor Altizer’s ‘A New History and a New but Ancient God?’” In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. , Published Essays,  –, edited by Ellis Sandoz, – . Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . “Structures of Consciousness.” In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. , The Drama of Humanity and Other Miscellaneous Papers,  –, edited by William Petropulos and Gilbert Weiss, – . Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . “Time and Existence.” In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. , On the

Bibliography



Form of the American Mind, translated by Ruth Hein and edited by Barry Cooper and Jürgen Gebhardt,  – . Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . “Toynbee’s History as a Search for Truth.” In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. , Published Essays,  –, edited by Ellis Sandoz,  –. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . “Wisdom and the Magic of the Extreme: A Meditation.” In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. , Published Essays,  –, edited by Ellis Sandoz, –. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, .

Works on Eric Voegelin Carmody, Denise L., and John T. Carmody. Interpreting the Religious Experience: A Worldview. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, . Cooper, Barry. Eric Voegelin and the Foundations of Modern Political Science. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . ———. The Political Theory of Eric Voegelin. Toronto Studies in Theology . Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, . Emberley, Peter, and Barry Cooper. Faith and Political Philosophy: The Correspondence of Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, . Franz, Michael G. Eric Voegelin and the Politics of Spiritual Revolt: The Roots of Modern Ideology. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, . Heilke, Thomas W. Eric Voegelin: In Quest of Reality. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, . ———. Voegelin on the Idea of Race: An Analysis of Modern European Racism. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, . Hughes, Glenn A. Mystery and Myth in the Philosophy of Eric Voegelin. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . ———. The Politics of the Soul: Eric Voegelin on Religious Experience. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, . Keulman, Kenneth. The Balance of Consciousness: Eric Voegelin’s Political Theory. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, . Lawrence, Frederick, ed. The Beginning and the Beyond: Papers from the Gadamer and Lonergan Conferences. Vol.  of Lonergan Workshop. Supplementary Volume. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, .



Bibliography

McCarroll, Joseph. “The Advance from Compactness to Differentiation . . . in Eric Voegelin’s Order and History I–III.” Master’s thesis, University College, Dublin, . McKnight, Stephen A., ed. Eric Voegelin’s Search for Order in History. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, . McKnight, Stephen A., and Geoffrey L. Price. International and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Eric Voegelin. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . Morrissey, Michael Patrick. Consciousness and Transcendence: The Theology of Eric Voegelin. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, . O’Carroll, Noreen. “The Equivalence of Symbolic Forms: A Study in Eric Voegelin’s Theory of Experiential Equivalence between Symbolic Forms.” Ph.D. diss., University College, Dublin, . Petrakis, Peter A., and Cecil L. Eubanks. Eric Voegelin’s Dialogue with the Postmoderns: Searching for Foundations. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . Porter, Jene M. Classics in Political Philosophy. nd ed. New York: Prentice Hall, . Price, Geoffrey L. Eric Voegelin: A Classified Biography. Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester  (Summer ). Purcell, Brendan. The Drama of Humanity: Towards a Philosophy of Humanity in History. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, . Rhodes, James M. “On Voegelin: His Collected Works and His Significance.” Review of Politics  (Fall ): –. Sandoz, Ellis. Eric Voegelin’s Significance for the Modern Mind. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, . ———. Eric Voegelin’s Thought: A Critical Appraisal. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, . Sandoz, Ellis, ed. The Voegelinian Revolution: A Biographical Introduction. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, . Sebba, Gregor. “Prelude and Variations on the Theme of Eric Voegelin.” Southern Review, n.s.,  ():  –. ———. “Prelude and Variations on the Theme of Eric Voegelin.” In Eric

Bibliography



Voegelin’s Thought: A Critical Appraisal, edited by Ellis Sandoz,  – . Durham, NC: Duke University Press, . Thompson, William M., and David L. Morse, eds. Voegelin’s Israel and Revelation: An Interdisciplinary Debate. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, . Walsh, David J. After Ideology: Recovering the Spiritual Foundations of Freedom. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, . ———. The Growth of the Liberal Soul. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, . ———. The Mysticism of Inner-Worldly Fulfilment: A Study of Jacob Boehme. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, . ———. “Restoring the Lost Centre of Education.” Thought , no.  (). Webb, Eugene. Eric Voegelin: Philosopher of History. Seattle: University of Washington Press, .

General Works Ackrill, J. L. A New Aristotle Reader. Oxford: Clarendon Press, . Améry, J. Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne: Bewältigungsversuche eines Uˆberwältigten. Munich: DTV, . Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, . ———. The Origins of Totalitarianism. Rev. ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, . Armstrong, Karen. The Great Transformation: The World in the Time of Buddha, Socrates, Confucius, and Jeremiah. London: Atlantic Books, . Buber, Martin. Between Man and Man. Translated by Ronald GregorSmith. London: Routledge Classics, . ———. Eclipse of God. Studies in the Relation between Religion and Philosophy. New York: Humanity Books, . ———. I and Thou. Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark, . ———. Meetings. London and New York: Routledge, . Camus, Albert. The Rebel. Translated by Anthony Bower. New York: Vintage, .



Bibliography

———. Resistance, Rebellion, and Death. Translated by Justin O’Brien. New York: Vintage, . Eliot, T. S. The Complete Poems and Plays. London: Faber and Faber, . ———. Reading The Waste Land, Four Quartets, and Other Poems. CDROM. London: Harper Collins. Originally recorded in . Remastered in , , and . Frankl, Victor. Man’s Search for Meaning. Translated by Ilse Lach. New York: Washington Square, . Gadamer, Hans Georg. Truth and Method. nd ed. Translation revised by Joel Weinsheimer and David G. Marshall. New York: Crossroad, . Gallagher, Michael Paul, S.J. Clashing Symbols: An Introduction to Faith and Culture. London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, . Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by. A. V. Miller. New York: Oxford University Press, . Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, . James, William. Essays in Radical Empiricism [and] A Pluralistic Universe.  vols. in . . Repr. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, . Jaspers, Karl. The Origin and Goal of History. Translated by Michael Bullock. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, . ———. Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte. Zurich: . Ivens, Michael, S.J. Understanding the Spiritual Exercises: Text and Commentary, A Handbook for Retreat Directors. Gloucester: Action Publishing Technology, . Kavanagh, Patrick. Collected Poems. Edited by by Antoinette Quinn. London: Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books, . Kierkegaard, Søren. The Concept of Anxiety. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, . ———. Fear and Trembling; Repetition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, . Langer, L. Admitting the Holocaust: Collected Essays. New York: Oxford University Press, . Lee, Desmond, trans. Plato: The Republic. England: Penguin Group, . Levinas, Emmanuel. Discovering Existence with Husserl. Translated by R.

Bibliography



Cohen and Michael B. Smith. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, . ———. God, Death, and Time. Translated by B. Bergo, Stanford: Stanford University Press, . ———. The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology. Translated by A. Orianne. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, . ———. Totality and Infinity. Translated by A. Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, . Lewis, C. S. The Abolition of Man. London: Macmillan, . Liguori, Alphonsus de. How to Converse Continually and Familiarly with God. Translated by L. X. Aubin, C.SS.R. Boston: St. Paul Editions, . Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Edited by P. H. Niditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press, . Lonergan, Bernard. Method in Theology. London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, . ———. “Openness and Religious Experience.” In Collection: Papers by Bernard Lonergan, S.J., edited by. F. E. Crowe, S.J.,  –, London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, . Marion, Jean-Luc. Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness. Translated by Jeffrey L. Kosky. Stanford: Stanford University Press, . ———. “The Voice without a Name: Homage to Levinas.” In The Face of the Other and the Trace of God: Essays on the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, edited by J. Bloech. New York: Fordham University Press, . Marmion, Declan. A Spirituality of Everyday Faith: A Theological Investigation of the Notion of Spirituality in Karl Rahner. Louvain Theological & Pastoral Monographs . Louvain, Belgium: Peeters Press/W.B. Eerdmans, . Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. Translated by by Marianne Cowan. Chicago: Gateway, . ———. The Gay Science. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage, .



Bibliography

———. Jenseits von Gut und Böse. No. . In Werke VII. Leipzig: . ———. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Penguin, . ———. The Will to Power. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage, . Plato. Complete Works. Edited by John M. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, . Rilke, Rainer Maria. Briefe aus den Jahren  bis . Leipzig: Ruth Steber-Rilke and Carl Sieber, . ———. Briefe aus den Jahren  bis . Leipzig: Ruth Steber-Rilke and Carl Sieber, . ———. Brieven aan een jonge dichter. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Balans, . Rogers, Carl. On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy. London: Constable, . Russell, D. S. The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic. Philadelphia: Westminster, . Solzhenitsyn, Alexander. “The Smatterers.” In From Under the Rubble, – . London: Fontana Collins, . Stein, Edith. The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross Discalced Carmelite. Vol. , On The Problem Of Empathy, translated by Waltraut Stein. Washington, DC: ICS Publications, . Tarkovsky, Andrey. Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema (The Great Russian Filmmaker Discusses His Art). Translated by Kitty Huntler-Blair. Austin: University of Texas Press, . Tillich, Paul. A History of Christian Thought. New York: Simon & Schuster, . Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, . Tredennick, Hugh. Plato: The Last Days of Socrates. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, . Whitehead, A. N. Process and Reality. New York: Harper, . Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logio-Philosophicus. Translated by D. F. Pears and B. F. Mc Guinness. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, . Yeats, William Butler. Collected Poems. Edited by A. Martin. London: Vintage, .

Bibliography



Centers of Research Anne Frank Museum. Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. Oswiecim, Poland. Center for Prayer and Dialogue in Auschwitz. Oswiecim, Poland. Center for Voegelin Studies. University of Manchester, England. Eric-Voegelin-Archiv. Munich, Germany. Eric Voegelin Forum. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evforum/. Eric Voegelin Institute. Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Eric Voegelin Study Page. http://home.salamander.com/~wmcclain/ev-index .html. Etty Hillesum Center. Deventer, The Netherlands. Etty Hillesum Research Center (EHOC). Belgium. http://www.ehoc.ugent .be. Herinneringscentrum (Memorial Center). Camp Westerbork, The Netherlands. Jesuit Library. Milltown Institute for Philosophy and Theology. Dublin, Ireland. Library of the Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Lonergan Center. Milltown Institute for Philosophy and Theology. Dublin, Ireland. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Washington, DC.



Aandacht (attention), –,  Acceptance (aanvaarden), , , ,  Adem (breath), –, ,  Adler, Alfred,  Aeschylus,  After Ideology (Walsh),  Agathon (Good),  Agnoia (ignorance), , , ,  Aletheia (truth, reality), , –, , ,  Alienation, , ,  Amathia (ignorance), , , ,  Améry, Jean, , n Amsterdam: anti-pogrom strike in, ; education in, ,  –; Jaap Hillesum in, , ; Mischa Hillesum in, ; Etty Hillesum’s life in, , , ,  – ; Nazism in, –; relocation of Jews to, –; Spier in, , n ,  – ; Wegerif in, , – Anamnesis (Voegelin), n Ander (Other), , – , ,  Anti-Semitism: in Germany, ; in Holland, –; and Jewish identity of Etty Hillesum,  – ; prohibition of public music performances by Jews, . See also Holocaust; Nazism Apeiron (depth), ,  Arche (ground), , , ,  –, , ,  Arendt, Hannah,  Aristotle: on athanatizein (immortalizing), ; on causality, ; on ethics, ; on friendship based on likeness in participation in nous, ; on good life, ; on hierarchy of being, ; on homonoia, ; influence of, on

Voegelin, ; on kinesis, ; on love, ; on mature human being, ; on nous (reason), –, , ; on philia (love), ; on phronesis (persevering in search of Ground), ; and politike episteme (political science), ; on spoudaios (mature person), ; on time and timelessness,  Athanatizein (immortalizing),  Attention (aandacht), –,  Attunement: awareness of flow,  –, , , ; cosmic order, ; exploring of the quest,  –; fidelity and eagerness, – ; living, –; mediators,  – ; mysticism, , , ,  –, , ,  – ; resisting disorder,  – Augustine, Saint, , , –, – ,  Auschwitz concentration camp: death of Stein in, ; deaths of Hillesum family members in, ; Frankl as survivor of, ; Etty Hillesum’s death in, , , , , ; prisoners in, ; travel of Jews to, , – ,  Austrian Anschluss,  Autoritäre Staat, Der (Voegelin),  Awareness of flow,  – Badings, Henk, n  Badness (slecht),  – Bakunin, Mikhail, n Balance (evenwicht), –  Beauty: appreciation of, despite war and Holocaust, , , ,  – , , ; and Eros, ; and God, ; of life, , ,  Becker, Bruno,  –, n 





Index

Being: hierarchy of, , –; Etty Hillesum on, , –; love of being versus existence,  –; versus doing, . See also Ground of being (prote arche) Bendien, Hans, n Bennington College,  Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, ,  Bernstein, Jacob,  Bernstein, Michael,  Bernstein, Rahel Sarra,  Bernstein-Hillesum, Rebecca (Riva), ,  –, , , ,  Beyond (epekeina), ,  –, ,  Bible: and Etty Hillesum, , , , , ; and Louis Hillesum, , ; letters in, ; Psalms in, n  Binnenwereld (inner world), –,  – ,  –  Blanken, Margreet, n  Boas, Henriëte,  Body (lichaam), –, , –  Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, ,  Braidotti, Rosi, n  Breakthrough: breath (adem), –, , ; center (centrum), ,  –,  – , , , , , , , ; disorientation, – ; erotic (erotiek), –; heart (hart), –, , , , ; inner experience of,  – ; metaxy (In-Between),  –; mystical breakthrough, ; principles of completeness, –; reason (nous), – ; in society, ; source (bron),  – , ; Spier as catalyst for,  –; unrest,  –; wrestling with (worstelen), – Breath (adem), , , –, ,  Brenner, Rachel Feldhay, , n  Bron (source),  –,  Brothers Karamazov, The (Dostoevsky), n Buber, Martin, n , , – Buddhism,  Buitenwereld (outer world), –, ,  Burleigh, Michael, n  Candler Lectures, n Center (centrum): and breakthrough,  –

,  – , , , , ; God as, , , , , , , ; as location for Etty Hillesum’s encounters with divine presence, ; of love,  –, ; and psyche, , ; and writing by Etty Hillesum, ,  “Central Experiential Problem: Hitler’s Rise to Power” (Voegelin), n Chagall, Marc, n Chaos, –, , ,  –, ,  Cicero,  –  Closed existence: badness (slecht),  –; chaos, ,  – , , ,  –, ; closure and openness, –; deformation, –, , ; reality, – ; sadness (treurigheid ),  – , n, , , , ; Second Reality, –, ; social disorder,  – Community (gemeenschap),  Community of suffering,  Completeness, principles of, – Concentration camps. See Auschwitz concentration camp; Bergen-Belsen concentration camp; Holocaust; Westerbork Camp Confessions (Augustine), –,  Congruence, n Consciousness: and cosmic soul (Welten Seele), , ; definition of, ; differentiation of, ; eclipsed consciousness,  –, – , ; female consciousness of Etty Hillesum’s diaries,  – ; and flow of presence,  –; historical and universal consciousness, ; and language, ; luminosity of, , n , , ; and metalepsis, methexis (mutual participation), , , , , , , , ; nomadic consciousness of Etty Hillesum, , , ; stream of, , ; Voegelin on,  – , –, , . See also Inner life (innerlijk); Reason (nous) “Conversations with Eric Voegelin” (Voegelin),  Cosmic soul (Welten Seele), ,  Costa, Denise de, , , n  Courage (moed ), , . See also Strength (kracht) Creative construction (scheppen), ,  Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky), n

Index Dankbaarheid (gratefulness), –  Death (dood ): acceptance and consciousness of, by Etty Hillesum, , , , – , ; fear of, , ; Etty Hillesum’s early thoughts on, as delivery from depression,  – ; inbetween forces of life (leven) and, , , , , , ; reality of, during Holocaust, ; and Thanatos, , . See also Holocaust Death of God, , ,  Deformation, – , , ,  Dejection. See Sadness (treurigheid ) Depression. See Sadness (treurigheid ) Depth (Apeiron), ,  Descartes, René, n  Desire (verlangen),  – , , ,  Deventer, Holland, , , –, , n ,  –  Diaries. See Letters and Diaries, The (Hillesum) Differentiation of consciousness,  Disorder,  – ,  –, . See also Chaos; Order Disorientation, –  Divine presence. See Flow of presence; God Dolefulness. See Sadness (treurigheid ) Dood. See Death (dood ) Dostoevsky, Fyodor, , , n ,  Doxa (opinions), , ,  “Drama of Humanity” (Voegelin), , n,  –  Dresden, Sem,  Durant, William James, , n Dysfunctional families. See Family dysfunction Eclipse,  – , – ,  “Eclipse of Reality, The” (Voegelin),  Ecumenic Age, The (Voegelin), n,  Eliot, T. S., , , , ,  Emory University, n  Emotional distress of Etty Hillesum: breathing exercises for, , ,  –; chaos, – , , ; diaries as therapy for, , , – , ; disorientation, –; and family dysfunction, , , , , –, , – , , – , ; meditation for, –, , , – ; neurotic distortion, ;



and psychosomatic symptoms, , , ; sadness and depression, , , ,  – , –, , , , ; and social disorder, – ; therapy for, n, , ,  –, , ,  – , –, , , , , ; unrest,  – Empathy, –  Epekeina (Beyond), ,  –, ,  Episteme (knowledge), ,  Equivalence,  – Ergas, Yasmine,  Eros, , , ,  Erotic (erotiek): and attraction between Spier and Etty Hillesum, , –, , , ; as breakthrough, –; and Etty Hillesum generally, , , , ; Etty Hillesum’s erotic fantasies, , , ; and wrestling, –  Ethics,  European Coal and Steel Community,  European Union,  Event character of the flow,  –  Evenwicht (balance), –  Evil. See Badness (slecht); Wickedness (slechtheid ) “Experiential Occasion of the Lectures: Schramm’s ‘Anatomy of a Dictator,’ The” (Voegelin), n Exploring of the quest,  – Fackenheim, Emil L.,  Faith (geloof ), ,  Family dysfunction, , , , , –, , – , , – ,  Fichtmüller, Vilma,  Fideistic acceptance, n  Filter image, – First Reality, – ,  Flow of presence: and attunement,  – , , , ; awareness of flow,  –; and being, –; and breakthrough,  –; and closed existence, – ; closure and openness, – ; and consciousness,  –; and deformation, –; and disorientation, – ; and event character of the flow,  – ; and exploring of the quest,  –; and fidelity and eagerness, – ; and Etty Hillesum, ,  – , , , ,  –, , –,



Index

–, , –, ,  –; and imago Dei, ; and inner life, –; as intersection of time and timeless,  – , , , ; and leap in being, , ; life in the flow,  –; and living, –; and love,  –, , ; mediators of,  – ; and metaxy (In-Between), , ,  –, ; and mysticism, –; and open existence, – ; and principles of completeness, –; and reality, – ; and reason (nous),  – ; and resisting disorder, –; and sadness, ; and soul, ; and unmastered present, ; and unrest,  –; virtualities of, as theoretical symbol, ; Voegelin on, , , ,  –,  –,  –, , , ,  –, , , , ,  – ,  – , ; and writing, , – , , , . See also God Flux of presence. See Flow of presence Forgiveness, –  Four Quartets (Eliot), , ,  Francis of Assisi,  Frank, Anne, , , ,  Frankl, Viktor,  Fransen, Käthe,  Freud, Sigmund, ,  Gaarland, J. Geurt,  Geest (spirit),  Gemeenschap (community),  Gender relations and gender differences, – ,  –  Germany: Institute for Political Science, University of Munich, ; postwar Germany,  – ; universities in, . See also Hitler, Adolf; Holocaust; Nazism Gilligan, Carol,  Glassner, Evaristos, ,  Gloominess. See Sadness (treurigheid ) God: Augustine on, ; and beauty, ; Buber on,  – ; connections between attention and love and, ; as Creator of the Universe, –; death of, , , ; dialogue between Etty Hillesum and,  – , ,  – , ,  – , , – , , , , , , ; Goethe on, ; gratitude to,

by Etty Hillesum, ,  –, , ; as ground of existence,  – ; as high tower, , , n ; Etty Hillesum’s aloneness with,  –; Hopkins on,  –; human attunement to divine presence, –; Ignatius of Loyola on, n ; and imago Dei, , , ; immersion in life of, like flowing spring water, ; indwelling of, ,  –; and inner life of Etty Hillesum, – , , ; and kneeling by Etty Hillesum, , , , , , – ; Liguori on,  – n; as love, ; love for, ; mercy of, ; Nietzsche on, ; number of references to, in Etty Hillesum’s writings, ; presence under, –; as source and center, , , , , , , ; as source of strength, , ; Spier as mediator between God and Etty Hillesum, ; and unrest of Etty Hillesum, ; Voegelin on, , , , ,  – , ; as You, , , , , . See also Flow of presence; Mysticism Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von,  Good and goodness: Agathon as good, ; and kindness to one another, ; of life, , , ; summum bonum (greatest good), ,  Gorgias (Plato),  Gospel of the Perfect Life, The,  Goya, Francisco,  Gratefulness (dankbaarheid ), , –, ,  Ground (arche), , , ,  – , , ,  Ground of being (prote arche),  – ,  –, ,  Growth of the Liberal Soul, The (Walsh),  – Hands: dedication of Etty Hillesum’s writing hand to God, ; ensouled hands, ; Etty Hillesum’s vision of writing hand, –; and language of the heart,  –  Happiness, ,  – ,  Hart. See Heart Harvard University, –,  Hatred, –, , ,  –

Index Heart, , –, , , , , – . See also Love Hegel, G. W. F.,  Helkein (being moved), ,  Heraclitus,  Hesiod,  Hierarchy of being, , –  Hillesum, Etty: in Amsterdam, , , ,  –; birth date of, ; and breathing exercises, , ,  – ; brothers of, , –, , – ; childhood of, , –, – , ; compared with Voegelin,  –; critical opinions of, ,  – ; daily schedule of, ; death of, in Auschwitz, , , , , , ; doubt of Spier’s love for, ; education of, , , ,  –, ; emotional distress and psychosomatic symptoms of, ,  – ,  – , – , , , , – , , ; erotic attraction between Spier and, , –, , , ; family background of, –, ; and family dysfunction, , , , –, , –, , – , ; farewell between Spier and,  –; father of, –, –, , , ,  –, ; and gender relations, – ,  – ; gratitude of, , – , , ; handwriting of, , ; health of, ; hospital work by, in Westerbork, ; inner peace and positivity of, , , –, – , – , , ,  –, ; intuition of,  –, , ; and Jewish Council,  – ; Jewish identity of, ,  – , , , , ; and kneeling, , , , , , – ; meditation by, , , ,  – ; meeting between Spier and, n , , ; and mental attitude connected with breathing,  –, ; mother of, ,  –, –, , , ; mysticism of, , , , –, , , , ; nomadic consciousness of, , , ; overview of life and writings of, –; personality and moods of, , , – , ,  – , ; plays and monologues on, n; reading by, , , , , – , n , , n , , n , , – , ; and reliance on Spier for strength and meaning of life, –



, , ; Rilke’s influence on, – , , , , , , ; and Russian language and literature,  –,  –nn –, n , , , ; sadness of, , , ,  –, n , –, , , , ; sculpture of, n; sexuality and eroticism of, , –, , –, , , , , , , , , ; and Smelik,  –,  – n,  –, , ; Spier as lover of, n , , ; Spier as mediator between God and, ; and Spier’s death, , , , ; and Spier’s hands, ; strength of, , , –, , , , – , , - , ,  –; therapy for, and Spier, n, , ,  – , , , –, –, , , , , ; travel of, to Auschwitz,  – , ; travel of, to Paris, ; and Wegerif, , –, , , , ; in Westerbork Camp, , , , ,  –, ,  – , , , , , , , , , , , , ; wrestling between Spier and, –. See also God; Holocaust; Letters and Diaries, The (Hillesum); Writing (schrijven) Hillesum, Jaap (Jacob), , , , , ,  –  Hillesum, Jacob Samuel,  Hillesum, Louis (Levi): attempt to Aryanize family of, ; children of, ; death of, ; employment of, ; and family dysfunction, , –, ; Jewish identity of, , ; philosophical outlook of,  –; in Westerbork Camp, , , , ,  Hillesum, Michael (Mischa), , , , , , , – Hillesum-Loeza, Esther,  History: Etty Hillesum on, ; and linear conception of the present, ; as open field of existence, ; of order, , , , ; order of,  –, , ; and unmastered past, , ; and unmastered present, ; Voegelin on order of,  –,  History of Political Ideas, The (Voegelin),  Hitler, Adolf, , , , , . See also Holocaust; Nazism



Index

Hitler and the Germans (Voegelin), ,  Holland. See Amsterdam Holm, Adri,  Holocaust: appreciation of beauty despite, , , ,  – , , ; deformations of concentration camp, ; and fear, ; first stages of, ; gratitude of Etty Hillesum despite, , – , , ; and hatred of Nazis and Germans, – , , ,  –; Etty Hillesum’s murder during, , , , , , ; Etty Hillesum’s realization of reality of, , , , – , , , ; inner peace and positivity within Etty Hillesum despite, , ,  –, – , – , , ,  –, ; love for suffering humanity during, – , ; murder of Hillesum family during, ; Nazi justification for, , ; number of deaths from, ; and prison camp memoirs, –; spiritual opposition to, by Etty Hillesum, , , ; survival strategy by Jews during, ; witnessing of, by Etty Hillesum, –, , , . See also AntiSemitism; Auschwitz concentration camp; Bergen-Belsen concentration camp; Love; Strength (kracht); Westerbork Camp Holocaust Museum, U.S., n , n  Homonoia (like-mindedness), , , ,  Hoop (hope), ,  Hoover Institute, Stanford University, ,  – Hope (hoop), ,  Hopkins Gerard Manley,  – Hughes, Glenn A., n  Husserl, Edmund, n  Ich haft (self centeredness),  –,  Idiot, The (Dostoyevsky), n Ignorance (agnoia, amathia), , , ,  Imagination (voorstelling),  Imago Dei, , ,  Immortality,  Immortalizing (athanatizein),  In-Between. See Metaxy (In-Between) Inner life (innerlijk): and being true to

oneself, – , ; binnenwereld (inner world) versus buitenwereld (outer world), – ,  – ,  – ; and breaking and being broken,  –; and breath,  – , , ; center (centrum) and source (bron) of, ,  –,  – , , , , , , , ; difficulties in writing about, ,  –, , , , , ; and flow of presence, –; and God, – , , ; and heart, , –, , , , ; and indwelling of God, , –; and inner peace and positivity, , , –, –, – , , ,  –, ; and listening to inner voice, , , ,  –, ; and music,  –; and rhythm, ; Rilke on, ; symbols of,  In Search of Order (Voegelin), n,  – Institute for Political Science, University of Munich,  Intuition,  –, ,  Israel and Revelation (Voegelin), n James, William, n Jewish Council, –  Jewish identity: of Etty Hillesum, ,  – , , , , ; of Louis Hillesum, , . See also Anti-Semitism; Holocaust Jonge, Dicky de,  Jung, Carl Gustav, , , , n , ,  Kant, Immanuel,  Katastrophen-Judeseins (Catastrophe Jew),  Kierkegaard, Søren,  Kinesis,  King, Peter,  Kneeling, , , , , , – Knowledge (episteme), ,  Koning, David,  Kracht. See Strength (kracht) Kropotkin, Peter, n Kuyper, Mien,  Lagrou, Els, ,  Landscape, –

Index Langer, Lawrence,  –  Leap in being, ,  Leonardo da Vinci,  Letters and Diaries, The (Hillesum): beginning of diary entries, ; in context of writing as resistance, –; difficulties in writing about inner life, ,  –, , , , , ; Dutch and German terms in, n , ; female consciousness of,  – ; handwriting in, , ; importance of, to Etty Hillesum generally, – , ; inspirational quotations in,  –, , , ; intramundane communication with other persons in letters,  –; intramundane reflection in diary form,  – ; letters from Westerbork generally, –; levels of understanding of, ; number of diary entries and letters in, ; poems in, ; purpose of diaries,  – , , ,  – , , , ; Reve’s critique of diaries, ; reviews of, ; significance of, for twenty-first century, ,  –, ; simple and profound method of, –; Smelik’s possession of diaries after Etty Hillesum’s death, , ; Spier’s advice on keeping a diary, , , ; subject matter for, ; survival and publication of diaries, , , ,  – ; symbols in, –, ,  – ,  – ; and transcendent address, – ; translation of, . See also Hillesum, Etty; Writing (schrijven); and specific topics, such as God Leven (life), –, – ,  Levi, Hertha S., ,  Levie, Liesl,  Levinas, Emmanuel,  Lichaam (body), – Life (leven) and living: and acceptance, , , , –, , ; Aristotle on good life, ; and attunement, –; beauty of, , ,  –, , , , , , , ; and being true to oneself,  –, ; as ebb and flow,  – ; fullness of life and living fully, –, , ; goodness of life, , , ; and happiness, ,  – , ; in-between forces of life and



death, , , , , , ; and inner peace and positivity, , , –, – , – , , ,  – , ; and learning, ; life in the flow,  – ; love, , ; meaning of life, ,  – ; and resting in oneself,  – ; and simplicity,  –; stereotypes of, ; and strength, –. See also Inner life (innerlijk) Liguori, Alphonsus de,  – n Lijden. See Suffering (lijden) with dignity Liopwsky, Hinde,  Lonergan, Bernard,  Louisiana State University,  Love: Aristotle on, , ; and being, –; of being versus existence,  – ; center and source of,  – ; and compassion, ; Eros as, , , , ; eschatological perfection of, ; for everyone made in God’s image, , ; and flow of presence,  –, , ; Francis of Assisi on, ; for God, ; God as, ; Gospel of the Perfect Life on, ; heart as place of,  –; Etty Hillesum’s personal attempt to restore love, ; for humanity, , ,  –,  – ; and kindness toward others, , ; of life, , ; and openness, ; and reason (nous), ; Spier on,  –; Stein on, – ; and strength, , ; for suffering humanity during Holocaust, –, ; Voegelin on, . See also Erotic (erotiek); Heart Luminosity, , n, ,  Maanen, Willem G. van, n Maas, Frans,  Mansions of Philosophy, The (Durant), n Marcel, Gabriel, n Marijn, Julika, n Marsman, Hendrik,  Meaning (zin),  – , , , ,  Meaningfulness (zinrijk), ,  –  Meaninglessness (zinloosheid ),  Meditation, –, , ,  –  Melancholy. See Sadness (treurigheid ) Memoirs from the House of the Dead (Dostoevsky), n 



Index

Mental attitude (geeteshouding ),  –  Merleau-Ponty, Maurice,  –n Merton, Thomas,  Mesdag, Clara van, n  Metalepsis, methexis (mutual participation), , , , , , , ,  Metaxy (In-Between): and Eros, ; and flow of presence, , , , ; and Etty Hillesum, ,  – , ,  – , ; Plato on, , , ; and time and timeless, –; Voegelin on, , –, , –,  Methexis, metalepsis (mutual participation), , , , , , , ,  Meylink, Bernard, ,  Mirkin, Marie,  Moed (courage), ,  Morrissey, Michael Patrick, n  Musel, Robert,  Music and musicians, , n , ,  – ,  Musil, Robert,  Mysticism: and flow of presence,  –; of Etty Hillesum, , , ,  –, , , , ; of Voegelin,  –, . See also God Napoleon, , n National Socialism. See Nazism Nazism: and deformation, , ; and degradation of values and norms, ; and German anti-Semitism, ; hatred of Nazis and Germans by local population,  – , , ,  –; Etty Hillesum’s response to, ,  – , – ,  – , , ; in Holland, – ; ideology of, ; and Jewish Council, –; and justifying system to falsify reality, , ; and Night of Broken Glass (), ; rise of,  – ; and violation of dignity of human person,  – ; Voegelin on, , , , , ,  –, . See also Hitler, Adolf; Holocaust Netherlands. See Amsterdam Newman, John Henry,  Nietzsche, Friedrich,  –,  Nisetich, Frank J., n 

Noddings, Nel,  Nooten, Christine van, , n Nooten, J. C. van, n  Nosos (spiritual disease, madness), , ,  Notre Dame University,  Nous (reason). See Reason (nous) Omphalos,  –  Onderstroom (undercurrent), – , , ,  On the Problem of Empathy (Stein), – , n  Open existence: being, –; closure and openness, –; event character of the flow,  – ; God, –,  – ; gratefulness (dankbaarheid ), – ; life (leven),  –, – , –, , – , , –; life in the flow,  – ; Other (ander), – ; strength (kracht), , , –, , , , – , , –, – Open self, , n  Opinions (doxa), , ,  Order: cosmic order, , ; Etty Hillesum on, , , ; Etty Hillesum’s experience of, through writing, ; Etty Hillesum’s personal attempt to restore order, ; of history,  –, , ; history of, , , , ; of soul,  –, , ; and source of life, ; Voegelin on,  –,  Order and History (Voegelin): and awareness of flow, ; on exploring the quest,  –; on leap in being, ; opening sentence of, , ; and philosophy of history generally, , , , ; titles of volumes of, n; on truth,  Other (ander), , , –, ,  Paris,  Parmenides, ,  Parousia (presence),  –, , ,  Pascal, Blaise,  Passions (pathos), , , , , , ,  Pathos (passions), , , , , , ,  Patterson, Charles, n 

Index Peitho (persuasion), ,  Periagogé (turning round or conversion of soul), , ,  Perron, Charles Edgard du,  Persuasion (peitho), ,  Philebus (Plato), ,  Philia (love),  Philia Politike,  Phronesis (persevering in search of Ground),  Pindar,  Plato: on Agathon (Good), ; on ascent and descent, , ; on autobiographical narrative, ; on daimonios aner (spiritual human being), , ; on doxa (opinions), ; Etty Hillesum’s reading of, ; on human types, , ; influence of, on Voegelin, , , , ; on judgment, ; on metaxy (In-Between), , , , ; as mystic philosopher, ; on nosos/ nosema (sickness, madness), ; on nous (reason), –, ; on peitho (persuasion), ; on periagogé (conversion of soul), , ; on phronesis (persevering in search of Ground), ; and politike episteme (political science), , , ; on time and timelessness, . See also specific works Plato and Aristotle (Voegelin), n Pleshoyano, Alexandra, n  Pneuma (soul),  Pushkin, Alexander,  Politeia (Plato),  Politike episteme (classical political science),  Pos, Helena C., n  Presence, , – ,  –, , , , – . See also Flow of presence Presence under God,  –. See also God Present time,  –. See also Time and timeless Principles of completeness, – Prote arche (ground of being),  –,  –, ,  Psyche: and Center, , ; and Etty Hillesum’s grounding in reality, ; intuitive dimension of, ; noetic insights into,  – ; as sensorium of



transcendence, , ; Voegelin on, , . See also Soul Psychochirology, ,  Psychosomatic symptoms. See Emotional distress of Etty Hillesum Purcell, Brendan,  Quest, exploring of,  – “Quod Deus Dicitur” (Voegelin),  Race idea, ,  Rassenidee in der Geistesgeschichte von Ray bis Carus, Die /The History of the Race Idea (Voegelin),  Rasse und Staat/Race and State (Voegelin),  Rauter, Hanns Albin,  Reality: aletheia as, , ; awareness of being part of comprehensive reality,  –; First Reality, – , ; Etty Hillesum on,  – , –,  –; justifying system to falsify reality, , ; and questioning by Etty Hillesum, , , ; Second Reality, – , ; Voegelin on, , , –, ; Voegelin’s grid for study of human affairs, – , n Reason (nous): and Etty Hillesum’s diaries, – , , , , ; meanings of, in classic philosophy,  –, , ; Voegelin on,  –, , – ,  “Reason: The Classic Experience” (Voegelin), ,  – ,  Renesse, George van,  Resisting disorder,  – Reve, Karel van het,  Ricoeur, Paul, n  Rilke, Rainer Maria, – , n , , , , , ,  Rittelmayer, Friedrich,  Rocco, Hedl (Hedwig),  Rodin, Auguste,  Rogers, Carl, n Russian language and literature,  –,  –nn –, n, , ,  Sadness (treurigheid ), , , ,  –, n, –, , , ,  Sandoz, Ellis, n, n , n 



Index

Scheppen (creative construction), ,  Schizophrenia, ,  Scholasticism,  Schrijvers, Piet, ,  Search (zetesis), , , , ,  – ,  Second Reality, –,  Self centeredness (ich haft),  –,  Sensorium, , ,  Shakespeare, William,  Silence (stilte), ,  Simplicity, –  Slecht (badness),  –  Slechtheid (wickedness), –  “Smatterers, The” (Solzhenitsyn), –, n  Smelik, Johanna F. (Jopie),  – ,  Smelik, Klaas, – ,  –n, , – , ,  Social disorder. See Disorder Socrates, ,  Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, – Sophistry, ,  Soul: breathing through soul, ; cosmic soul or world soul (Welten Seele), , ; as experience of intuitive attunement, ; and flow of presence, ; heart versus, ; omphalos (navel) of,  – ; openness of Etty Hillesum’s soul, , –; order of,  –, , ; periagogé (turning round or conversion of soul), , , ; personal and historical tensions in, – ; rational soul, ; as sensorium of transcendence, , ; as symbol of timelessness, ; tensions within Etty Hillesum’s soul,  – ; Voegelin on, . See also Psyche Soul-landscape,  – Source (bron),  – ,  Spier, Julius Philipp: birth date of, ; death of, , , , ; erotic attraction between Etty Hillesum and, , –, , , ; and experience of flow of time, ; face of, ; farewell between Etty Hillesum and,  –; hands of, ; Etty Hillesum’s doubt in love of, ; letter to, , ; on love of mankind, – ; as lover of Etty Hillesum, n, , ; and meaning of

life for Etty Hillesum, ; as mediator between God and Etty Hillesum, ; meeting of Etty Hillesum and, n , , ; and music, n , ; as other, , ; as psychochirologist, ; quotations from, in Etty Hillesum’s diaries, ; and Rilke, –; strength and “centre” quality of,  –, , ; as therapist for Etty Hillesum, n , ,  –, , ,  – , –, , , , , ; women’s relationships with, , ; wrestling between Etty Hillesum and, – Spirit (geest), , , –  Spoudaios (mature person),  Stanford University, ,  – Starreveld, Pieter, n  Stein, Edith, – , n ,  Stilte (silence), ,  Stokvis, Benno,  Stream of consciousness, ,  Strength (kracht): and acceptance of suffering, ; God as source of, , , ; for helping others, ,  – ,  –, ; and life (leven), – ; and love of life, ; and love of people, , ; outer appearances versus inner strength, ; and personality of Etty Hillesum, ; prayer for, ; sources of, , , , ; of Spier,  –, ; and wrestling between Spier and Etty Hillesum, – Suffering (lijden) with dignity, – , ,  Summum bonum (greatest good), ,  Symbols: of Etty Hillesum, –, ,  –,  –; Voegelin on, ,  Symposium (Plato), , , ,  Tarkovsky, Andrey,  Tasis (tension), , – , , – , , –,  Taxis (order), ,  Telos,  – Tension (tasis), ,  – , , – , , –,  Thanatos, ,  Theophany, . See also God Therapy for Etty Hillesum. See Emotional distress of Etty Hillesum

Index Thomas à Kempis,  Tideman, Henny,  Tillich, Paul,  Time and timeless: and consciousness, ; experience of flow of time, ; intersection of, as flow of presence,  – , , , ; linear conception of present, ; Merleau-Ponty on,  – n; and metaxy (In-Between), –; Plato and Aristotle on, ; and presence, ; symbols of timelessness, ; and unmastered past, , ; and unmastered present, ; Voegelin on, ,  – , –n, , –,  – Tolstoy, Lev Nikolayevich, , , n Totalitarianism, , . See also Nazism Transcendence and transcendent address, , , , –  Treaty of Paris,  Treurigheid (sadness), , , ,  –, n, – , , , ,  Truth: Etty Hillesum on, , , ,  –, ; Voegelin on, , , ,  Tuinzing, Maria, , , ,  Undercurrent (onderstroom),  –, , ,  United Nations,  United States Holocaust Museum, n , n University of Amsterdam, , n  University of Dallas,  University of Munich,  University of Texas at Austin,  Unrest, –  Van Gogh, Vincent,  Van Wijk, Nikolaas, , n  Verlangen (desire),  – , , ,  Verwey, Albert, , –n Voegelin, Eric: academic career of, – ; American citizenship for, ; birth date of, ; Candler Lectures by, n ; and Christianity, ; compared with Etty Hillesum,  –; death of, ; education of, ; fidelity and eagerness of, – ; immigration of, to United States, – ; later years of,



 –; life and writings of,  – ,  – ; meditation by, –; mysticism of,  –, ; Nazism’s impact on, , , , , –, ; Plato’s influence on, , , , ; political, philosophical, and religious categorizations of, ; reading by, –; as spiritual realist, . See also specific works; and specific concepts, such as Consciousness Voorstelling (imagination),  Walsh, David, , – War and Peace (Tolstoy), n Wegerif, Ella,  Wegerif, Han, , –, , , ,  Wegerif, Heleen Wilhelmina,  Wegerif, Hendrik Johannes (Hans),  Wegerif, Wilhemina Johanna,  Wegerif, Willem Jan,  Weil, Simone,  Welten Seele (world soul), ,  Wermeskerken, A. G.(Swiep), , n  Westerbork Camp: chaotic life in, , , ; health conditions in, ; Hillesum family in, –, , , ; Etty Hillesum in, , , , ,  –, ,  – , , , ,  – , , , , , , ; hospital in, ; as other, ; survival strategy by Jews in, ; train to Auschwitz from, ,  “Why Philosophize? To Recapture Reality!” (Voegelin),  Wickedness (slechtheid ), –  Witnessing, – , , ,  World of the Polis, The (Voegelin), n World soul (Welten Seele), ,  World War I,  World War II, , , , , . See also Holocaust; Nazism Wrestling with (worstelen), – Writing (schrijven): and being, ; and Center point, ; and creative powers, – ; dedication of writing hand to God, ; difficulties in writing about inner life, ,  – , , , , , ; with ensouled hands, ; and event character of the flow,  – ; as final cause or end for Etty Hillesum, ; fleetingness of,



Index

; flow of, , ; and flow of presence, , – , , , ; Etty Hillesum’s experience of order through, ; importance of, to Etty Hillesum generally, – , ; inner peace and quiet from, ; of inspirational quotations in diaries,  –, , , ; and language, , ; mystical ascent of the soul through, ; prison camp memoirs, –; purpose of diaries, –, , ,  – , , , ; simple and profound method of,  –; small details included in, ; and stream of consciousness, ; subject matter for, , , ; symbols used by Etty

Hillesum in, –, ,  –,  –; vision of writing hand, –. See also Letters and Diaries, The (Hillesum) Yeats, William Butler, , n  Zetesis (search), , , , ,  – ,  Ziel (soul). See Soul Zijn (being). See Being Zimmerson, Louis, , n  Zin (meaning), – , , , ,  Zinloosheid (meaninglessness),  Zinrijk (meaningfulness), ,  – 