From Enclosure to Disclosure: Images of the Self in Etty Hillesum’s Diary

Summary

Abstract

Self-narration has often been perceived as a narcissistic display of the self, a rupture from the outside world. Etty Hillesum's diary has not been spared the accusation, though being the setting of an opposite process, where narrative and ethics mingle: the “dis-closure” of the Self, which enables the encounter with the other. This process of transformation from enclosure to disclosure will be analyzed in this article through the images Hillesum employs to portray the Self, images which are at first restricted, personal, and limited, and will, with time, evolve into wider, more open ones.

Keywords: Self, literary images, process, disclosure, Carl Gustav Jung, coincidence of opposites, God, otherness

There are still many ongoing discussions to determine whether Etty Hillesum was mainly a writer, a spiritual figure, a philosopher, a poet, or a social worker. Be that as it may, it is certain that the rhythm of her writing was highly poetical. It depends not only on her rich figurative language, but also on the abundance of images that she employs. Hillesum worked closely with images, as a means to explore and enlighten her experiences and conceptions. Thus, if we want to outline her “philosophy,” we cannot avoid studying and analyzing her imagery. And if we think of her cherished authors, those who inspired her, even when they were universally recognized as authorities in their disciplines (Jung as a psychologist, Rilke as a writer, St Augustine as a theologian), they had, at times, been considered “unconventional” because of their fascination with the power of images.

In this article, I will focus on the conception of the Self in Etty Hillesum through the images she uses in her diary. Hillesum never makes the Self her concept, even if she seems to make reference to such an entity when she speaks of being in “contact” with herself. I adopt this terminology from Carl Gustav Jung, who capitalizes Self as a proper noun, which helps me stress that, despite the diversity of images, Hillesum implicitly refers to the same concept. I have chosen to use “Self,” rather than “ego,” “consciousness,” or “psyche,” because it immediately gives the idea of a totality: it represents the experience that we have of ourselves as a whole.