Introduction

Summary

In autumn 1979, Klaas A.D. Smelik shared with the Dutch publisher, Jan Geurt Gaarlandt, a piece of Etty Hillesum's diaries transcribed by his half-sister Johanna Smelik, whom Hillesum called “Jopie” in her diaries. Unlike publishers in the 1950s, when his father Klaas Smelik Sr. had tried in vain to get Hillesum's diaries published, Gaarlandt immediately understood the value of the texts and moved to publish selections from them. An anthology appeared in 1981 under the Dutch title Het verstoorde leven [An Interrupted Life]. From the very beginning, the book was an overwhelming success. Many translations followed and Etty Hillesum became renowned internationally. The remarkable global reception included some extreme reactions: hagiographic admiration, identification, lack of understanding and outright rejection. Every author claimed to know the truth about Etty Hillesum without any consideration of the research done by others.

The worldwide response to Hillesum's writings was, moreover, based on the selection of texts made by the publisher himself and taken from an unreliable transcription of the original manuscript. An unabridged and scholarly edition of Hillesum's texts, both her diaries and letters, was required. The Etty Hillesum Foundation in Amsterdam asked Klaas A.D. Smelik to address this need and, assisted by a group of young scholars, in 1986 he published a complete annotated edition of all then available texts of Etty Hillesum: Etty: De nagelaten geschriften van Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943. The unabridged edition has been reprinted several times; the sixth edition appeared in 2012 with a different title: Etty Hillesum, Het Werk. In each new edition, annotations have been updated and revised where necessary, and newly discovered texts by Etty Hillesum added. In 2002, the complete edition appeared in English translation, followed by a French version in 2008 and in 2012-2013 by an Italian translation in two volumes. A German translation of the complete edition is in preparation.

In 1989, Jan Geurt Gaarlandt expressed his astonishment at the many reviews and essays on Etty Hillesum:

It's shocking to read how many different aspects one can discover in her life and work. Literary, mystical, philosophical, historical, theological, psychological and therapeutic perspectives have generated material for many essays. She is compared and connected to people like Kafka, Meister Eckhart, Ruusbroec, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Rilke, Jung, Seneca, Carry van Bruggen, Bonhoeffer, important representatives of literature, theology and philosophy.