Wandering Beyond Words: Etty Hillesum and Clarice Lispector

Summary

Abstract

Etty Hillesum and Clarice Lispector were two brilliant authors who belonged to the same generation and were victims of Jewish persecution. Most references to the two women consider them mystical writers who reveal an unconventional notion of God. For both, the search for the divine was connected to the failure of language. For both, the use of language to represent reality meant being removed from full participation in the reality being described. Their task was impossible and contradictory. When language failed, or removed them from their own experience, how did they get beyond words? After all, their medium was language. Hillesum and Lispector faced this paradox. It was their challenge to find ways to describe their world's turn toward darkness and to reveal their own journey through these events.

Keywords: Clarice Lispector, God, search for the divine, mysticism, language failure, new language

Silence.

If one day God comes to earth there will be great silence.

The silence is such that not even thought thinks.

When surfing the internet or browsing through publications on Etty Hillesum, one occasionally notices her name linked to that of Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector (1920-1977). This has been especially true since Hélène Cixous wrote about both women. Most references to the two women consider them mystical writers who reveal an unconventional notion of God. But between the two there are many more points of commonality. For both, the search for the divine was connected to the failure of language. For both, the use of language to represent reality meant being removed from full participation in the reality being described. Their task was impossible and contradictory. When language failed, or removed them from their own experience, how did they get beyond words? After all, their medium was language. Hillesum and Lispector faced this paradox. It was their challenge to find ways to describe their world's turn toward darkness and to reveal their own journey through these events.

In practical terms, Hillesum and Lispector came from quite similar backgrounds. They were both of Russian descent and Hillesum's mother as well as Lispector's family had been victims of pogroms.