It is November 2, still the Day of the Dead, a time to recall literary doppelgangers, the ghosts of writers past who still have an impact on us and whom we might even miss, despite never having met them.
The face of one of my doppelgangers gazes at me from a book cover as if to ask, “I did it. Can you? Will you keep trying?” She is wondering if I will again – after many starts and stops - commit to writing as a spiritual practice, a way of finding wholeness within. She has wavy dark brown hair, similar to mine. Her brown eyes face directly into the camera and her eyebrows are arched, creating an expression that is both quizzical and confrontational. A partially smoked cigarette rests in her right hand. She is Etty Hillesum (1914-1943), a Dutch Jewish seeker who transcended her circumstances and became a celebrant of life, even amidst the horrors of the Holocaust, even knowing that she would be exterminated. When she was boarding the transport to Auschwitz, she was “talking gaily, smiling, a kind word for everyone she met on the way,” according to a witness.
Her lively and indomitable spirit lives on in An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork. Even on the very first page I felt as if I were sitting down with a soul mate who, by revealing her inner life through journals and correspondence, illuminated mine. I gasped when I read this journal entry:
The thoughts in my head are sometimes so clear and so sharp and my feelings so deep, but writing about them comes hard. The main difficulty, I think, is a sense of shame. So many inhibitions, so much fear of letting go, of allowing things to pour out of me, and yet that is what I must do if I am ever to give my life a reasonable and satisfactory purpose…..I seem to be a match for most of life’s problems, and yet deep down something like a tightly wound ball of twine binds me relentlessly, and at times I am nothing more or less than a miserable, frightened creature, despite the clarity with which I can express myself. (March 9, 1941)
And these words almost made me drop the book and rush back to my writing:
Come on, my girl, get down to work or God help you. And no more excuses either, no little headache here or a bit of nausea there, or I’m not feeling very well. That is absolutely out of the question. You’ve just got to work, and that’s that. No fantasies, no grandiose ideas, and no earth shattering insights. Choosing a subject and finding the right words are much more important….
And yet I read on to learn that she, too, was prone to highly extravagant thoughts....
….But let me impress just one thing upon you, sister. Wash your hands of all attempts to embody those great, sweeping thoughts. The smallest, most fatuous little essay is worth more than the flood of grandiose ideas in which you like to wallow. (March 10, 1941).
Although I have shelves filled with books that say much the same thing in myriad ways, her words shot to my heart as a reminder that *any* writing is better than not writing at all. Perhaps the best way to honor our literary doppelgangers and mentors, dead or alive, is to simply (ha!) keep writing.
