Abstract
We do not know if Etty Hillesum has read anything of Kierkegaard's work, and if so, what exactly and how intensively. But speaking of her worries about future, she quotes several times Chapter 6 of the Gospel of Matthew, a passage that Kierkegaard has commented upon several times, especially in his edifying discourses of 1848 entitled Cares of Pagans. Could it be that Etty Hillesum knew these discourses? This article compares from several perspectives Kierkegaard's and Hillesum's reading of Matthew 6. It concludes by discovering in both authors what John D. Caputo has called “quotidianism”: for both, it is essential to devote all attention to living today.
Keywords: Matthew Gospel, Soren Kierkegaard, Care of the Pagans, quotidianism, worry about future, concentrating on present
My latest treasure: the birds of the heavens and the lilies of the fields
− Etty HillesumIntroduction
My article is inscribed in a kind of a triangle: a possible connection between Etty Hillesum, the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), and the Gospel of Matthew, specifically 6:25-34 where Jesus speaks of the birds of the heavens and the lilies of the fields. This passage must have touched Etty Hillesum as she was attuned to nature as God's creation, and especially to flowers. Reflecting, for example, on her roses that went on quietly blossoming in Amsterdam while she was in Camp Westerbork, she wrote, “Many say, ‘How can you still think of flowers!’”
But how was Etty Hillesum's attention drawn to Matthew's parable? Could it be that she found “the birds of the heavens and the lilies of the fields” in Kierkegaard's edifying discourses on Matthew 6? This is the basic query that I shall try to answer.
In fact, we do not know if Etty Hillesum had read anything of Kierkegaard's work. If she had, we do not know which passages nor how intensively she may have focused on them. There are only four occurrences where she even mentioned Kierkegaard in Het Werk, and these references to the Danish philosopher were quite unspecific, often inside of a list of several authors.