The École Normale Supérieure 1952–1956 77
I’m sure that these weeks of rest will have done you good. I was
sad to see you so tired, exposed to every agrégativo-administra-
tive wind. In a few weeks, I bet, you’ll have got your strength
back, and you’ll be here again to give us your support over the
diffi cult times before or after the oral exam, with your advice
and your presence.Describing his own situation, Derrida at fi rst feigned detachment:
The period leading up to the agrégation is the same every year.
Personally, I’m in pretty good shape. A few exercises augur
well. An essay on Descartes that de Gandillac thought quite
highly of (14.5, ‘not being generous, today’ – sic). Analysis of
Kant passage for Hyppolite (‘Masterly and excellent’, it would
have got ‘at least 17’ – resic). I’m not saying this like a good
little pupil proud of his good marks – you know, at my age...- but because it reassures me, perhaps wrongly, and gives me a
bit of a psychological boost before the agrégation.
But he could not long conceal how intolerable all this had become
to him:
I can no longer, alas, take pride in any praise from de Gandillac
or Hyppolite, but I lap it up like a potion, suff ering from the
agrégation like a disease. My God, when will I be able to put
this concentration-camp crap behind me? Philosophy – and
the rest, as there is the rest and it’s more and more important- suff ers, suff ers so much from this captivity in the land of agré-
gation; so much so that I might have gone down with a kind
of chronic illness like yours as a result. Do you think we’ll be
completely cured one day?^40
With Michel Monory, as usual, he was more direct and no longer
even attempted to conceal his malaise. From a bed in the infi rmary,
where for a week he had been suff ering from severe angina, though
he was mainly being devoured by anxiety, he wrote the following
words to Monory. They now seem prophetic: ‘I’m no good for any-
thing except taking the world apart and putting it together again
(and I manage the latter less and less frequently).’ Just before the
written exams, Jackie went off with Robert Abirached to recharge
his batteries at the ‘Vieux Pressoir’, ‘a little chateau near Honfl eur
which discreet philanthropists make available to “exhausted intel-
lectuals” ’. He had hoped to pay a visit to Michel, who had just
started the chore of military service in Dinan, but he realized this
would not be sensible. ‘If you could see the state I was in, I’m sure
you wouldn’t be annoyed with me. This stay in Normandy has done