A Year in America 1956–1957 87
you outside the Lycée Chaptal, down in the dark, before going
to see the Dialogue des Carmélites, the dark stairs of the lycée,
those in the rue Lagrange, the little words over the doors, all
those disappointments, a walk under the arcades of the rue de
Rivoli, near Concorde, the day I had come back from Algeria,
hesitations at the crossroads, and so on and so forth,* and the
English poets... all of this like so many little signs of a life
urging them on, life in full, fully present, all of this like a net
dropped into the sea. [.. .]
When I remember all this, it hurts, it hurts fi rst because I’m
remembering it, quite simply, and then because I’m thinking
how far apart we are now, and how much we had been dreading
this.^17When they were fi nally free of their military obligations, Jackie
wanted Michel and himself to be able to teach in the same town,
hoping thereby that they could revive the passionate friendship they
had shared at the age of twenty. More immediately, he sympathized
with the travails of his friend:
So you’re off to Algeria, and this is the reply that will have been
given – ironically and tragically – to our old plan. And there
was me trembling at the thought of getting you to come to my
family – where we’d have been so ill at ease: what I now suggest,
if you’re in Algiers or environs, or passing through, is that you
stop off there and make yourself at home, move into my room
and take all your meals there, get your washing done, etc. Don’t
hesitate. You know, they’re really nice, however depressed I
sometimes felt there. [.. .] I have to write to Bourdieu, he’s a
soldier, but in a detachment at Headquarters in Algiers. He
tells me he wields some power and I’ll tell him about you.That same month, Derrida got back in touch with Althusser, fi rst
apologizing for not sending him any news for so long. He felt unable
to tell him much about his travel impressions, since he had seen only
New England so far. As he did not have much money, he would not
be able to cross the United States from the East Coast to the West
Coast, as Althusser had advised him. But he gave his old caïman a
particularly severe description of the way philosophy was taught
in Harvard. ‘In general, it’s poor, elementary stuff. In comparison
with these vast and pompous façades – behind which they glean with
enthusiasm and youth, but also with inexperience and innocence –,
the Sorbonne is an old worm-eaten house through which the spirit
- In English in the original. – Tr.