4
A Lucky Year
1967The letter which Derrida sent to Gabriel Bounoure on 12 January
1967 showed the extent to which, even after his recent successes,
the old writer’s judgement remained essential to him. The tone was
lyrical, sometimes enigmatic, and in any case very much out of line
with the tone Derrida used with all his other correspondents:
I will never be able to express my gratitude. [.. .] There is
nothing so precious, in the growing desert, as a complicity like
yours. And I am often afraid of not being worthy of it. Then, to
reassure myself, I allow myself to be inspired by my confi dence
and by my admiration: I conclude that what I am writing is of
any interest only because of the interest you say you fi nd in it.
And I need to believe this, especially because I am walking on
ground that’s forever giving way. [.. .]
Here, there’s a mixture of agitation, turbulence, and pro-
found silence. We are living through a strange period: one of
the greatest disquiet and an equal sterility. Clamours on every
side, faced with the current collapse, crazed cries and crack-
ups, but also a profound, dead silence, for those who can hear
it. In all this, I am trying, despite my despair, to maintain a
kind of calm that will not be – too much – one of blindness
and deafness; to grant to this period itself, so as not to lose my
head completely, a craftsman’s labours (teaching, turning out
short pieces of writing). Marguerite and Pierre – both of them
touched by your aff ectionate and loyal thoughts – both help me
in this in a reliable and really life-affi rming way.^1Since his return from the United States, Derrida assured
Bounoure, he had been working very hard, ‘though mainly going
over the same points, organizing them properly’. As for Bounoure
himself, he had now settled for good at Lesconil, in the southern part
of Finistère. Derrida regretted that they could meet up only rarely,
and hoped that their shared plan of travelling to Morocco – a land