212 Derrida 1963–1983
Despite the increasing popularity of his seminar, Derrida some-
times dreamed of leaving the ‘gilded fortress’ of the École and going
back into the university system. Though he had abandoned the idea
of writing a traditional thesis since the death of Jean Hyppolite,
the new opportunities opened up in the wake of May 1968 seemed
to involve less burdensome modes of entry. He confi ded in Pierre
Aubenque, now a professor at the Sorbonne, whose reply was
encouraging. He said he had recently had a long conversation with
Maurice de Gandillac on the subject of two or three philosophers
who could take advantage of the new regulations, whereby they
could put forward published work as a thesis: ‘We talked mainly
about you and Althusser, and Gandillac didn’t think there’d be any
major obstacles, especially for you.’^15 But he would need to inves-
tigate further, since there were few precedents. Over the autumn
of 1969, Derrida and Aubenque both talked the matter over with
Canguilhem, who would be fully in favour, on a personal level, but
was worried about the reluctance on principle of several colleagues,
at least initially. The project was shelved for a long time.^16
Things were easier in foreign universities, where Derrida was being
welcomed with growing enthusiasm. He returned to Berlin at the begin-
ning of July 1969, then regularly over the next year, giving a seminar
in the Department of Comparative Literature to some forty or so stu-
dents. During these trips, he made the acquaintance of a young man
from Luxembourg, Rodolphe Gasché, whose son became one of his
most reliable supporters, and wrote an account of Of Grammatology
at Hans-Georg Gadamer’s request before embarking on a translation
of Writing and Diff erence for the great publishing house Suhrkamp.
Derrida also met Werner Hamacher, who, like Gasché, later spent a
long period at Normale Sup, auditing the seminar, and who became a
staunch Derridean, in the United States and Germany.
At the Free University, Berlin, where the pressure of Marxism
was as great as in Paris, it was with Samuel Weber that Derrida
had the closest professional and personal relationships. He also
continued to be close to Peter Szondi, even though the latter,
increasingly isolated within his own department, viewed the evolu-
tion of the seminar with mistrust. Szondi wrote to a friend, with a
hint of bitterness: ‘People are increasingly indulging in an esoteric
style of reading, à la Derrida (it is painful for me to say this, since I
like Derrida a great deal); they fantasize about texts, as Liszt wrote
fantasias on themes by Bach.’17*
In Britain, too, there was increasing interest in deconstruction.
On 25 September 1969, a long, serious review of Of Grammatology
- Peter Szondi committed suicide in Berlin on 18 October 1971, just over a year
after Paul Celan and, like him, by drowning.