Severed Ties 1972–1973 249
Derrida’s works are very important. Have you read them? I’d be
very grateful if you could explain in what way they are important.’
Taminiaux felt all the more awkward since only ten minutes or so
remained before the ritual interruption of the conversation by the
philosopher’s wife, and since, too, he was obliged to express himself
in German:
I couldn’t tell him about ‘deconstruction’ without falling into
a trap, since his own use of the word Destruktion, prior to and
diff erent from Derrida’s, stood in the way. As for diff érance
with an ‘a’, just you try, without pedantry, when you think in a
Romance language, translating it into German and, to crown
it all, in front of the thinker of ontological diff erence. Since,
the day before, Heidegger had discussed his relationship with
Husserl via the Logical Investigations, I charged ahead into an
impossible summary of Speech and Phenomena. [.. .] I rushed
into an ultra-schematic identikit portrait of the issues at stake
in Husserl’s distinction between expression and index. From
Heidegger’s reaction, I very quickly realized that my eff ort
had failed: ‘Ach so! Sehr interessant!’ he said, hastily adding:
‘But in what I’ve written, I think there are things very similar
to what you’ve just said.’ As Madame Heidegger was coming
in to bring the conversation to a close, I was barely able to
stammer: ‘Yes, yes, no doubt, he owes a lot to you, but it’s still
completely diff erent.’^48In October 1973, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe informed Derrida
that Heidegger was too tired and had asked for the planned meeting
to be postponed again; he did not want to give up hope, however:
‘Since Heidegger seems keen on it, this meeting really will happen.’^49
But it was not to be: the health of the master of Freiburg gradually
declined until his death on 26 May 1976. The planned meeting never
came off. It is not clear that Derrida really wanted it to happen: the
chance of a meeting worthy of the name was very slender.
Another major fi gure was central to Derrida’s relations with the
two philosophers from Strasbourg: Jacques Lacan. Reading the
manuscript of The Title of the Letter, which extended the analysis
they had set out in their discussions at Normale Sup, Derrida made
no attempt to disguise his admiration for this ‘very prudent, skilful,
and impregnable rigour. It would be a wily customer who could
catch you out.’^50 Curiously, ‘impregnable’ (in French, ‘imprenable’)
seems to have been a word that Derrida associated with Lacan: it
was the same word he had used in 1966, when thanking Lacan for
his vast work. But the adjective had slipped from being applied to
the fortress of the Écrits to this subtle and rigorous study.