Portrait of the Philosopher at Sixty 419
would keep in touch with them by writing or telephone, and showed
real empathy. He was sincerely aff ected by their tribulations and
was able to share their joys. The day when Alan Bass showed him
a photo of his daughter just a few months old, Derrida marvelled
at her and said: ‘Make the most of it, the time goes so quickly.’ He
himself had suff ered from seeing his children leave home too swiftly
for his liking.
Many of those close to him, such as Samuel Weber and Martine
Meskel, his niece, also remember his bursts of laughter. Derrida,
unlike what he says in some of his texts, loved telling funny stories,
but they made him laugh so much – especially Jewish jokes – that
he was often unable to get as far as the punch line. ‘Laughter to him
was like another version of aporia. It was an important dimension
to his personality, together with melancholy,’ says Samuel Weber.
I can remember one joke he liked to tell, as it struck me as
revealing his own anxieties: A man goes to the doctor and has
several tests done. When he comes back a few days later, the
doctor tells him: ‘No need for you to worry, everything’s fi ne,
everything’s really fi ne... We’re just going to carry out a few
more little tests.. .’ ‘Oh, that’s good,’ says the patient. ‘When
exactly?’ ‘Well, let’s say tomorrow morning, as soon as the
surgery opens.’ That made him laugh a lot. It’s the burlesque
version of his anxiety about death.^6But as his fame and his authority grew, this liking for laughter
was expressed less and less often. In public, Derrida appeared more
serious, in response to people’s expectations of him. In private, his
mood was often sombre. Élisabeth Roudinesco is still struck by his
incredible tendency to feel guilty, as if he felt responsible for every-
thing that happened: ‘A fortnight before his death, referring to the
questionnaire that Bernard Pivot used to put out on Apostrophes,*
he told me: “When I arrive in front of Saint Peter, this is what I’ll tell
him: ‘I’m really sorry’ and ‘the landscapes are lovely’. Remember
that.” ’^7 Derrida was more and haunted by the passing of time, and
the thought of death became an increasing obsession. ‘Life will have
been so short,’ he kept saying, using the future anterior that suited
him so well. He had a kind of urgent drive to be forever produc-
ing something, to get involved in more and more projects, to leave
traces. To the people who, like Claire Nancy, rebuked him some-
times for publishing too much, he replied: ‘I can’t help it. It’s my
way of fi ghting against death.’
- Apostrophes was a French TV programme hosted by Bernard Pivot. It was
devoted to books and ran from 1975 to 1990. – Tr.