78 Jackie 1930–1962
me some good, but I’m washed out and I hardly dare imagine that
I’ll get through these exams okay.’^41
The stress of the exam defi nitely did not suit him. Yet again he
was on the edge of a nervous breakdown. This time the written and
oral parts of the agrégation went off without any disaster, but his
results were so-so, if not mediocre, and far less good than what the
preparatory exercises had allowed him to expect. Congratulating
Jackie on his success, Lucien Bianco encouraged him not to set any
store by the ‘ridiculously low place’ he had achieved. He knew how
hard his friend had worked over the last two years, and said that he
was mainly happy that Jackie ‘at last had the right to try to get a
life’.^42
Derrida waited until 30 August before writing to Althusser,
who was still unwell, and had followed the progress of the exams
only from a distance – he was not even able to attend the leçon
d’agrégation of his favourite pupil.* This involuntary desertion did
not prevent Derrida from writing to his old caïman with considerable
aff ection:
I have sadly watched as this year drew to a close [.. .] because
I’m going to be separated from my best friends, whose pres-
ence has been so important for me: you are, as you know, one
of them. [.. .] I don’t want to express my thanks to you – even
though I should – for all that you have given me in your advice
and your teaching. I am very aware of what I owe to them, but
all the usual formulas of respectful distance with which one
addresses a master might damage the aff ectionate friendship
you have always shown me. It is this friendship that I ask you
to keep for me, and for which I thank you from the bottom of
my heart.^43Althusser’s reply, too, could not have been more aff ectionate:
You’ll never know how relieved I was, a fortnight ago, to hear
of your success. In spite of everything, and even the favourable
opinions I had been picking up before I left, I couldn’t help
being secretly worried on your behalf, fearing the unpredictable- Hélène Cixous, however, who had just arrived in Paris, did attend. ‘In June 1956, I
just happened to slip into a “theatre”, furtively: this was the Richelieu lecture hall in
the Sorbonne. I sat on an old wooden bench near the door – so I could make a quick
getaway. Far away, ahead of me, his back. He sat there and spoke for a long time.
I didn’t know him. I can see his back. He’s facing an agrégation jury, he’s going to
be sentenced. The subject he is speaking on: “The thought of death”. At the end, I
leave. The scene stays with me, down to the slightest detail, forever. I didn’t see him’
(‘Le bouc lié’, Rue Descartes no. 48, 2005: ‘Salut à Jacques Derrida’, p. 17).