Melancholia in Le Mans 1959–1960 109
For this year at least, we’re in this big but peaceful provincial
city of Le Mans. It has several advantages, fortunately: it’s at
the gates of Paris (2 hours by train!); I have some interesting
teaching to do (philosophy in hypokhâgne) that leaves me a lot
of free time, and above all we’ve very quickly managed to fi nd
a really suitable apartment.^5Derrida taught two classes, which meant some fi fteen hours per
week. In the literary terminale, there were only about fi fteen pupils.
In the hypokhâgne, where, by special dispensation, both boys and
girls were admitted, there were almost thirty, not all that brilliant
in the main. The audiences were thus a little ‘rustic’, very diff erent
from those Derrida had been hoping to have in the Sorbonne. This
did not stop him preparing his lessons meticulously, even if he did
not have time to write them out in full as he later did. Far from
teaching a standard course, he wanted to communicate the philo-
sophical preoccupations closest to his heart at the time. But perhaps
he had taken the headmaster’s demands for seriousness too literally.
He probably also sought to make up for his shyness by a display of
somewhat frigid authority. His pupils would be mainly left with the
memory of a diffi cult and over-demanding teacher. The three eye-
witnesses who have shared their experiences with me all agree.
Albert Daussin, then a pupil in hypokhâgne, mainly remembers
a ‘handsome young man, dark-complexioned, with the profi le of
a Roman medallion’, who would sometimes, when class was over,
talk nostalgically about North Africa. Otherwise, he was not spe-
cially close to his pupils and often gave the impression that he lived
in a world of ideas and thoughts to which they would never gain
access. ‘I seem to remember that he introduced us to the thought of
Hegel in such a complex language that few of us could follow him!
Our marks demonstrated our inability to follow Derrida’s words –
it seemed clear that they were in a diff erent dimension, way beyond
our capacities for absorption.’
As for Paul Cottin, he was struck by Derrida’s seriousness and
concentration, very diff erent from the Voltairean irony of Genette
and the bohemian charm of Pascal Fieschi, the philosophy teacher
they had had the previous year.
Derrida gave nothing away. He seemed to dislike anecdotes
and amusing examples. He did not try to make himself liked,
but to give us solid, well-structured lessons. His lessons were
demanding, but they were at an intellectual level that was too
high for us. He placed a little too much trust in our intellectual
abilities. The level of our hypokhâgne was quite unlike that of
a class at Louis-le-Grand or Henri-IV. I remember him talking
to us at length about the Critique of Pure Reason. In fact, he