A Lucky Year 1967 185
English, which uses two related words – ‘to diff er’ in the fi rst
sense and ‘to defer’ in the second – constitutes an intermediate
case. Heidegger was forced to admit: ‘On this point, French
goes further than German.’ And he asked me to transmit to
Derrida his great eagerness to meet him, though unfortunately
this did not happen.^53It is important to note that, while Derrida also wanted to make
the acquaintance of Heidegger, he wanted to do so in a suitable
context. The French disciples of the master of Freiburg irritated
him too much for him to imagine going to the Thor seminar the fol-
lowing year – near the home of René Char, in l’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue
- even though Granel and Deguy would be taking part. Heidegger
conceived these private seminars as lectures and the participants as
pupils in a ‘Kindergarten’, whom he cross-questioned brusquely.
Given the diffi culties of translation and ‘the strangeness of the rela-
tionships short-circuited by Fédier and an immediate entourage that
was really ridiculous’, Deguy was convinced that Derrida would
never have stood it.^54