246 Derrida 1963–1983
was more than work in the air. Jean-Luc Nancy, who was thrilled to
discover the place, remembers that this décade was swept along ‘by
a Dionysian mood’ characteristic of the years in the wake of 1968:
‘There were talks and discussions in every corner and every sense, it
was a little intellectual orgy, but a sensual orgy too.’^39 Many people
embarked on aff airs, more or less discreetly. Derrida already had
the reputation of being a seducer, and this was not his fi rst fl ing. But
it was probably the fi rst one that turned passionate. To escape the
somewhat stifl ing atmosphere of the château, Jacques slipped away
on several evenings with Sylviane, to Deauville or Cabourg. His stay
at Cerisy was, in any case, very brief; he left halfway through the
conference, as he had said he would.
Over the next few weeks, Jean-Noël Vuarnet, who had been badly
shaken, alluded in veiled terms to the intellectual and emotional ten-
sions that had left their mark on Cerisy. From then on, Sylviane and
he ‘fell out for good’.^40 In his own letters, Derrida kept quiet about
his relationship with the young woman even to his closest friends,
but he could not hide his turmoil. To Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe,
who told him about the last days of the décade, in particular an anti-
Derridean outburst from Jean-François Lyotard, he wrote:
I feel the same: what I remember of this conference, which
has left me with more than one painful, very painful memory,
is fortunately – with a sense of trust that I don’t often have,
increasingly rarely in fact – being able to meet with a few
friends, you fi rst and foremost. And this sustains me. As I was
sustained by everything shown in the magnifi cent text you gave
me to read: rigour, sobriety, the absence of all complacency,
the openness to what really does need to be hunted down, these
days, in the places where if I might say so, saving your presence,
not many of us are on the prowl. [.. .] In the current situ ation- where as you can imagine I often feel very ill at ease and very
alone – this relationship that I have just evoked and that I
have with very few people (almost nobody apart from yourself,
Nancy, and Pautrat) is absolutely vital to me.41*
With Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, a veritable alliance was being
established. During the conference, on a stroll through the grounds
of the château, Derrida mentioned to them Michel Delorme and
the new publishing house run by the cooperative structure Galilée
that he was launching. He suggested that they extend their study
- This letter is written in red ink, like most of those Derrida sent between August
1972 and the end of the following year. This habit annoyed some of his correspond-
ents, beginning with Paule Thévenin, who dated the diffi culties in her friendship with
him from that time.