48 Jackie 1930–1962
to be a ‘reliable, hard-working pupil’, in whom one could place
‘some hope’. In French, despite his ‘good attitude’, his marks were
‘no better than middling’. In other subjects, they were frankly poor
and Derrida failed to hand in a great deal of work.^22
On 28 May 1951, Jackie sat down to take the written part of the
entrance exams in an altogether deplorable physical and psychologi-
cal state. He had been through a series of sleepless nights and stuff ed
himself with amphetamines followed by sleeping pills, and was yet
again on the verge of nervous collapse. Stress did the rest. Unable to
write, he handed in a blank sheet of paper at the fi rst test and had no
choice but to abandon the exam. A few days later, he was in despair;
he confi ded his distress to his old friend Fernand Acharrok. Jackie
feared that Louis-le-Grand would not take him back for a third
khâgne after such a disastrous year. But returning to Algeria would
not just be humiliating; it would force him to give up any hope of a
university career and to become a schoolteacher instead.
In one last surge of hope, Derrida went to see his French teacher,
Roger Pons. In many ways, he was an old-style schoolmaster, more
straightforward than some other teachers at Louis-le-Grand. But
he probably showed himself more attentive to Jackie’s situation. At
all events, this meeting was to be decisive, at least psychologically,
as Derrida wrote a year later in a letter to Pons, after passing the
entrance exam:
My gratitude also reminds me, among many memories, of
that morning in June 1951 when, still downcast by an event
that I thought was irreparable [.. .], I came to you for advice
and, above all, encouragement. I left you feeling much calmer,
determined to continue in spite of my disappointment, which
I really thought I would never recover from. Can I confess to
you that I would have never gone on with my studies in khâgne,
or perhaps anywhere else, if I had not paid you a visit that
morning?^23At the Sorbonne, on the other side of the rue Saint-Jacques,
certain teachers showed themselves to be decidedly less impressed
by Derrida’s personality. He had to take several papers for the
licence: in the general history of philosophy exam, for an answer
on Malebranche, he was awarded a stinging 5/20. The comments of
examiner Henri Gouhier are quite farcical, and must have stung him
deeply.
These answers are brilliant in the very same way that they
are obscure. [.. .] An exercise in virtuosity, with undeniable
intelligence, but with no particular relation to the history of
philosophy. Has studied Descartes. Can’t make his mind up