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GENERAL |
| We were back home for
Christmas of 1940. At the Lycée we became, as soldiers
in uniform, a sensation among the students. Even the teachers showed
us a certain respect, as in general we worked much more seriously than
our younger classmates. Still, the disciplines which had caused our
downfall in 1939, Math and the Sciences, were by no means our long suit.
By learning the theorems by heart, one could get a passing grade in Math
in the written part of the examination.
For the oral exams in Physics and Chemistry, we counted on our uniforms. I was questioned first about why I was in uniform. Then the examiner wanted to know where I had been fighting. When he heard about our stay in Mayenne and our escape from Angers, he asked whether we had gone a few miles east, through La Flèche, which had been his own College before the war. I told him our train had not used the Ponts de Cé, which were to the east of us, but that I knew about the battle which had raged there during our escape by train. I surmised that the battle had been short and that the physical damage inflicted might not be too considerable. This, in turn, made him open up about his own retreat in 1940, and we chatted amicably for a few minutes, one soldier to another. Suddenly he realized that he had to give me a grade. Noting from the report sheets that my results had been anything but brilliant in his subjects, he did not even dare ask me a question, for fear of getting me into trouble. "Passing grade" he said as he dismissed me with his best wishes. The second year of the Baccalauréat was both easier and more interesting. Math was reduced to a mere two hours of Astronomy a week, while History, Geography, and Biology were expanded. There were also ten hours of Philosophy, which became my favorite subject. Our teacher was Jean Beauffret, a close friend of Jean Paul Sartre, with whom he had been to the Rue d'Ulm. He was a devotee of Husserl and Heidegger, whose books he gave me to read (I had limited success.) in the original. Their terminology escaped me almost completely. Isolated in Grenoble and away from his beloved Paris, Beauffret attracted a coterie, to which my brother and I belonged innocently, though this was not the case for every student. In the classroom Beauffret was a magnificent teacher, who knew how to guide us in thinking like the philosophers he presented to us. Yet he aware of our limitations. Rather than taking chances with misinterpretations, he dictated his course notes, which usually contradicted the textbook required by the Lycée. That particular year also
brought into our lives new bonds of friendship, of which the most lasting
was our association with Georges Berthoin. Georges' father had been,
until 1940, the Secretary General of the Interior Ministry under Herriot.
His last act in office had been to name himself Treasurer of the Isère
Department in June 1940. Georges became inseparable from my brother
and me. He would accompany us home after school, and we would then
walk him home, spending hours talking and forging plans for the future.
Seeing how the previous generation had bungled the peace after World War
I, we decided that the real solution for our generation after an Allied
victory over Germany, which we had only recently begun to expect, was a
united Europe. Having just learned about Plato's maïeutique
and Freud's psychology, we decided to divide the tasks. I would become
the midwife of |
