A student came to me during break this week to tell me that in my classes, it’s like I’m singing. Whether my voice rises and falls or projects and retains its power like nuances in music, fortissimo until the whisper of pianissimo. I had never been aware of my penchant for these voice effects, but since this student told me about it, I now see myself playing the little theater of my classes with all these characters that I summon to explain to them the historical context of the works that I give them to read for this course. For example Mirabeau, Danton, Marie-Antoinette, Marat, Robespierre, Madame de Staël, Desmoulins, Olympe de Gouges for the revolutionary period.
I stopped for a moment, observing myself preparing these skits, performing them for myself, testing their effects and emphasizing how all this paraphernalia helps to read the texts better. And suddenly I saw myself, as if in an inner mirror, smiling with contentment: what pleasure you take, old monkey, in teaching, what a magnificent profession yours is, that of transmitting your passion for these works that you admire, that you’ve been reading and rehashing for decades. What wicked pleasure you take in performing your circus scene, chanting these syllables that you know by heart to better make all this mental opera in which you dare to set up the class heard. What pleasure you give yourself to hear the embarrassed laughter of the skull-cap resisters at the back of the room who first look at you with circumspection, amusement and soon laugh with you at the madness which has just taken over the group.
Yes, they have just entered a scene by Balzac with this smile on their lips, they follow with passion the rebirth of Colonel Chabert who returns from the world of the dead to that of the living who do not recognize him. They experience with this ghost his frustration at the imbecility of human things and end up becoming indignant themselves at the stupidity of our world.
We have talked a lot for years about what is weighing down the teaching profession, and we are right to do so (composition of the class, salaries, competition from GAFAM, omnipresence of screens, intrusion of ministerial authorities into the content of courses, etc. .). But we forget to say that through all these obstacles, there remains the joy of teaching, of transmitting, of seeing eyes light up, of hearing tongues loosen, brains overheating, ideas and ideas sentences collide in a magnificent choreography that is not always chaotic. The most beautiful job in the world, no doubt.
By omitting this whole aspect of the marvel that is the profession of teaching, we discourage many people and in doing so we deprive the institution of talents who will never have this chance to experience this theater of the voice, who will not will not have the opportunity to deploy their abilities to vibrate texts and consciences. We destroys the soul, to put it clearly, of this most important profession in our society, the one which bridges the gap between the world of the home and the human jungle of society, which allows us to grant for the first time its trust in someone other than the parents, to see existence from another look, a different perspective, to move later, very slowly, towards an adult, autonomous, enlightened life.
I have been teaching for 25 years now and I have not yet gotten over all this responsibility that falls to me, this duty that is mine to cultivate curiosity, to open wide the desire to know, to transform myself contact with the otherness of texts. In my classroom, I have few resources to put light in the eyes like lanterns lit one by one.
First I have the French language, of which I deploy as much as possible all the lexical resources, all the most hair-raising grammatical turns of which I am capable to show them the marvelous play of words that the language offers to those who wish to manipulate it. And I also have the story, which I illuminate with paintings that I can interpret with them for hours: The Raft of the Medusa, Liberty Leading the People, The traveler contemplating a sea of clouds.
I also have musical pieces that make them hear what these human brothers (Villon) who preceded us had in the ears: the Trio of spirits of Beethoven, the Hungarian danceo 5 by Brahms, Zigeunerweisen by Pablo de Sarasate, but also The carmagnola where the It will be fine, which the people sang in the streets. And above all, above all, I have with me these immense texts which have passed through the hands of generations to reach us still vibrant with the battles that, for example, Germaine de Staël fought to finally give voice to women in From literature in 1800.
To raise awareness that we did not invent the four-hole button yesterday morning and that generations have gone before us, lived, hoped, suffered and despaired, and that our position in history is not limited to presentism in which our anxiety-provoking news locks us. To make people feel this communion with the dead is, for me, a major part of the joy of teaching; in a word, it is to open wide the gaping question, completely unresolved today, of what is human soul.