Believe me, you are the one who is enviable, and thinking on it I naturally want to take up the refrain which speaks of it as “most beautiful job in the world,” even if now some chant it in an ironic tone. The wear and tear of successive back-to-school sessions burdened with tedious rituals cannot make us forget that teaching remains a great thing – the importance of which has yet to be fully measured at a time when the world is tipping into complexity and uncertainty. Is this message enough to restore your beginner’s enthusiasm? And I don’t mean in order to devote yourself to listening to the principal’s long speech… that is what it is. But I mean the day after tomorrow, on the other hand, when the question from this bespectacled student whose name you do not yet know will have the power to restore you to your vocation: the vocation of showing the way.

Yves Stalloni (1944)
Literature professor, writer

“And there you have it. Once again, you’re seated in this sweltering gymnasium, transformed for this occasion into a conference room, listening to your school director distribute the traditional summer news and back-to-school instructions. Next to you, a math colleague who’s had the curious idea of growing a beard; further on, a newly-appointed young English agrégée, scrupulously attentive to the information which you’re only distractedly following, being more interested in the story of the expedition to the Mont-Blanc massif whispered to you by Chauvet, your old literary accomplice. And that’s it. Tomorrow the students arrive, and you’ll be welcoming them for the twelfth, fifteenth time, who knows? Administrative forms to fill in, schedule to copy, list of teachers in the class… the same old routine. The class will be there, curiously silent and recollected, as if the hour were of great importance (whereas it’s just a matter of trivial formalities), frozen in a state of respect in contrast to the pleasant disorder which will accompany your fine analyses of Pascal’s irony in the Provinciales or Rimbaud’s boldness in the Illuminations. Totally normal. Back-to-school days are special. Clans have yet to be formed; hierarchies to be established; customs to be inaugurated. Next week… This first day of school, and then the next, will have you thinking, a little bitterly, about your job. Teaching Literature! What a curious thing! What’s the point of spending hours, year after year, explaining Hermione’s fury, Valmont’s cunning, Fabrice del Dongo’s virtù, commenting on the anacoluthon in verse 5 and the isotopy of death in Du Bellay’s sonnet…? What good is it to keep doing so when men are busy killing one another on different continents, and not always very far away; and when economists talk in all seriousness about rehabilitating “odd jobs” to give work to our flowering youth; when national distractions are orchestrated on the various news channels by acrobats allergic to the word “culture”? I sense a bit of the virus of discouragement, or at least disillusionment in you… those long, brilliant studies at university, those difficult, hard-won diplomas, those interminable hours spent reading, researching, preparing and correcting, only to end up with this: verbose sessions attended, at best, by a polite but always ungrateful audience, convinced, in any case, that the reality of the world begins beyond this door, elsewhere than in this protected space. You may be tempted to think that you’d be better off restoring your farm in the Haute-Loire, or sailing off to the Lipari Islands. But I’d like to convince you that you’re wrong to give in to such pessimism. Deep down, you’ve never stopped believing (and your very survival depended on it) in this truth – which I’m simply reminding you of – you play an essential role and your profession is admirable. Your mission is to shape young minds, to open them up to the subtleties of thought and of culture, and in these times of calculation and mediocrity, you are one of the last dispensers of selfless beauty. And this priceless task is almost entirely up to you. Of course, you are subject to constraints – syllabuses, exams, academic competitions; but far from being a hindrance, these things are merely stimulants which feed your appetite, spur your initiatives, renew your choices – without anyone looking over your shoulder. And you remain the reference, the awakener, and the guarantor of the values inherent in the acquisition of knowledge. What is the discomfort of a classroom, the noisy boredom of a few reluctant students, or the servitude of weekly stacks of assignments compared to the curiosity of a child, the stirring of an intellect, the joy of working with great authors, and the privilege of freely shaping your own work?”

Yves Stalloni (1944)
Literature professor, writer