AFER READING IT, GUESS WHO WROTE IT. (THE ANSWER IS IN COMMENTS.)
WE SHOULD ALL ENDEAVOR TO HAVE THE EFFECT THIS TEACHER HAD ON HIS PUPIL ON THOSE AROUND US, AND TO EXPRESS OUR GRATITUDE TO THOSE WHO HAVE HELPED US JUST AS FORTHRIGHTLY.Dear [TEACHER'S NAME],
I let the commotion around me these days subside a bit before speaking to you from the bottom of my heart.
I have just been given far too great an honor, one I neither sought nor solicited. But when I heard the news, my first thought, after my mother, was of you.
Without you, without the affectionate hand you extended to the small poor child that I was, without your teaching, and your example, none of all this would have happened.
I don't make too much of this sort of honor. But at least it gives me an opportunity to tell you what you have been and still are for me, and to assure you that your efforts, your work, and the generous heart you put into it still live in one of your little schoolboys who, despite the years, has never stopped being your grateful pupil. I embrace you with all my heart.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1997-03-21/news/9703210024_1_camus-life-louis-germain-camus-work
ReplyDeleteWith the 1995 publication of "The First Man," Camus' unfinished autobiographical novel, the French master reveals, years after his death, the debt he owed to his public elementary school teacher. Camus' daughters decided to publish "The First Man" in a belief that it "would be of exceptional value to those interested in Camus' life."
We are apprised in the forward that "once you have read `The First Man' you will understand why the appendix includes the letter Albert Camus wrote to his teacher, Louis Germain, after receiving the Novel Prize, and the last letter Louis Germain wrote to him." Little is known about Louis Germain save for the warm portrait of him in `The First Man.`
This autobiographical novel recounts the classic story of a poor boy who made good. Camus was born and raised in Algeria in a female-headed household. His father died in World War I, when Camus was no more than a year old. His mother was partially deaf, his uncle totally so, and his grandmother dominated a household that also included Albert's slightly older brother. The parental figures could neither read nor write. The grandmother's intention was that the young Camus would help relieve the family's bitter poverty by apprenticing to a local tradesman.
But Camus was precocious, and school became a sanctuary for him where he could "escape family life." What he and his classmates "so passionately loved in school," according to the book, "was that they were not at home, where want and ignorance made life harder and more bleak."
Camus became his teacher's pet. And Louis Germain's influence on the boy was crucial in switching the tracks of his prescribed destiny. It is a familiar story which I have found repeated often in my investigations of educating poor children. The teacher often becomes the main actor, rather than the parents.
Here is what Albert Camus, fresh from his speech in Stockholm accepting the Nobel Prize for literature, had to say to his former teacher:
Dear Monsieur Germain,
I let the commotion around me these days subside a bit before speaking to you from the bottom of my heart. I have just been given far too great an honor, one I neither sought nor solicited. But when I heard the news, my first thought, after my mother, was of you. Without you, without the affectionate hand you extended to the small poor child that I was, without your teaching, and your example, none of all this would have happened. I don't make too much of this sort of honor. But at least it gives me an opportunity to tell you what you have been and still are for me, and to assure you that your efforts, your work, and the generous heart you put into it still live in one of your little schoolboys who, despite the years, has never stopped being your grateful pupil. I embrace you with all my heart.
--Albert Camus
A copy of this letter should be kept in every teacher's desk
"I have just been given far too great an honor, one I neither sought nor solicited"
ReplyDeleteI thought it was going to be BHO writing to Frank Douglas!