Éliette Abécassis, herself normalienne and agrégée of philosophy, returns in 45 rue d’Ulm (Flammarion, 2025) as part of the intimate literary book series “Retour chez soi” to her former student digs (thurne) the Ecole normale superiorieure (ENS) back. The book is her first autobiographical work in the first person and condenses the experience of one night and one day into a pointed assessment of her intellectual generation. The journey through time is triggered by a box of old correspondence and, in particular, by a letter that has remained unopened for thirty years, the unveiling of which forms the narrative framework and fuels the story of friendship, failure, and intellectual freedom.
The arc of memory
The book develops a clearly contoured narrative of looking back, in which the physical return to 45 Rue d'Ulm serves as an anchor point for an existential "journey through time" ("voyage dans le temps").") serves as the narrative structure. The plot is circular and cyclical: it begins with the triumph of the recording (1989) and the trauma of the arduous preparation (khagne), leads through romantic turmoil and academic failure (twice failing to achieve the Aggregation) to an emotional confrontation with one's own daughter and culminates in the symbolic reunion with fellow students.
The temporal structure thrives on the constant interplay between present and memory. The present (the night in the thurne BF250) sometimes appears “irréal,” while the past takes on an almost hallucinatory intensity. This approach is philosophically legitimized by the concept of the palimpsest: The author recognizes that the current book is unconsciously a new version of her first, forgotten, and rejected manuscript. Le Bassin aux Ernests from 1991. The return is therefore not just a memory, but a rewriting of one's own identity.
The author positions her cohort (PhD graduates 1989) as a "key generation" ("génération charnière"): This generation experienced the collapse of the Eastern Bloc (the fall of the Berlin Wall) and the existential threat of the AIDS crisis. Central to the generational paradigm of the "normaliens" is the concept of "taking the tangent" ("prendre la tangente"), formulated by Emmanuel Breen. This implies a conscious departure from established paths of power and career (ENA, great wealth) in favor of the pure pursuit of knowledge, intellectual independence, and freedom. The life paths of her friends—from African studies (Catherine) and open data activism (Henri Verdier) to techno-avant-garde computer science (Jean-Paul Smets)—illustrate this ethos of deviation.
The narrative begins with the traumatic experience of the preparatory classes (khagne at the Lycée Henri-IV) is portrayed as a time of "humiliation" and "unimaginable effort," the goal of which was not ambition, but the desire for independence. The ENS itself is depicted as a utopian, "monastic" place of freedom and described in terms of pure research. normaliens They are paid as "fonctionnaires-stagiaires", which eliminates any obligation to be present and philosophical reverie This enables it. The highest good is a passionate relationship to knowledge ("relation à la connaissance passionnelle") and critical thinking skills.
The characters are both real people and literary archetypes. The ENS friends (Henri, Catherine, Rose, Manu, Marc, Smets) form a "spiritual family" ("famille d'esprit") whose cohesion transcends ideological divides.
The role of women is ambivalent. As ulmienne (Part of the fifth generation of women after the 1985 merger), the narrator struggles against male academic disdain and identifies with icons of liberation (Simone de Beauvoir, Gilda). At the same time, she confesses that her youth was "flirtation" and that she was a manipulative Célimène figure whose romantic excesses led to her academic failure. Her success as a writer is indirectly legitimized by this early distancing from the ENS bubble. The dialogue with her daughter serves as a generational reflection, contrasting the mother's academic asceticism with the pragmatism and emotional vulnerability of today's youth.
The thematic range is remarkable. Important socio-political topics include activism and remembrance, such as the successful fight against the negationist bookstore. La Vieille Taupe and the collective trauma of the Shoah, including the reading of Primo Levi's Si c'est un homme and the confrontation with the duty of memory shaped the generation. The narrator situates her writing ideal in the Jewish family tradition, where writing is sacred. She laments the "return of the antisemitic loop" and criticizes the bizarre phenomenon that the antisemitism of the extreme left is tolerated, while other forms of discrimination are rigorously combated. The author argues that philosophical deconstruction (Foucault, Derrida, Barthes) led to idealism (LGBT rights, feminism) and activism (the VSS questionnaire at the ENS party), but that it unintentionally led to the "technologization of the world" and "governance by algorithm," a central paradox of her generation.
Conclusion
The text's poetics stem from the combination of high academic standards and intimate confessional literature. Literary and philosophical references (Valéry, Flaubert, Stendhal, Proust, Sirinelli, Bourdieu, Foucault) permeate the text. The narrator employs self-irony, nostalgia, and the metaphorical power of the place (thurne as a "time capsule", the unpublished Bassin aux Ernests) and poetic gestures (recitation of Valéry's "Les pas" for his daughter). The style is pointed, often excessive, and characterized by "lyrical abundance," reflecting the exalted attitude of youth.
45 rue d’Ulm It is also a nostalgic alumni portrait, but more than that, an academically grounded reckoning with the intellectual legacy of a "key generation." The book offers an honest examination of the unintended consequences of deconstruction and idealism (from the fight against AIDS trauma to the technological surveillance of the consent principle). By solving the mystery of the unopened letter as "the most beautiful failure," Abécassis transforms the individual story into a universal plea for freedom of thought and proves that the true ENS tangent The ceaseless search for the book of life itself.
This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.
