Hear the Letter of Gratitude That Albert Camus Wrote to His Teacher After Winning the Nobel Prize, as Read by Footballer Ian Wright

When Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize, he wrote a let­ter to one of his old school­teach­ers. “I let the com­mo­tion around me these days sub­side a bit before speak­ing to you from the bot­tom of my heart,” the let­ter begins. “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.” For it was from this teacher, a cer­tain Louis Ger­main, that the young, father­less Camus received the guid­ance he need­ed. “With­out you, with­out the affec­tion­ate hand you extend­ed to the small poor child that I was, with­out your teach­ing and exam­ple, none of all this would have hap­pened.”

Camus ends the let­ter by assur­ing Mon­sieur Ger­main 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.”

In response, Ger­main recalls his mem­o­ries of Camus as an unaf­fect­ed, opti­mistic pupil. “I think I well know the nice lit­tle fel­low you were, and very often the child con­tains the seed of the man he will become,” he writes. What­ev­er the process of intel­lec­tu­al and artis­tic evo­lu­tion over the 30 years or so between leav­ing the class­room and win­ning the Nobel, “it gives me very great sat­is­fac­tion to see that your fame has not gone to your head. You have remained Camus: bra­vo.”

It isn’t hard to under­stand why Camus’ let­ter to his teacher would res­onate with the foot­baller Ian Wright, who reads it aloud in the Let­ters Live video at the top of the post. A 2005 doc­u­men­tary on his life and career pro­duced the ear­ly viral video above, a clip cap­tur­ing the moment of Wright’s unex­pect­ed reunion with his own aca­d­e­m­ic father fig­ure, Syd­ney Pig­den. Com­ing face to face with his old men­tor, who he’d assumed had died, Wright instinc­tive­ly removes his cap and address­es him as “Mr. Pig­den.” In that moment, the stu­dent-teacher rela­tion­ship resumes: “I’m so glad you’ve done so well with your­self,” says Pig­den, a sen­ti­ment not dis­sim­i­lar to the one Mon­sieur Ger­main expressed to Camus. Most of us, no mat­ter how long we’ve been out of school, have a teacher we hope to do proud; some of us, whether we know it or not, have been that teacher.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Albert Camus’ Touch­ing Thank You Let­ter to His Ele­men­tary School Teacher

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Albert Camus’ Exis­ten­tial­ism, a Phi­los­o­phy Mak­ing a Come­back in Our Dys­func­tion­al Times

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.