Jean Cocteau

Name	Jean Cocteau
Caption	Jean Cocteau in his 20s
Birth name	Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau
Birth date	July 05, 1889
Birth place	Maisons-Laffitte, France
Death date	October 11, 1963
Death place	Milly-la-Foret, France
Partner	Panama Al Brown(?)Jean Marais (1937–1963)

Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager, playwright, artist and filmmaker. Along with other avant-garde artists of his generation (Jean Anouilh and René Char for example) Cocteau grappled with the algebra of verbal codes old and new, mise en scène language and technologies of modernism to create a paradox: a classical avant-garde. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María Félix, Édith Piaf (whom he cast in one of his one-act plays entitled Le Bel Indifferent in 1940), and Raymond Radiguet.

His work was played out in the theatrical world of the Grands Theatres, the Boulevards and beyond during the Parisian epoque he both lived through and helped define and create. His versatile, unconventional approach and enormous output brought him international acclaim.

Early life

Cocteau was born in Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines, once a small village near Paris to Georges Cocteau and his wife Eugénie Lecomte, a prominent Parisian family. His father was a lawyer and amateur painter, who committed suicide when Cocteau was nine. He left home at age fifteen. Despite his achievements in virtually all literary and artistic fields, Cocteau insisted that he was primarily a poet and that all his work was poetry. He published his first volume of poems, Aladdin's Lamp, at nineteen. Soon Cocteau became known in the Bohemian artistic circles as 'The Frivolous Prince'—the title of a volume he published at twenty-two. Edith Wharton described him as a man "to whom every great line of poetry was a sunrise, every sunset the foundation of the Heavenly City..."

In his early twenties, Cocteau became associated with the writers Marcel Proust, André Gide, and Maurice Barrès. In 1912 he collaborated with Léon Bakst to produce Le Dieu bleu for the Ballets Russes – the principal dancers being Tamara Karsavina and Vaslav Nijinsky. During World War I Cocteau served in the Red Cross as an ambulance driver. This was the period in which he met the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, artists Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani, and numerous other writers and artists with whom he later collaborated. The Russian ballet-master Sergei Diaghilev challenged Cocteau to write a scenario for the ballet – "Astonish me," he urged. This resulted in Parade which was produced by Diaghilev, designed by Picasso, and composed by Erik Satie in 1917. An important exponent of avant-garde art, he had great influence on the work of others, including the group of composer friends in Montparnasse known as Les six. "If it had not been for Apollinaire in uniform," wrote Cocteau, "with his skull shaved, the scar on his temple and the bandage around his head, women would have gouged our eyes out with hairpins." Cocteau denied being a Surrealist or being in any way attached to the movement.

Friendship with Raymond Radiguet

In 1918 he met the French poet Raymond Radiguet. They collaborated extensively, socialized, and undertook many journeys and vacations together. Cocteau also got Radiguet exempted from military service. In admiration of Radiguet's great literary talent, Cocteau promoted his friend's works in his artistic circle and also arranged for the publication by Grasset of Le Diable au corps (a largely autobiographical story of an adulterous relationship between a married woman and a younger man), exerting his influence to have the novel awarded the "Nouveau Monde" literary prize. Some contemporaries and later commentators thought there might have been a romantic component to their friendship. Cocteau himself was aware of this perception, and worked earnestly to dispel the notion that their relationship was sexual in nature.

There is disagreement over Cocteau's reaction to Radiguet's sudden death in 1923, with some claiming that it left him stunned, despondent and prey to opium addiction. Opponents of that interpretation point out that he did not attend the funeral (he generally did not attend funerals) and immediately left Paris with Diaghilev for a performance of Les noces (The Wedding) by the Ballets Russes at Monte Carlo. Cocteau himself much later characterised his reaction as one of "stupor and disgust." His opium addiction at the time, Cocteau said, was only coincidental, due to a chance meeting with Louis Laloy, the administrator of the Monte Carlo Opera. Cocteau's opium use and his efforts to stop profoundly changed his literary style. His most notable book, Les Enfants terribles, was written in a week during a strenuous opium weaning. In Opium, Diary of an Addict, he recounts the experience of his recovery from opium addiction in 1929. His account, which includes vivid pen-and-ink illustrations, alternates between his moment-to-moment experiences of drug withdrawal and his current thoughts about people and events in his world.

The Human Voice

Cocteau's experiments with the human voice peaked with his play La Voix humaine. The story involves one woman on stage speaking on the telephone with her (invisible and inaudible) departing lover, who is leaving her to marry another woman. The telephone proved to be the perfect prop for Cocteau to explore his ideas, feelings, and "algebra" concerning human needs and realities in communication.

Cocteau acknowledged in the introduction to the script that the play was motivated, in part, by complaints from his actresses that his works were too writer/director-dominated and gave the players little opportunity to show off their full range of talents. La Voix humaine was written, in effect, as an extravagant aria for Madame Berthe Bovy. Before came Orphée, later turned into one of his more successful films; after came La Machine infernale, arguably his most fully realized work of art. La Voix humaine is deceptively simple—a woman alone on stage for almost one hour of non-stop theatre speaking on the telephone with her departing lover. It is, in fact, full of theatrical codes harking back to the Dadaists' Vox Humana experiments after World War One, Alphonse de Lamartine's "La Voix humaine", part of his larger work Harmonies poétiques et religieuses and the effect of the creation of the Vox Humana ("voix humaine"), an organ stop of the Regal Class by Church organ masters (late 16th century) that attempted to imitate the human voice but never succeeded in doing better than the sound of a male chorus at a distance.

Reviews varied at the time and since but whatever the critique, the play represents Cocteau's state of mind and feelings towards his actors at the time: on the one hand, he wanted to spoil and please them; on the other, he was fed up by their diva antics and was ready for revenge. It is also true that none of Cocteau's works has inspired as much imitation: Francis Poulenc's opera La Voix humaine, Gian Carlo Menotti's "opera bouffa" The Telephone and Roberto Rosselini's film version in Italian with Anna Magnani L'Amore (1948). There has also been a long line of interpreters including Simone Signoret, Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann (in the play) and Julia Migenes (in the opera).

According to one theory about how Cocteau was inspired to write La Voix humaine, he was experimenting with an idea by fellow French playwright Henri Bernstein. "When, in 1930, the Comedie-Française produced his La Voix humaine... Cocteau disavowed both literary right and literary left, as if to say, 'I'm standing as far right as Bernstein, in his very place, but it is an optical illusion: the avant-garde is spheroid and I've gone farther left than anyone else.'"

Maturity

In the 1930s, Cocteau had an affair with Princess Natalie Paley, the beautiful daughter of a Romanov grand duke and herself a sometimes actress, model, and former wife of couturier Lucien Lelong. She became pregnant. To Cocteau's distress and Paley's life-long regret, the fetus was aborted. Cocteau's longest-lasting relationships were with the French actors Jean Marais and Edouard Dermithe, whom Cocteau formally adopted. Cocteau cast Marais in The Eternal Return (1943), Beauty and the Beast (1946), Ruy Blas (1947), and Orpheus (1949).

During the Nazi occupation of France, Cocteau's friend Arno Breker convinced him that Adolf Hitler was a pacifist and patron of the arts with France's best interests in mind. In his diary, Cocteau accused France of disrespect towards Hitler and speculated on the Führer's sexuality. Cocteau effusively praised Breker's sculptures in an article entitled 'Salut à Breker' published in 1942. This piece caused him to be arraigned on charges of collaboration after the war, though he was cleared of any wrongdoing and had in fact used his contacts to attempt to save friends such as Max Jacob.

Parade, théme de Jean Cocteau|150px]]In 1940, Le Bel Indifférent, Cocteau's play written for and starring Édith Piaf, was enormously successful. He also worked with Pablo Picasso on several projects and was friends with most of the European art community. Cocteau's films, most of which he both wrote and directed, were particularly important in introducing the avant-garde into French cinema and influenced to a certain degree the upcoming French New Wave genre.

Cocteau is best known for his novel Les Enfants terribles (1929), and the films Blood of a Poet (1930), Les Parents terribles (1948), Beauty and the Beast (1946), and Orpheus (1949).

Cocteau died of a heart attack at his chateau in Milly-la-Forêt, Essonne, France, on 11 October 1963 at the age of 74. It is said that upon hearing of the death of his friend, the French singer Édith Piaf the same day, he choked so badly that his heart failed. He is buried beneath the floor of the Chapelle Saint Blaise Des Simples in Milly-la-Forêt. The epitaph on his gravestone set in the floor of the chapel reads: "I stay with you" ("Je reste avec vous").

Honours and awards

In 1955 Cocteau was made a member of the Académie française and The Royal Academy of Belgium.

During his life Cocteau was commander of the Legion of Honor, Member of the Mallarmé Academy, German Academy (Berlin), American Academy, Mark Twain (U.S.A) Academy, Honorary President of the Cannes film festival, Honorary President of the France-Hungary Association and President of the Jazz Academy and of the Academy of the Disc.

Filmography

Le Sang d'un poète (The Blood of a Poet) (1930)

L'Éternel retour (The Eternal Return) (1943)

La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast) (1946)

L'Aigle à deux têtes (The Eagle with Two Heads) (1948)

Les Parents terribles (The Storm Within) (1948)

Coriolan (1950) never released

Orphée (Orpheus) (1950)

La Villa Santo-Sospir (1952)

(1957) co-director, experimental film

Le Testament d'Orphée (The Testament of Orpheus) (1960)

Works

Literature

Each year links to its corresponding "[year] in literature" article, except for poetry and poetry criticism, which link to corresponding "[year] in poetry" articles.

, France]] ;Poetry

1909 La Lampe d'Aladin

1910 Le Prince frivole

1912 La Danse de Sophocle

1919 Ode à Picasso – Le Cap de Bonne-Espérance

1920 Escale. Poésies (1917–1920)

1922 Vocabulaire

1923 La Rose de François – Plain-Chant

1925 Cri écrit

1926 L'Ange Heurtebise

1927 Opéra

1934 Mythologie

1939 Énigmes

1941 Allégories

1945 Léone

1946 La Crucifixion

1948 Poèmes

1952 Le Chiffre sept – La Nappe du Catalan (in collaboration with Georges Hugnet)

1953 Dentelles d'éternité – Appoggiatures

1954 Clair-obscur

1958 Paraprosodies

1961 Cérémonial espagnol du Phénix – La Partie d'échecs

1962 Le Requiem

1968 Faire-Part (posthume)

;Novels

1919: Le Potomak (definitive edition: 1924)

1923: Le Grand Écart – Thomas l'imposteur

1928: Le Livre blanc

1929: Les Enfants terribles

1940: La Fin du Potomak

;Theater

1917: Parade, ballet (music by Erik Satie, choreography by Léonide Massine)

1921: Les Mariés de la tour Eiffel (music by Georges Auric, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc and Germaine Tailleferre)

1922: Antigone

1924: Roméo et Juliette

1925: Orphée

1930: ''La Voix humaine

1934: La Machine infernale

1936: L'École des veuves

1937: Œdipe-roi. Les Chevaliers de la Table ronde, premiere at the Théâtre Antoine

1938: Les Parents terribles, premiere at the Théâtre Antoine

1940: Les Monstres sacrés

1941: La Machine à écrire

1943: Renaud et Armide. L'Épouse injustement soupçonnée

1944: L'Aigle à deux têtes

1946: Le Jeune Homme et la Mort, ballet by Roland Petit

1948: Théâtre I and II

1951: Bacchus

1960: Nouveau théâtre de poche

1962: L'Impromptu du Palais-Royal

1971: Le Gendarme incompris (posthumous, in collaboration with Raymond Radiguet)

;Poetry and criticism

1918 Le Coq et l'Arlequin

1920 Carte blanche

1922 Le Secret professionnel

1926 Le Rappel à l'ordre – Lettre à Jacques Maritain

1930 Opium

1932 Essai de critique indirecte

1935 Portraits-Souvenir

1937 Mon premier voyage (Around the World in 80 Days)

1943 Le Greco

1947 Le Foyer des artistes – La Difficulté d'être

1949 Lettres aux Américains – Reines de la France

1951 Jean Marais – A Discussion about Cinematography (with André Fraigneau)

1952 Gide vivant

1953 Journal d'un inconnu. Démarche d'un poète

1955 Colette (Discourse on the reception at the Royal Academy of Belgium) – Discourse on the reception at the Académie française

1956 Discours d'Oxford

1957 Entretiens sur le musée de Dresde (with Louis Aragon) – La Corrida du 1er mai

1950: Poésie critique I

1960: Poésie critique II

1962 Le Cordon ombilical

1963 La Comtesse de Noailles, oui et non

1964 Portraits-Souvenir (posthumous ; A discussion with Roger Stéphane)

1965 Entretiens avec André Fraigneau (posthumous)

1973 Jean Cocteau par Jean Cocteau (posthumous ; A discussion with William Fielfield)

1973 Du cinématographe (posthumous). Entretiens sur le cinématographe (posthumous)

;Journalistic poetry

1935–1938 (posthumous)

Film

;Director

1925 : Jean Cocteau fait du cinéma

1930 : Le Sang d'un poète

1946 : La Belle et la Bête

1948 : L'Aigle à deux têtes

1948 : Les Parents terribles

1950 : Orphée

1950 : Coriolan

1952 : La Villa Santo-Sospir

1955 : L'Amour sous l'électrode

1957 :

1960 : Le Testament d'Orphée

;Scriptwriter

1943 : L'Éternel Retour directed byJean Delannoy

1944 : "Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne" directed by Robert Bresson

1948 : Ruy Blas directed by Pierre Billon

1950 : Les Enfants terribles directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, script by Jean Cocteau based on his novel

1951 : La Couronne Noire directed by Luis Saslavsky

1961 : La Princesse de Clèves directed by Jean Delannoy

1965 : Thomas l'imposteur directed by Georges Franju, script by Jean Cocteau based on his novel

;Dialogue writer

1943 : Le Baron fantôme (+ actor) directed by Serge de Poligny

1961 : La Princesse de Clèves directed by Jean Delannoy

1965 : Thomas l'imposteur directed by Georges Franju

;Director of Photography

1950 : Un chant d'amour réalisé par Jean Genet

Poetry illustrator

1924 : Dessins

1925 : Le Mystère de Jean l'oiseleur

1926 : Maison de santé

1929 : 25 dessins d'un dormeur

1935 : 60 designs for Les Enfants Terribles

1941 : Drawings in the margins of Chevaliers de la Table ronde

1948 : Drôle de ménage

1957 : La Chapelle Saint-Pierre, Villefranche-sur-Mer

1958 : La Salle des mariages, City Hall of Menton – La Chapelle Saint-Pierre (lithographies)

1959 : Gondol des morts

1960 : Chapelle Saint-Blaise-des-Simples, Milly-la-Forêt

1960 : Windows of the Église Saint-Maximin de Metz

Recordings

Colette par Jean Cocteau, discours de réception à l'Académie Royale de Belgique'', Ducretet-Thomson 300 V 078 St.

Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel and Portraits-Souvenir, La Voix de l'Auteur LVA 13

Plain-chant by Jean Marais, extracts from the piece Orphée by Jean-Pierre Aumont, Michel Bouquet, Monique Mélinand, Les Parents terribles by Yvonne de Bray and Jean Marais, L'Aigle à deux têtes par Edwige Feuillère and Jean Marais, L'Encyclopédie Sonore 320 E 874, 1971

Collection of three vinyl recordings of Jean Cocteau including La Voix humaine by Simone Signoret, 18 songs composed by Louis Bessières, Bee Michelin and Renaud Marx, on double-piano Paul Castanier, Le Discours de réception à l'Académie Française, Jacques Canetti JC1, 1984

Derniers propos à bâtons rompus avec Jean Cocteau, 16 September 1963 à Milly-la-Forêt, Bel Air 311035

Les Enfants terribles, radio version with Jean Marais, Josette Day, Silvia Monfort and Jean Cocteau, CD Phonurgia Nova ISBN 2-908325-07-1, 1992

Anthology, 4 CD containing numerous poems and texts read by the author, Anna la bonne, La Dame de Monte-Carlo and Mes sœurs, n'aimez pas les marins by Marianne Oswald, Le Bel Indifférent by Edith Piaf, La Voix humaine by Berthe Bovy, Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel with Jean Le Poulain, Jacques Charon and Jean Cocteau, discourse on the reception at the Académie française, with extracts from Les Parents terribles, La Machine infernale, pieces from Parade on piano with two hands by Georges Auric and Francis Poulenc, Frémeaux & Associés FA 064, 1997

Poems by Jean Cocteau read by the author, CD EMI 8551082, 1997

Hommage à Jean Cocteau, mélodies d'Henri Sauguet, Arthur Honegger, Louis Durey, Darius Milhaud, Erik Satie, Jean Wiener, Max Jacob, Francis Poulenc, Maurice Delage, Georges Auric, Guy Sacre, by Jean-François Gardeil (baryton) and Billy Eidi (piano), CD Adda 581177, 1989

Le Testament d'Orphée, journal sonore, by Roger Pillaudin, 2 CD INA / Radio France 211788, 1998

Journals

1946 La Belle et la Bête (film journal)

1949 Maalesh (journal of a stage production)

1983 Le Passé défini (posthumous)

1989 Journal, 1942–1945

Stamps

Marianne de Cocteau, 1960

Bibliography

Cocteau, Jean, Le Coq et l'Arlequin: notes autour de la musique – avec un portrait de l'auteur et deux monogrammes par P. Picasso, Paris, Éditions de la Sirène, 1918

Cocteau, Jean, Le Grand Écart, 1923, his first novel

Cocteau, Jean, Le Numéro Barbette, an influential essay on the nature of art inspired by the performer Barbette, 1926

Cocteau, Jean, The Human Voice, translated by Carl Wildman, Vision Press Ltd., Great Britain, 1947

Cocteau, Jean, The Eagle Has Two Heads, adapted by Ronald Duncan, Vision Press Ltd., Great Britain, 1947

Cocteau, Jean, "Bacchus". Paris: Gallimard, 1952.

Cocteau, Jean, The Holy Terrors (Les Enfants terribles), translated by Rosamond Lehmann, New Directions. New York, 1957

Cocteau, Jean, Opium: The Diary of a Cure, translated by Margaret Crosland and Sinclair Road, Grove Press Inc., New York, 1958

Cocteau, Jean, The Infernal Machine And Other Plays, translated by W.H. Auden, E.E. Cummings, Dudley Fitts, Albert Bermel, Mary C. Hoeck, and John K. Savacool, New Directions Books, New York, 1963

Cocteau, Jean, Toros Muertos, along with Lucien Clergue and Jean Petit, Brussel & Brussel,1966

Cocteau, Jean, The Art of Cinema, edited by André Bernard and Claude Gauteur, translated by Robin Buss, Marion Boyars, London, 1988

Cocteau, Jean, Diary of an Unknown, translated by Jesse Browner, Paragon House Publishers, New York, 1988

Cocteau, Jean, The White Book (Le Livre blanc), sometimes translated as The White Paper, translated by Margaret Crosland, City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1989

Cocteau, Jean, Les Parents terribles, new translation by Jeremy Sams, Nick Hern Books, London, 1994

Footnotes

References

Breton, André (1953). La Clé des champs, p. 77. Paris: Éditions du Sagittaire.

Steegmuller, Francis, Cocteau: A Biography, Atlantic-Little, Brown, Boston, 1970.

Crucifixion translated into Bengali by Malay Roy Choudhury

Further reading

Arthur B. Evans, Jean Cocteau and his Films of Orphic Identity. Philadelphia: Art Alliance Press, 1977.

Cornelia A. Tsakiridou, ed. Reviewing Orpheus: Essays on the Cinema and Art of Jean Cocteau. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1997.

External links

Original Edition of Ceramics by Jean Cocteau

Jean Cocteau website

Cocteau/cinema Bibliography (via UC Berkeley)

Cocteau CMEF Cap d'Ail

Cocteau et La chapelle Saint-Blaise-des-Simples

Jean Cocteau, Filmmaker

Raquel Bitton: 'The Sparrow and the Birdman', a drama focusing on the relationship of Cocteau to Edith Piaf

Category:1889 births Category:1963 deaths Category:People from Maisons-Laffitte Category:Ballet librettists Category:Commandeurs of the Légion d'honneur Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:French dramatists and playwrights Category:French experimental filmmakers Category:French fantasy writers Category:French film directors Category:French illustrators Category:French novelists Category:French painters Category:French poets Category:French screenwriters Category:Les six Category:LGBT directors Category:LGBT screenwriters Category:LGBT writers from France Category:Members of the Académie française Category:Prince des poètes Jean Cocteau