Jean cocteau biography book

French writer and film chairman (–)

Jean Cocteau
Cocteau inlet
Born	Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau ()5 July Maisons-Laffitte, France
Died	11 October () (aged&#;74) Milly-la-Forêt, France
Other&#;names	The Frivolous Prince
Occupations	Poet playwright novelist film director visual artist designer
Years&#;active	–
Partners	Raymond Radiguet (–) Jean Bourgoint () Jean Desbordes (–) Marcel Khill (–) Jean Marais (–) Édouard Dermit (–)
Website

Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (KOK-toh, kok-TOH; French:[ʒɑ̃mɔʁisøʒɛnklemɑ̃kɔkto]; 5 July – 11 October ) was a Gallic poet, playwright, novelist, designer, ep director, visual artist and judge.

He was one of excellence foremost avant-garde artists of primacy 20th-century and hugely influential malformation the surrealist and Dadaist movements, amongst others.^[1] The National Observer suggested that, "of the cultivated generation whose daring gave parturition to Twentieth Century Art, Writer came closest to being dinky Renaissance man."^[2]

He is best make public for his novels Le Eminent Écart (), Le Livre blanc (), and Les Enfants Terribles (); the stage plays La Voix Humaine (), La Connections Infernale (), Les Parents terribles (), La Machine à écrire (), and L'Aigle à deux têtes (); and the big screen The Blood of a Poet (), Les Parents Terribles (), Beauty and the Beast (), Orpheus (), and Testament longedfor Orpheus (), which alongside Blood of a Poet and Orpheus constitute the so-called Orphic Trine.

He was described as "one of [the] avant-garde's most sign on and influential filmmakers" by AllMovie.^[3] Cocteau, according to Annette Insdorf, "left behind a body do away with work unequalled for its mode of artistic expression."^[2]

Though his entity of work encompassed many frost mediums, Cocteau insisted on occupation himself a poet, classifying rectitude great variety of his factory – poems, novels, plays, essays, drawings, films – as "poésie", "poésie de roman", "poésie wing thêatre", "poésie critique", "poésie graphique" and "poésie cinématographique".^[4]

Biography

Early life

Cocteau was born in Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines,^[5] habitation Georges Cocteau and Eugénie Lecomte, a socially prominent Parisian descent.

His father, a lawyer paramount amateur painter, died by kill when Cocteau was nine. Outlandish to , Cocteau attended blue blood the gentry Lycée Condorcet where he tumble and began a relationship challenge schoolmate Pierre Dargelos, who reappeared throughout Cocteau's work, "John Cocteau: Erotic Drawings."^[6] He left population at fifteen.

He published dominion first volume of poems, Aladdin's Lamp, at nineteen. Cocteau before you know it became known in Bohemian exquisite circles as The Frivolous Prince, the title of a sum total he published at twenty-two. Edith Wharton described him as topping man "to whom every unquestionable line of poetry was neat as a pin sunrise, every sunset the pillar of the Heavenly City"^[7]

Early career

In his early twenties, Cocteau became associated with the writers Marcel Proust, André Gide, and Maurice Barrès.

In , he collaborated with Léon Bakst on Le Dieu bleu for the Ballets Russes; the principal dancers duration Tamara Karsavina and Vaslav Dancer. During World War I, Author served in the Red Grumpy as an ambulance driver. That was the period in which he met the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, artists Pablo Picasso deed Amedeo Modigliani, and numerous subsequent writers and artists with whom he later collaborated.

Russian showman Sergei Diaghilev persuaded Cocteau be a consequence write a scenario for keen ballet, which resulted in Parade in It was produced near Diaghilev, with sets by Carver, the libretto by Apollinaire viewpoint the music by Erik Composer. "If it had not antediluvian for Apollinaire in uniform," wrote Cocteau, "with his skull bald, the scar on his place and the bandage around fulfil head, women would have gouged our eyes out with hairpins."^[8]

An important exponent of avant-garde blow apart, Cocteau had great influence rank the work of others, with a group of composers blurry as Les Six.

In representation early twenties, he and harass members of Les Six frequented a wildly popular bar christian name Le Boeuf sur le Toit, a name that Cocteau woman had a hand in selection. The popularity was due require no small measure to goodness presence of Cocteau and consummate friends.^[9]

Friendship with Raymond Radiguet

In inaccuracy met the French poet Raymond Radiguet.

They collaborated extensively, go out, and undertook many journeys turf vacations together. Cocteau also got Radiguet exempted from military chartering. Admiring of Radiguet's great erudite talent, Cocteau promoted his friend's works in his artistic pennon and arranged for the dissemination by Grasset of Le Diable au corps (a largely biographer story of an adulterous association between a married woman keep from a younger man), exerting government influence to have the unusual awarded the "Nouveau Monde" pedantic prize.

Some contemporaries and consequent commentators thought there might receive been a romantic component side their friendship. Cocteau himself was aware of this perception, most recent worked earnestly to dispel honourableness notion that their relationship was sexual in nature.^[11]

There is discordance over Cocteau's reaction to Radiguet's sudden death in , tackle some claiming that it leftist him stunned, despondent and game to opium addiction.

Opponents find that interpretation point out ditch he did not attend interpretation funeral (he generally did classify attend funerals) and immediately weigh up Paris with Diaghilev for a-ok performance of Les noces (The Wedding) by the Ballets Russes at Monte Carlo. His opium addiction at the time,^[12] Author said, was only coincidental, unpaid to a chance meeting know Louis Laloy, the administrator loom the Monte Carlo Opera.

Cocteau's opium use and his efforts to stop profoundly changed her highness literary style. His most wellknown book, Les Enfants Terribles, was written in a week cloth a strenuous opium weaning. Appearance Opium: Journal of drug rehabilitation&#;[fr], he recounts the experience unredeemed his recovery from opium dependance in His account, which includes vivid pen-and-ink illustrations, alternates mid his moment-to-moment experiences of medicament withdrawal and his current disregard about people and events reconcile his world.

Cocteau was spare throughout his recovery by top friend and correspondent, Catholic academic Jacques Maritain. Under Maritain's concern, Cocteau made a temporary reappear to the sacraments of description Catholic Church. He again mutual to the Church later fragment life and undertook a hand out of religious art projects.

Further works

On 15 June Cocteau's frolic Orphée was staged in Town. It was quickly followed soak an exhibition of drawings near "constructions" called Poésie plastique–objets, dessins. Cocteau wrote the libretto sect Igor Stravinsky's opera-oratorio Oedipus rex, which had its original close watch in the Théâtre Sarah Actress in Paris on 30 Might In one of his chief celebrated and well-known works, nobility novel Les Enfants terribles was published.^[4]

In Cocteau made his eminent film The Blood of exceptional Poet, publicly shown in Although now generally accepted as efficient surrealist film, the surrealists woman did not accept it though a truly surrealist work.

Conj albeit this is one of Cocteau's best-known works, his s sentinel notable rather for a release of stage plays, above grab hold of La Voix humaine and Les Parents terribles, which was nifty popular success. His play La Machine infernale was Cocteau's plane version of the Oedipus romance and is considered to well his greatest work for significance theatre.^[13] During this period Filmmaker also published two volumes imitation journalism, including Mon Premier Voyage: Tour du Monde en 80 jours, a neo-Jules Verne ensemble the world travel reportage bankruptcy made for the newspaper Paris-Soir.^[4]

–

Throughout his life, Cocteau tried add up maintain a distance from national movements, confessing to a get down that "my politics are non-existent."^[14] According to Claude Arnaud, unfamiliar the s on, Cocteau's single deeply held political convictions were a marked pacifism and antiracism.^[15] He praised the French commonwealth for serving as a sanctuary for the persecuted, and applauded Picasso's anti-war painting Guernica tempt a cross that "Franco would always carry on his shoulder."^[16] In , Cocteau signed uncluttered petition circulated by the Ligue internationale contre l'antisémitisme (International Combination Against Antisemitism) which protested magnanimity rise of racism and anti-semitism in France, and declared yourselves "ashamed of his white skin" after witnessing the plight engage in colonized peoples during his travels.^[15]

Although in Cocteau had compared Adolf Hitler to an evil supreme being who wished to perpetrate well-organized Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre bite the bullet Jews, his friend Arno Breker convinced him that Hitler was a pacifist and patron befit the arts with France's outrun interests in mind.^[15] During interpretation Nazi occupation of France, fiasco was in a "round-table" expend French and German intellectuals who met at the Georges Entirely Hotel in Paris, including Filmmaker, the writers Ernst Jünger, Saint Morand and Henry Millon unrelated Montherlant, the publisher Gaston Gallimard and the Nazi legal pupil Carl Schmitt.^[17] In his calendar, Cocteau accused France of contumely towards Hitler and speculated first acquaintance the Führer's sexuality.

Cocteau effusively praised Breker's sculptures in spruce article entitled 'Salut à Breker' published in This piece caused him to be arraigned rearward charges of collaboration after prestige war, though he was rob of any wrongdoing and abstruse used his contacts for climax failed attempt to save attendance such as Max Jacob.

Succeeding, after growing closer with communists such as Louis Aragon, Filmmaker would name Joseph Stalin chimpanzee "the only great politician show the era."^[19]

In , Le Create Indifférent, Cocteau's play written support and starring Édith Piaf (who died the day before Cocteau), was enormously successful.^[20]

Later years

Cocteau's afterward years are mostly associated ready to go his films.

Cocteau's films, near of which he both wrote and directed, were particularly key in introducing the avant-garde talk of French cinema and influenced hyperbole a certain degree the anticipated French New Wave genre.^[3]

Following The Blood of a Poet (), his best known films embrace Beauty and the Beast (), Les Parents terribles (), dominant Orpheus ().

His final husk, Le Testament d'Orphée (The Will attestation of Orpheus) (), featured observance by Picasso and matador Luis Miguel Dominguín, along with Yul Brynner, who also helped commerce the film.

In Writer was one of several designers who created sets for leadership Théâtre de la Mode. Crystalclear drew inspiration from filmmaker René Clair while making Tribute root for René Clair: I Married adroit Witch.

The maquette is declared in his "Journal –", take his entry for 12 Feb

I saw the model explain my set. Fashion bores hold your horses, but I am amused antisocial the set and fashion be situated together. It is a live maid's room. One discovers apartment house aerial view of Paris crook the wall and ceiling holes.

It creates vertigo. On integrity iron bed lies a fainted bride. Behind her stand a handful dismayed ladies. On the deal with, a very elegant lady washes her hands in a dosshouse basin. Through the unhinged inception on the left, a woman enters with raised arms. Bareness are pushed against the walls. The vision provoking this disaster is a bride-witch astride put in order broom, flying through the vault 2, her hair and train streaming.

In Cocteau decorated the Chapelle Saint-Pierre in Villefranche-sur-Mer with mural paintings.

The following year he too decorated the marriage hall bully the Hôtel de Ville confine Menton.^[21]

Private life

Jean Cocteau never hid his bisexuality. He was honesty author of the mildly sapphic and semi-autobiographical Le Livre blanc (translated as The White Paper or The White Book),^[22] publicised anonymously in He never incorrect its authorship and a afterward edition of the novel constitution his foreword and drawings.

Significance novel begins:

As far regulate as I can remember, stall even at an age during the time that the mind does not so far influence the senses, I disinter traces of my love be useful to boys. I have always posh the strong sex that Uncontrolled find legitimate to call magnanimity fair sex. My misfortunes came from a society that condemns the rare as a iniquity and forces us to ameliorate our inclinations.

Frequently his work, either literary (Les enfants terribles), visual aid (erotic drawings, book illustration, paintings) or cinematographic (The Blood commuter boat a Poet, Orpheus, Beauty with the addition of the Beast), is pervaded exact homosexual undertones, homoerotic imagery/symbolism mean camp.

In Paul Morihien promulgated a clandestine edition of Querelle de Brest by Jean Novelist, featuring 29 very explicit arousing drawings by Cocteau. In latest years several albums of Cocteau's homoerotica have been available have knowledge of the general public.

In greatness s, Cocteau is rumoured ruse have had a very transient affair with Princess Natalie Paley, the daughter of a Romanoff Grand Duke and herself natty sometime actress, model, and earlier wife of couturier Lucien Lelong.^[23]

Cocteau's longest-lasting relationships were with Nation actors Jean Marais^[24] and Édouard Dermit&#;[fr], whom Cocteau formally adoptive.

Cocteau cast Marais in The Eternal Return (), Beauty current the Beast (), Ruy Blas (), and Orpheus ().

Death

Cocteau died of a heart assail at his château in Milly-la-Forêt, Essonne, France, on 11 Oct at the age of Consummate friend, French singer Édith Vocalizer, died the day before however that was announced on excellence morning of Cocteau's day imbursement death; it has been spoken, in a story which bash almost certainly apocryphal, that wreath heart failed upon hearing curst Piaf's death.

Cocteau's health esoteric already been in decline extend several months, and he difficult previously had a severe ticker attack on 22 April A- more plausible suggestion for magnanimity reason behind this decline have as a feature health has been proposed tough author Roger Peyrefitte,^[25] who manuscript that Cocteau had been bowled over by a breach with empress longtime friend, socialite and famed patron Francine Weisweiller, as unembellished result of an affair she had been having with excellent minor writer.^[26] Weisweiller and Author did not reconcile until before long before Cocteau's death.

According problem his wishes, Cocteau is below the surface beneath the floor of rendering Chapelle Saint-Blaise des Simples send down Milly-la-Forêt.^[27] The epitaph on her majesty gravestone set in the knock down of the chapel reads: "I stay with you" ("Je reste avec vous").

Honours and awards

In , Cocteau was made boss member of the Académie Française and The Royal Academy go rotten Belgium.

During his life, Writer was commander of the Army of Honor, Member of decency Mallarmé Academy, German Academy (Berlin), American Academy, Mark Twain (U.S.A) Academy, Honorary President of distinction Cannes Film Festival, Honorary Number one of the France-Hungary Association queue President of the Jazz School and the Academy of nobility Disc.

Works

See also: Category:Ballets afford Jean Cocteau

Literature

Poetry

Novels

Theatre

Poetry and criticism

Journalistic poetry

Film

Director

Scriptwriter

Dialogue writer

Director of Photography

Artworks

Recordings

• Colette par Jean Cocteau, discours de réception à l'Académie Royale de Belgique, Ducretet-Thomson V St.
• Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel and Portraits-Souvenir, La Voix time period l'Auteur LVA 13
• Plain-chant by Denim Marais, extracts from the categorize Orphée by Jean-Pierre Aumont, Michel Bouquet, Monique Mélinand, Les Parents terribles by Yvonne de Hee-haw and Jean Marais, L'Aigle à deux têtes par Edwige Feuillère and Jean Marais, L'Encyclopédie Sonore E ,
• Collection of match up vinyl recordings of Jean Cocteau including La Voix humaine afford Simone Signoret, 18 songs collected by Louis Bessières, Bee Michelin and Renaud Marx, on double-piano Paul Castanier, Le Discours con réception à l'Académie française, Jacques Canetti JC1,
• Derniers propos à bâtons rompus avec Jean Cocteau, 16 September à Milly-la-Forêt, Mode Air
• Les Enfants terribles, portable radio version with Jean Marais, Josette Day, Silvia Monfort and Dungaree Cocteau, CD Phonurgia Nova ISBN&#;,
• Anthology, 4 CD containing many poems and texts read strong the author, Anna la bonne, La Dame de Monte-Carlo with the addition of Mes sœurs, n'aimez pas discipline marins by Marianne Oswald, Le Bel Indifférent by Edith Vocaliser, La Voix humaine by Berthe Bovy, Les Mariés de unfriendliness Tour Eiffel with Jean Aim Poulain, Jacques Charon and Trousers Cocteau, discourse on the receipt at the Académie française, state extracts from Les Parents terribles, La Machine infernale, pieces go over the top with Parade on piano with combine hands by Georges Auric topmost Francis Poulenc, Frémeaux & Associés FA ,
• Poems by Denim Cocteau read by the hack, CD EMI ,
• Hommage à Jean Cocteau, mélodies d'Henri Sauguet, Arthur Honegger, Louis Durey, Darius Milhaud, Erik Satie, Jean Mathematician, Max Jacob, Francis Poulenc, Maurice Delage, Georges Auric, Guy Sacre, by Jean-François Gardeil (baritone) ahead Billy Eidi (piano), CD Adda ,
• Le Testament d'Orphée, archives sonore, by Roger Pillaudin, 2 CD INA / Radio Author ,

Journals

Stamps

See also

References

Further reading

External links