COCTEAU Jean - Lot 76

Lot n° 76
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Estimation :
1500 - 2000 EUR
COCTEAU Jean - Lot 76
COCTEAU Jean 7 L.A. (minutes, some signed),[1938]; 20 pages in-4 or in-8. Interesting together about the banning of his play Les Parents terribles by the City of Paris. These are drafts of Jean Cocteau's letters to various bodies, including the President of the Paris City Council, the Prefect of Police and the City Council of the City of Paris, and even the President of the Republic. Created on November 14, 1938, the piece was immediately a triumph, despite attacks from a certain press that saw it as an apology for incest. But when the director of the Théâtre des Ambassadeurs, where the play was performed, thought of offering free mornings to school children, it was a scandal: they talked about an invitation to debauchery. The City of Paris, represented by the City Council, was in fact partly in charge of the theatre; and it forced it to withdraw the work. Playwright Henry Bernstein supported these manoeuvres. "The City Council has just made itself ashamed and ridiculous. By what right, I ask, do forty-seven uncultivated gentlemen dare to take measures with regard to the youth of schools, which should only be taken by their teachers? In a deleted postscript, Cocteau reacts to the "police threats" made against him: "For thirty years, I have lived in a glass house. If I do terrible things, I shout them from the rooftops, I only ask for a scandal that would allow me to express myself in the open"... To the President of the City Council. "I no longer hesitate to address your High Authority to complain, not that I am being deprived of the theatre where I will not stay under any pretext (all the directors of Paris having offered me their rooms), but of an insult and an injustice likely to compromise my work and the French Letters abroad. The City Council ruled, without knowing my play, that it was pornographic. .... Council's manoeuvre is based on bad faith. I did not summon the pupils of the schools but their teachers, so that they could decide for thems
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