COCTEAU Jean - Lot 84

Lot n° 84
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Estimation :
2500 - 3000 EUR
COCTEAU Jean - Lot 84
COCTEAU Jean Original design, Eluard de tête, with autographed MANUSCRIT signed "Jean Cocteau",[circa 1942]; graphite, 15 x 9 cm, on an in-4 sheet written on both sides. An astonishing portrait of Paul Eluard, with a draft letter to Marshal Pétain. The portrait of Paul ELUARD, in a frontal bust, is drawn with graphite on one half of the page; opposite, another small original drawing (15 x 1 cm, lead pencil), representing a male profile extended downwards by a wavy line decorated with dots, is drawn on the margin of a draft pencil letter to Marshal Petain, where Cocteau protests against the ban on his piece Renaud et Armide, received on 19 January 1942 by the Comédie-Française reading committee and then refused on 21 January by administrator Jean-Louis Vaudoyer on the order of Secretary of State Jérôme Carcopino "There are only 2 possible attitudes in life. The military hero or the saint. Napoleon is lost by a traitor. The traitor is the leader. In our field, holiness only gives trouble, as if it were right. Because the straight line is incomprehensible at the meander [...] Sometimes I wake up at night and wonder why I am being overwhelmed by incredible injustices. It's the price of being clean. On the back, a longer version of the letter, signed, erased and corrected, is written in ink: "But the press that you know and that strives to pit the French against each other hastened to act this time in silence. Undoubtedly misinformed by her, Mr CARCOPINO, the day after the Committee's decision, told Mr Vaudoyer, the administrator, that I was not a desirable author at the Comédie- Française. It was unacceptable for me, for the letters, for the Comédie-Française, where my Human Voice is in the repertoire and which for months had been asking me to write this work and was following its progress. It is therefore in my name and in the name of the actors that I ask for justice. It is my honour that I must defend and that of a house that should be unassailable and t
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