COCTEAU Jean - Lot 127

Lot n° 127
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Estimation :
1000 - 1500 EUR
COCTEAU Jean - Lot 127
COCTEAU Jean Autograph MANUSCRIT signed "Jean Cocteau",[Devant l'Aurige, 1953]; 5 pages in-4 with blue ballpoint pen. Beautiful evocation of the Aurige de Delphes. This text was written for Doré OGRIZEK's book La Grèce (collection "Le Monde en couleurs", Éditions Odé, 1953); it was published in Les Nouvelles littéraires on 12 November 1953. "I have always considered the Aurige of Delphi as a blind man in motion, a sign of the time that deceives us, a votive column with enamel eyes and bronze eyelashes, a continuity of that Greece whose role I am not qualified to say in the disorder of the world, but to whom, by virtue of the power conferred on poets, I bestow the order of myth, invisible and sovereign order. [...] Poor little Aurige! His toes were resting in a chariot harnessed with horses. He announced the amphitheatre of Delphi. Amputated, deprived of his carriage, he doesn't stop. He's just hitchhiking. He calmly attacks a base"... Resolutely taking the side of myth against history, he states a principle that sheds light on its entire aesthetic: "The genealogy of mythologists is less suspicious than that of historians. Because history is distorted in the long run and myth is formed in the long run. Because history is of the true that becomes false and myth is false that asserts itself".... Then he talks about his recent trip to Greece, where "one begins to hope instead of despair in the open cage of the Pallas grasshopper"... We attach the typewritten text.
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