COCTEAU Jean - Lot 141

Lot n° 141
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1500 - 2000 EUR
COCTEAU Jean - Lot 141
COCTEAU Jean Autograph MANUSCRIT signed "Jean Cocteau", Preface for The Princess of Cleves,[1960]; 10 and a half pages in-4. Nice analysis of Madame de La Fayette's masterpiece. Preface written for an edition of La Princesse de Clèves by Le Livre Club du Libraire (1960), on the occasion of the release of the film by Jean Delannoy, adapted and dialogued by Cocteau. "Madame de La Fayette was a great friend of La Rochefoucauld. ...] while La Rochefoucauld summarizes her work in a few sentences, Madame de La Fayette does not hesitate to build a delicate and great machine inspired by the circulation of blood and the tree of nerves, and La Princesse de Clèves is a "kind of realistic fairytale as white, as light, as compact as snow. His style of saying obscure things as clearly as possible, as simply as possible complex things, is the height of elegance"... After rejecting the accusation of frivolity, Cocteau engages in variations on genius, inspiration and poetry: "Poetry is made up of numbers and algebras. It is precise. [...] Madame de La Fayette is a great poet"... At the end of his text, Cocteau evokes the memory of Raymond RADIGUET: "It was in front of the Princess of Cleves that Raymond Radiguet erected his easel to, he said, copy it. The result was The Ball of the Count of Orgel".... Attach the typewritten text (6 pages in-4).
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