COCTEAU Jean (1889-1963)

Lot 358
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6000 - 8000 EUR
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Result : 5 460EUR
COCTEAU Jean (1889-1963)
Approximately 57 signed autograph letters and postcards, and 9 telegrams, [1910-1937], to Marie SCHEIKEVITCH; 73 pages of various sizes, numerous envelopes and addresses; plus a few letters and annexed documents; all mounted on laid paper and bound in an in-folio volume. Half havana chagrin (G. Gauché). Binding a little rubbed. Very beautiful, tender, almost amorous correspondence from Cocteau to his "fiancée" who was also Marcel Proust's muse. Marie Scheikévitch (1882-1964) was for Cocteau, as she was for Proust, a friend and a protector; she played an important role, through her social relations, in making Cocteau's first poetic works known, and in introducing him into the literary world. Cocteau seems to have been very much in love with this beautiful, worldly, intelligent and highly cultured woman. From 1913 onwards, the relationship gradually weakens, without ceasing altogether. Cocteau signed his letters with his name, his first name, then "Jean Coq" or "Coq", and addressed his "great friend" with tender names: "Marie", "Edwige", "Chérie", "Chère fi ancée", "Machinka chérie", etc. The correspondence began in 1910. [Maisons-Laffi tte October 10, 1910], evoking Nijinsky and Diaghilev, Reynaldo HAHN for whom Cocteau is going to write the libretto of the ballet Le Dieu bleu, and d'Annunzio: "The young Russian ballerina and his mahout are in your walls. I think we will work for them with Reynaldo. They no longer count on the bald voluptuous child whose promises are vague. What evenings in prospect when we shall see the snow lady [Marie Scheikévitch] with her crown of victory, damnably unmutilated!" ... 1911. [April]. Having been ill, Cocteau stays at Cap-Martin with his mother: "The sublime blue, the warm sound of the sea spread like a silence, the mythological memories exhilarate and relax me at the same time. I think of you constantly and more than of any other. With what kindness you bent over me at the moment when I needed an "Irene", how simple, pretty, spontaneous, sweet and profound you are"... - "I think and think again about you. You are more in my poor life than you seem to believe, and our little pact saves me many a foolish thing to do and consoles me for many a foolish thing done" ... - "Liebe Kleine, Queen etc... I envy your radium and your garlic. Parisians contaminate each other and exchange bacilli. This laboratory pool is unbreathable; only a few ladies anointed with goose fat resist and swim. [...] I'm running out of oxygen!" ... In May-June, Marie Scheikévitch leaves for London, and Cocteau complains about not having any news: "It's another sadness added to the thousand sadnesses that slyly detract from my character" ... July 28th, while the "great friend" is on holiday at Evian: "I've just come out of an intense period of work and that's why I haven't made the slightest sign to you. My work interludes are full of silliness and bad temper! What an atmosphere! One stirs electric and slow limbs as if in warm water, and I remain there, an unfortunate thinking pile which says to itself "they are going to touch my thread with another thread! O inconsistent hands of chance! and I am going to jump, burst, melt!" ... August 17, he begs "Machinka chérie" to obtain an article by Jules Lemaitre on Sophocles' Dance, after a "monstrous" article by Guy de Lubersac: "I cry! I weep!" ...September 12, he thanks "Séléné la blanche" for having spoken about him to "Séléné la brune" [Anna de Noailles]: "I thank you for having spoken about me and my verses to this admirable person who is poorly instructed by jealous guards. [...] I need your advice, your calm, your support, your heart. My dirty egoism calls you. I am quite alone in spite of mother and I send my unalterable affection to meet you"... November 1st : "You are, after mother, the person I respect and admire most in the world" ... [23 November], after a performance of Lucretia Borgia by Sarah Bernhardt : "Sarah, so monstrous and so sublime, this immense and ridiculous work, these hideous and grandiose sceneries, form an overwhelming whole. [...] Sarah, bowing at the end, gave me the impression of God after the 7th day. This is the highest expression of the "inferior theatrical genre". Besides, the melodrama of noble style and indisputable interest seems to me to be the most perfect form of what should be played on a stage" ... 1912. In March, postcards from Cocteau's stay in Algeria. In June, he urges Marie to intervene with Calmette to obtain a note in Le Figaro, "indispensable for pushing the big, indolent, literary ladies"... In August, amusing worldly news from Paris... September, a visit to the Rostands in Arnaga: "Maurice carries a curly cow dung in balance on his back.
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