COCTEAU Jean (1889-1963)

Lot 364
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Estimation :
5000 - 6000 EUR
COCTEAU Jean (1889-1963)
Retrouvons notre enfance, autograph manuscript signed S.l., 1935, 134 pages in-4 in ink. Important manuscript of reportage poetry, recounting a cruise off the Côte d'Azur with Marcel Khill, from Villefranche-sur-Mer to Toulon, evoking old stays in the company of Radiguet and his friends. At the end of July 1935, Cocteau leaves Villefranche-sur-Mer on a fishing boat in the company of Marcel Khill; they arrive in Toulon on August 8th, after sailing along the coast and passing through Cannes, the islands of Lérins, Saint-Tropez, Port-Cros, Porquerolles, and Saint-Mandrier, and meeting many friends: Daisy Fellowes, Colette, Joseph Kessel, Moïse Kisling, and Jean Desbordes. But Cocteau projects a nostalgic memory of these places, evoking the heroic days of the Welcome Hotel in Villefranche with Christian Bérard and Igor Stravinsky, and the holidays in Lavandou and Pramousquier with Raymond Radiguet. This report was published in ten articles in Paris-Soir, from 6 to 16 August 1935. The manuscript shows that Cocteau had planned to put these articles together in a volume; they were not published in volume until 1973, by Pierre Chanel, in Poésie de journalisme (Pierre Belfond, 1973). The manuscripts, in their first draft, contain numerous corrections, with important variants and unpublished passages; it is the diary that apparently made the reworkings and cuts. The beginning of the manuscript must be missing about ten pages, and it also has many framed headings (we will mention only a few), dividing the text into sequences, headings that were deleted in the publication.
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