COCTEAU Jean (1889-1963)

Lot 366
Go to lot
Estimation :
1500 - 2000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 6 326EUR
COCTEAU Jean (1889-1963)
Portrait of Paul Éluard, original drawing and autograph manuscript signed Jean COCTEAU, [ca. 1942]; graphite, 15 x 9 cm, on one in-4 sheet written recto-verso. Amazing portrait of Paul Éluard, with a draft of a letter to Marshal Pétain. The portrait of Paul éLUARD, in full face bust, is drawn in graphite on one half of the page; opposite, another small original drawing (15 x 1 cm, in graphite), representing a male profile extended downwards by a wavy line decorated with dots, is drawn in the margin of a draft in pencil of a letter to Marshal PÉTAIN, in which Cocteau protests against the banning of his play Renaud et Armide, received on 19 January 1942 by the Comédie-Française reading committee and then refused on 21 January by the administrator Jean-Louis Vaudoyer on the orders of the Secretary of State Jérôme Carcopino. "There are only two possible attitudes in life. The military hero or the saint. Napoleon was lost to a traitor. The traitor makes the leader. [...] In our field holiness only gives trouble, as it should. For the straight line is incomprehensible to the meandering [...] Sometimes I wake up at night and wonder why I am burdened with incredible injustices. [...] That is the price of being clean". On the back, a longer version of the letter, signed, with erasures and corrections, is written in ink: "But the press that you know and that is bent on setting the French against each other has hastened to act this time in silence. No doubt misinformed by it, Mr. CARCOPINO, the day after the decision of the Committee, told Mr. Vaudoyer, the administrator, that I was not a desirable author at the Comédie-Française. This was inadmissible for me, for letters, for the Comédie-Française where my Voix humaine is in the repertoire and which for months had been asking me to write this work and 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 company which should be unassailable and which is also covered in insults by the same press that hunts me down and dares to criticise you. Mr Maréchal, my only policy is to follow you and to take a leap of faith as far as you are concerned. As I have never been involved in politics, I cannot follow any other. Believing in you, it is to you that I address myself. I am not unaware that your heavy burden prevents you from looking at such problems - but I have blind confidence in your justice and I cannot believe that the honour of a writer who has brought glory to France in all countries, leaves you indifferent. Exhibition Jean Cocteau, sur le fi l du siècle (Centre Georges Pompidou, 2003, n° 231). PROVENANCE Pierre and Franca Belfond.
My orders
Sale information
Sales conditions
Return to catalogue