COCTEAU JEAN (1889-1963).

Lot 52
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Estimation :
2000 - 3000 EUR
COCTEAU JEAN (1889-1963).
9 autograph MANUSCRITS, [Monologues and songs, 1940 ?]; 21 pages in-4. Important set of songs and monologues written for Jean Marais. It is thought that these texts were written in part in the summer of 1940, in Perpignan where the exodus led Cocteau, and where Jean Marais, demobilized, came to join him. These monologues and songs were collected in the Théâtre de poche (Paul Morihien, 1949), and included in the Théâtre complet de la Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, to which we refer. Jean Marais recorded some of these songs in 1965. Le menteur (5 pages in-4, Pl. 1344), a monologue in which Cocteau develops the theme that is dear to him of the paradox of the liar. This text was spoken on the radio by Jean Marais with a musical accompaniment by Jean Wiener. "I would like to tell the truth. I love the truth. But it does not like me. [...] Am I a liar? I ask you? I am rather a lie. A lie that always tells the truth". Follows a quatrain (after a crossed-out sizain) not retained in the published version. La farce du château (3 pages in-4 and 1 page in-fol., Pl. 1351). "I have a mania for mystifications and pranks"... Monologue of a tutor who, in order to play a prank, disguises himself as a ghost, as well as his pupils, who discover their mother going to find her lover. The last page, in pencil, a little split, uses a page of album with a drawing on the back. [L'assassin] (5 pages in-4, Pl. 1354), monologue in verse, in a longer version than the one published (see Pl. 1825), with erasures and corrections. Confession of a murderer who is not believed : "There are people fed with dreams / And who suffer from having read too much / I have made too many lies / My tragedy is that I am not believed anymore"... Spoken song (1 page in-4, Pl. 1355), working manuscript of this song with erasures and corrections, in 9 numbered quatrains (8 in the published version, the 9th unpublished). "There are words / That are worth songs / Word and song fly / Each in their own way"... La gamme (1 page in-4, Pl. 1357), 14 lines, with erasures and corrections. "You turn your back on me madam - do-do-do-do"... (Tapuscript attached). Mon pays (1 page in-4, Pl. 1358), 7 cinquains and a final quatrain, with 5 stanzas crossed out. "There is a country where we love each other / And where nobody is mean"... Les veuves (1 page in-4, Pl. 1359), 7 numbered stanzas; the manuscript is much crossed out and corrected. "When one goes down the river / The river, the river / One meets widows"... Les îles marquises (2 pages in-4, Pl. 1365). "The Frenchman, born marquis invented the marquises / In the marquise islands / Even the houses / Wear marquises"... Chansonnette (1 page in-4, Pl. 1368), 22 verses, with some erasures and corrections. "An eye which flies / It is a bird"... Plus the manuscript copied by Jean Marais of the monologue Lis ton journal (4 pages in-4, Pl. 1350). Provenance : Carole WEISWEILLER. Original edition, one of the 35 first copies on Annam paper (n° 6), accompanied by two suites, one in black, the other in sanguine, of the two lithographs out of text by Jean Cocteau.
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