COCTEAU JEAN (1889-1963).

Lot 62
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Estimation :
800 - 1000 EUR
COCTEAU JEAN (1889-1963).
MANUSCRIT autograph signed "Jean Cocteau", [Devant l'Aurige, 1953]; 5 pages in-4 in blue ballpoint pen (typescript attached). Beautiful evocation of the Aurige of Delphi. This text was written for the work of Doré OGRIZEK, La Grèce (collection "Le Monde en couleurs", Éditions Odé, 1953); it was published in Les Nouvelles littéraires of November 12, 1953. "I always considered the Aurige of Delphi as a blind man in motionless walk, a sign of the time which dupes us, of a votive column to the eyes of enamel and to the lashes of bronze, a continuity of this Greece of which I do not have quality to say the role which it plays in the disorder of the world, but to which, by virtue of the power conferred on the poets, I award the order of the myth, invisible and sovereign order. [...] Poor little Aurige! His toes rested in a chariot harnessed with horses. It announced the amphitheatre of Delphi. Amputated, deprived of his carriage, he does not stop. He only makes the gesture of the stop. He calmly struggles on a base"... Taking resolutely the side of the myth against the history, he enunciates a principle which enlightens all his aesthetics: "The genealogy of the mythologists is less suspicious than that of the historians. Because the history is deformed in the long run and the myth is formed in the long run. Because the history is of the true which becomes false and that the myth is of the false which is affirmed"... Then he evokes his recent trip to Greece, where "one starts to hope instead of despairing in the open cage of the grasshopper Pallas"... An autograph MANUSCRIT is attached, [1954] (1 page and a half in-4). Notes for his journal. This manuscript consists of eleven entries, separated by asterisks. These are not daily notes, but rather reflections on himself and his work. "Oedipus-King. As for the great tapestry of the Antibes Museum, I try to paint while writing, to tell". On his participation in the film by Hans RICHTER and Marcel DUCHAMP, La Partie d'échecs de Marcel Duchamp: "Almost all my sequence is turned upside down, against the principle of causality. The effects occur there before the cause"... On the villa Santo-Sospir: "In 1950 I began the tattooing of the walls. I made the ceilings in 1953, as well as the mosaics of the porch"... On the misunderstanding between him and the public: "I have never read about me that inaccuracies, things I have never done or said. And I only like accuracy. It's bad luck"... Etc.
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