COCTEAU Jean

Lot 16
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Result : 15 000EUR
COCTEAU Jean
Autograph notebook,[1919-1920]; 79 oblong sheets in-8 (13.5 x 20.5 cm), most of which are written recto and verso, in ink and pencil, mounted on tabs; bound in an oblong volume in-8, red half marble with stripes, smooth back with a gold title with letters surrounded and crossed by a palladium net, golden Cocteau star on the first dish band, golden head, preserved covers (Paul Bonet). Precious notebook, a true laboratory of Cocteau's creation when he just met Radiguet: poems, reflections on cubism, aphorisms, notes on current literary and artistic events, draft letters, drawings or sketches. Cocteau took this notebook with him during his August-September 1919 holidays in the Basque Country, then in Provence, notably in Grasse in Francis de Croisset's villa, and entrusted him with all the thoughts he considered important. This decisive period in his life was very rich: engaged in the literary and artistic avant-garde of the post-war period, he began to look back on himself under the influence of Raymond Radiguet, whose clear classism attracted him. This capital notebook has remained unknown to Cocteau's exegetes. Poems. The beginning of the notebook (ff. 3-39) is mainly devoted to poetry, to the first draft and to the elaboration of poems, most of which will appear in the collection Poésies (1917-1920) published in May 1920 by La Sirène: Cocteau has written here highly reworked intermediate versions, and thrown first ideas, sketches, sometimes not repeated. Among them are the following poems, including the six forming the sequence of "Cartes posta les" (Cette, Lourdes, Marseille le soir, Marseille le matin, Aix, La Maison de Cézanne): Madrigal (f. 1, Pléiade p. 346); Fête de Montmartre" (ff. 5-7 and 9-12, several successive versions some with provisional titles: Encore un tour, Départs, Timbre poste, Le Pied marin); Voyage de noces (f. 8); This (ff. 13-14); Sundial (f. 14 v); Marseille in the evening (ff. 16-17 and 19, with pro
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