Jean COCTEAU – Illustrated manuscript – Indirect criticism essay. 1932.

Jean Cocteau (1889.1963)

Illustrated autograph manuscript – Indirect criticism essay

Four pages large in-4° in pencil

Without place or date. [1932]

Magnificent working manuscript, first draft, in very dense writing, and illustrated with two profiles of men and two erect phalluses. Numerous variations regarding the text of this criticism finally published by Grasset in 1932.

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In Bin-Hounien, Seabrook saw the little Negro princesses impaled on the jugglers' swords. […] If for centuries, instead of looking at Bourget's monocle, on psychology or the relationship between men, Europe had looked, like these blacks, at deep chemistry, at the relationships between them of fluids and atoms, perhaps piercing flesh with a saber and not disorganizing it any more than mercury or water would seem natural to us as this method allowing playwrights to end well, moral wounds to heal under the influence of a smile.

The little black women who come out of the enclosure intact, after having been pierced right through, it is nothing other than the happy outcome of an organic disorder, a conflict of flesh which is resolved, instead of the outcome of a superficial disorder of the organism. 

I emphasize, in passing, the funniest. The man remains incredulous and yet he considers this physical disorder contemptible. He is not surprised that a disorder that he finds profound and noble leaves no trace. Widows consoled, etc.

Bad news gives us jaundice, neuritis. At Salpêtrière, we provoke stigmata. A great Negro playwright (the juggler) shows a sleeping body – 1st act – Disturbs its elements – 2nd act – Puts its elements back in order – 3rd act. Outcome.

It is curious that Europe does not know that we can put to sleep the spirits of which man is made as well as his mind.

The truth of all this is that the European places his body very high and recites with Jules Lemaitre this disgusting prayer: “My God, preserve me from physical suffering; for the moral suffering I take care of it. »

The Orientals, the Blacks, endure the tortures because, among them, the strength of soul also controls the form of the soul, that is to say the body. The Aissaouas who dance stabbed, the buried fakirs, pierced with needles, demonstrate oriental fortitude. Our mania for understanding only lets us sleep with one eye open. But it's all a question of sleep. Sleep of plants, beasts, fakirs, Voodoo.

The Princess of San Dei is sleeping, but she is sleeping inside and out. The saber which crosses it crosses a thousand little sleepers who do not know it, who move aside, and who return to their original place without having noticed anything.