Jean Cocteau motto on the United States and writes his letter to the Americans.

Jean Cocteau (1889.1963)

Autograph manuscript signed - American.

Two ½ pages in-4 °.

Autograph notes in pencil on the back of the 3 ^rd sheet.

Without place or date. [1949]

“Everywhere, in America, a minority piles and gives itself a prisoner of a dummy freedom. »»

Jean Cocteau addresses Americans in proselyte poet of old Europe.

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"Americans.

What is the nightmare of your city standing standing, I ask you? The atomic bomb. It exists and you don't want it to exist. We don't talk more about your table than rope at the hanged. And as you need excuses for it to exist, you unconsciously increase this modern slope towards dead thought [this is the reason for the success of the ballets in New York where gesticulation seeks to replace the words.], Because if the thought had dead explosives would only destroy emptiness and no longer kill anything.

I don't admire a race as a race. A breed is neither bad nor good. I only like a breed if it is oppressed. Because, even innumerable, if it is oppressed, a race is a minority. Now a minority will always prevail in my heart over a majority since a majority oppresses a minority because of some superiority over it and the remorse that this minority gives it.

A breed that oppresses another is detestable. If the oppressed race oppresses in turn, it will become detestable. Do you not know that we are eternally on the wrong side of the barricade we minority of the old Europe and that this bad side prevails in the long run, in this time that bothers you, you who want to live the present minute, in love with success and success.

You will not be saved by arms or fortune.  You will be saved by the minority of those who think. By your secret souls, not your little ones [?], By your madness sums up that Edgar Poe sums up, in short by your poets, whatever the ink of which they use, and your cinematograph is not the least of these inks, an ink of light that the false morals fill with water and prevent from blossoming.

Anonymous companies are less strong, in the end, than a hidden name which gradually draws up. Everywhere, in America, a minority is pledging and gives itself a prisoner of a dummy freedom and almost worse than the imperialism of dictators.

I sum up. It would be enough to have a stroke of luck for your complexes, your Protestant reserve, your anxiety, your fears will vanish, that your spirit buds, swarms, explores under control with the gigantic eroticism of the spring of your southern campaigns.

A chemistry directs the universe, an indifferent chemistry and superior to our actions : but, do not forget, the rhythm of the world is that he breathes like your chest, that his lungs expand and contract in turn. We are victims of a period when the lungs empty. The world expires . He no longer thinks. He spends . His breath destroys his harvests. Wait for it to fill its lungs again.

Since he disintegrates, wait for him to become again integrated and that he concentrates until he is only the lamp of a attic who thinks and who risks saving men. Jean Cocteau. »»

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After spending almost a month in New York, in 1949, Cocteau wrote - upon his return by plane - a letter to his hosts who will be published by Grasset under the title of "Letter to the Americans"