Jean Cocteau – Poem in homage to Charles Ferdinand Ramuz.
"Of the devil and the little devils / Ramuz knows the car / Blood red is its paint / The red stripes of its zebras"
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"Of the devil and the little devils / Ramuz knows the car / Blood red is its paint / The red stripes of its zebras"
Sold
Jean Cocteau (1889.1963)
Unpublished autograph poem.
One page in quarto with frayed edges.
Residual trace of stamp.
Slnd.
An astonishing first draft poem – bearing erasures and corrections – in homage to his friend, the Swiss writer Charles Ferdinand Ramuz.
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Of the devil and his little devils
Ramuz knows the car
Blood red is his painting
From its red zebras, the rays
Of the devil and his little devils
The sedan has five wheels
The white road, she wheeled
It looks like beatings with a stick
The mustache, the eyelids,
The careful choice of words
They hide the secret of the stones
And animal spirits
The fühn (the spring wind)
Breathe and sow madness
But, calmly, Ramuz waits
May the trees know how to read.
Cocteau here places his friend Ramuz in perfect harmony with the surrounding Swiss mountains. Indeed, before being called the Tour Saint Martin, one of the peaks of Les Diablerets (a resort in the canton of Vaud) was known as the Quille du Diable (Devil's Skittle). The numerous legends about this alpine devil inspired Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz (1878-1947) for his novel Derborence.