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Pierre KLOSSOWSKI (Maurice BEJART)

Lettre autographe signée au chorégraphe Maurice Béjart

Paris 5 août 1969, 21x27cm, trois feuilles.

Handwritten letter signed by the writer Pierre Klossowski addressed to Maurice Béjart, dated 5 August 1969.
58 lines written in black ink on three leaves.
Interesting letter regarding choreographer Maurice Béjart's project to adapt Klossowski's Baphomet into a ballet.
Klossowski had met Maurice Béjart through a mutual friend, the writer and film maker François Weyergans. The idea of a ballet based on Klossowski's book Le Baphomet was born out of this meeting. This medieval baroque tale, published four years earlier, recounted the mystical vicissitudes and the religious divides of the Templar. The writer, obsessed by the project, confided his doubts about such an undertaking, which seemed impossible to achieve due to the many pitfalls: "Plus je m'évertue à esquisser quelques ébauches de synopsis, et plus sûrement je m'égare [...] je n'arrive pas à sortir d'une visualisation théâtrale” “The more I strive to sketch out the draft of the synopsis, the more I lose my way [...] I am not able to escape a theatrical visualisation.” There are fascinating passages questioning the relative permeability between the literary text and the ballet scene: "Il me semble maintenant que c'est non point le tableau mais la trame verbale - le mouvement de la parole et ses développements qui offriraient les éléments des figures que seul votre génie puisse réinventer à sa guise !” “It now seems to me that it is not the visual picture but the verbal thread - the movement of the words and their developments that would present the characteristics of the characters that only your expertise can reinvent as you please!” At the end of the letter he writes a list of the three scenes to adapt and shares an idea for a very original production: "(J'avais imaginé que l'on assisterait à l'animation de la statue de Ste Thérèse du Bernin - le page simulant la statue - donc jouant la moniale pour figurer le Baphomet - mais voilà encore du « théâtre »)” “(I had imagined that we would see the animation of the Ste Thérèse du Bernin statue - the page resembling the statue - therefore casting the nun to represent Baphomet - well, even more “theatre”)”. 
Despite Klossowski's efforts, the collaboration project with Béjart never happened. Nevertheless, the two artists remained close, and their correspondence, of which we still found examples dated 1991, testifies to their longstanding friendship.
 

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