Appogiatures - Manuscrit autographe d'une version primitive en partie inédite

Autograph manuscript by Jean Cocteau, early version of the poetry collection Appogiatures - published in 1953 by Éditions du Rocher in Monaco - comprising 47 leaves of thick paper taken from a large drawing pad and 5 smaller leaves of thin paper, written in blue ink and blue ballpoint pen. Numerous deletions and corrections. The leaves are numbered up to 25 (including one number 8 bis) and most bear a small cross or the mythical Cocteau star. The last leaf, containing the poem titled "Lettre," is dated in the poet's hand August, 15, 1952. Also in Cocteau's hand, the first leaf bears the final title, above which is crossed out the initially envisaged title - Soucoupes volantes - the date 1952 and the place - St Jean Cap Ferrat; it also features a crossed-out dedication: "À la mémoire de Baudelaire et de Max Jacob qui nous apprirent ces exercices de style." While the collection clearly shows the influence of Baudelaire's Petits Poèmes en prose and Max Jacob's Le Cornet à dés, this tribute was not retained in the published version and was replaced by a dedication to the publisher Henri Parisot.

An exceptional ensemble containing 33 of the 51 published poems, 11 texts rejected on the advice of publisher Henri Parisot and published in "En marge d'Appogiatures" (Œuvres poétiques complètes de la Pléiade, pp. 818-831) and 6 unpublished texts.

David Gullentops, in the edition of Jean Cocteau's Œuvres poétiques complètes in the Pléiade, notes the existence of a second set of manuscripts and typescripts, preserved at the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris (BHVP). He further indicates that he had access to no manuscript of the poem "Lanterne sourde." Yet this poem is indeed part of our ensemble, which would thus be the first version of the collection envisioned by Cocteau.

Jean Cocteau began writing this collection of poems in verse and prose, commissioned by his friend the publisher Henri Parisot, at the end of July 1952 while staying at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat in Francine Weisweiller's Villa Santo-Sospir. The first version of the collection was completed in mid-August, as attested by the two dates on our manuscript ("août 1952" and "15 août 1952") and this entry in Cocteau's diary: "J'ai terminé la mise au point des courts poèmes en prose pour Parisot. Il y en aura vingt-six, à moins que le mécanisme continue, ce que je ne souhaite pas car, à la longue, ces exercices d'écriture, illustrés par Baudelaire et Max Jacob, fatiguent." (Le Passé défini, Tome 1, 1951-1952, August 14, 1952). Our ensemble would thus be a mixture of the first poems sent to Henri Parisot, written with a pen, and several added texts, written with a ballpoint pen. This hypothesis is supported by the writing of the final title Appogiatures on the title page of our manuscript; Cocteau relates this change, again in his diary, dated August 29, 1952: "Ai [...] classé les poèmes pour Parisot sous le titre : Appogiatures."

Our early manuscript version contains significant variants concerning the titles of the poems; thus the poem "Livre de bord" was initially titled "Le Spectacle," likewise for "Au poil" for which Cocteau had previously chosen "La langue française," or "Le tableau noir" originally titled "Le lièvre et la tortue." The order of the poems was also considerably modified for printing: our ensemble shows that Cocteau wished to begin the collection with "Le voyageur," which would finally be replaced by "Seul" and moved to second position. Also noteworthy in our dossier is the presence of eight poems entirely in verse: these would be removed, Appogiatures becoming a collection exclusively in prose.

The ensemble, heavily deleted and corrected, also presents long passages suppressed in the published version, for example this very beautiful extract from the poem "Scène de ménage" evoking the "countess" Francine Weisweiller: "Et les larmes de la comtesse se disaient : nous sommes la mer. Et la mer se disait : Je suis les larmes de la comtesse. Et les vagues se disaient : je suis la bave du comte. Et le comte se disait : je suis les vagues."; likewise for the conclusion of "Le Fantôme réaliste": "Il en serait mort de honte, si la mort n'était interdite aux fantômes. Un jour, de rage, il décida de lancer l'école du réalisme fantomatique. Et, fort vite, ce furent les autres fantômes qui, sans succès, voulurent le suivre." or seventeen lines from "Le Cœur au ventre" (leaf 25 of our manuscript, transcribed in "En marge d'Appogiatures"): "[...] Douce douce était la terre / Douce à la main douce au cœur / Il est injuste de le taire / De quoi donc auriez-vous peur / soldats abandonnant vos armes / Vous devez défendre ses charmes / Car douce est la douleur [...]"

Finally, this remarkable ensemble contains six entirely unpublished poems ("Le pêcheur," "Antibes," "Art poétique," "Sous toute réserve," "L'accordéonaniste" and "Lettre") appearing neither in any subsequent collection by Jean Cocteau nor in "En marge d'Appogiatures" in the Pléiade.

Provenance: Carole Weisweiller collection, daughter of Francine Weisweiller. Cocteau made the acquaintance of Francine Weisweiller, producer of Les Enfants terribles, in 1949. The opium-addicted poet's career was then in decline and this new friend, nearly thirty years his junior, gave him a new lease on life. She opened the doors of her private mansion on Place des États-Unis and especially those of her villa at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, on whose walls Cocteau painted superb frescoes. Francine became Jean's muse and patron and would use her influence to have him elected to the Académie française.