Jean Cocteau - The Difficulty of Being

One of the most inspiring creatorsand self-creationsof the twentieth century.

THE NEW YORKER

To enclose the collected works of Cocteau one would need not a bookshelf, but a warehouse.

W. H. AUDEN

One of the master craftsmen.

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

A [man] to whom every great line of poetry was a sunrise, every sunset the foundations of the Heavenly City.

EDITH WHARTON

[Cocteau] had, and still has, a huge influence on the avant-garde of American film.

THE GUARDIAN

Cocteau has the freest mind, and the purest, in Europe

EZRA POUND

A comet that passed over French cinema, throwing a vivid light on the landscape.

DAVID THOMSON,
THE NEW BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF FILM

He left his mark on an entire era.

NEW YORK TIMES

A true Renaissance man.

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

Brilliant jack-of-all-trades, longtime adept in the art of enchantment, this creator whose originality eluded the confines of any particular artistic or literary movement dedicated himself to but a single master: astonishment, his own as much as that of others.

ACADEMIE FRANCAISE

THE DIFFICULTY OF BEING

JEAN COCTEAU (18891963) was born in the Paris suburbs to a wealthy family. His father, a prominent attorney and amateur painter, committed suicide when Cocteau was nine, and he was sent off to a private schoolfrom which he was expelled a few years later. Cocteau ran off to Marseille and then Paris, where he haunted theatrical and artistic circles. He published his first volume of poetry, Aladdins Lamp, at nineteen, and another two years later called The Frivolous Prince, which became his nickname. He soon circulated in the highest ranks of Parisian bohemia and counted Proust and Gide among his friends. During World War I, he served with the Red Cross as an ambulance driver, a period in which he met and became close to Apollinaire, Picasso, Modigliani, and many others with whom he would later collaborate. A leading exponent of avant-garde art, he created scenarios for the Ballet Russes and librettos for operas by Stravinsky and Satie. He wrote and directed his own films, including Beauty and the Beast, a seminal work in cinema history, and Orpheus. His other important works include the play The Human Voice and the novel The Holy Terrors. Known in his lifetime for a libertine lifestylehe lived with the actor Jean Marais and was, at one time, an opium addictCocteau died of a heart attack after being informed of the death of his friend, the singer Edith Piaf.

ELIZABETH SPRIGGE (190074) translated the works of Jean Cocteau and August Strindberg. She was also the author of a biography of Gertrude Stein.

GEOFFREY OBRIEN is the editor in chief of the Library of America. His writing has been collected in Stolen Glimpses, Captive Shadows: Writing on Film, 20022012.

THE NEVERSINK LIBRARY

I was by no means the only reader of books on board the Neversink. Several other sailors were diligent readers, though their studies did not lie in the way of belles-lettres. Their favourite authors were such as you may find at the book-stalls around Fulton Market; they were slightly physiological in their nature. My book experiences on board of the frigate proved an example of a fact which every book-lover must have experienced before me, namely, that though public libraries have an imposing air, and doubtless contain invaluable volumes, yet, somehow, the books that prove most agreeable, grateful, and companionable, are those we pick up by chance here and there; those which seem put into our hands by Providence; those which pretend to little, but abound in much. HERMAN MELVILLE, WHITE JACKET

THE DIFFICULTY OF BEING
Originally published in French as La difficult dtre in 1947
Copyright ditions du Rocher, 2003
English translation copyright 1966 by the translator,
reprinted by arrangement with the translators estate
Introduction copyright 2013 Geoffrey OBrien

First Melville House printing: May 2013

Cover photograph: Germaine Krull (18971985) Estate Germaine Krull, Museum Folkwang, Essen. Jean Cocteau, 1929. Gelatin silver print, 8 6 9/16 (22.3 16.6 cm). Mount: 13 10 (33 25.7 cm). Sitter: John Cocteau.
Thomas Walther Collection. Gift of Thomas Walther.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, U.S.A.
Digital image The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY

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eISBN: 978-1-61219-291-8

A catalog record for this title is available from the Library of Congress.

v3.1

This translation is dedicated to the memory of
K ATRIONA S PRIGGE
whose unfailing interest sustained me during la difficult de traduire
Elizabeth Sprigge

INTRODUCTION
by Geoffrey OBrien

I do not for a moment conceal from myself, Jean Cocteau writes at the end of The Difficulty of Being, the terrible harm that a witty lawyer, a witness for the prosecution, and the distance that separates the jury from a poet, can do to my work through my personality. He adds in a footnote: I know very well what will be said about this book. The authors preoccupation with himself is exasperating. Who is not thus preoccupied? To talk about Cocteau, or to see his work clearly, one must first, as it were, get Cocteau out of the way. He plants himself in the heart of every sentence and every image in the same way that he planted himself in every salon and theater and literary forum. Franois Mauriac called him a ubiquitist; some have been tempted to see in him a sort of Zelig of twentieth-century French culture, evading precise definition even as he pops up at every turn.

He was indeed everywhere, from the moment he made his first minor splash as a teenage dandy whose poems were presented in 1908 at a public reading organized by the equally dandyish actor douard de Max. It was always as a poet that he defined himself, but his sense of what poetry was extended easily to theater, ballet, art, design, fiction, film. He wrote the scenario for the Diaghilev ballet Parade, with music by Satie and stage design by Picasso; he promoted and collaborated with the composers of Les Six; he wrote the libretto for Stravinskys Oedipus Rex. He produced at least one pervasively influential novel, Les Enfants Terribles, and a series of films that may well prove his most enduring works. He was also a starhe affixed a star under his signature in case anyone should forgeta celebrated conversationalist whose nonstop monologues could seem like a way of sustaining his very sense of being, a scene-maker whose name and image were familiar even to those otherwise unacquainted with his work.