Talk:Jean Cocteau

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Contents

[edit] Improving Comment and links

I would like to know if it is fine to have videoartworld as an external link for this page. On his article there is a nice focus on the orpheus trilogy and a rich media content...I am an teacher and art critic collaborating with www.videoartworld.com (for free). Videoartworld is a non profit site, having only banners of non profit entities (Green Peace, WWF, British Art Council...). As i i am writing for them, it looks like there is a conflict of interest according to Wikipedia Guidelines. One moderator deleted every links thinking at first i might be a spammer. Which mean i need to 1st talk with people on the discussion page. please do not hesitate to give me advices as i am quite new in wikipedia, but as an Art lover and Cinema teacher, i would love to be more involved....

PS: in Videoartworld, more than 40 critics from every continents are collaborating to give high levels of critics (we all do it for free, no business at all, no spam. To keep this Art alive....) I hope it will be appreciated by all the people working on Cinema, "art et essais," Experimental video art..... If you have advices as well about adding new contemporary artists, please tell it to me.... Thanks a lot for your answers and your advices. Jjcolmax 11:19, 21 September 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Surrealist?

"As a leading member of the surrealist movement, he had great influence on the work of others": this is a flat-out lie! Cocteau was never a member of the surrealist movement and the surrealists repeatedly expressed their contempt for him! --Daniel C. Boyer

Um, actually he was great friends with people like Dali and Elsa Schiaparelli, both very active in the surrealist movement...
Have you seen his first film, the blood of a poet? --concerned art patron —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.37.86.130 (talk) 06:09, January 28, 2005 (UTC)
I have changed the expression 'leader of the surrealist movement' to important exponent of surrealism.
I've seen blood of a poet and yes I think there is a surrealist sensibility and aesthetic... So i would say that Cocteau is without a doubt a surrealist artist. But I have a problem with the expression "surrealist movement" which to me refers to the social/artistic group which revolved around Breton, with people like Elouard and Aragon and many others (from which Dali was notoriously expelled) which held -apart from a certain aesthetic- an emphasis on political/social commentary as expressed in Breton's manifestos. There is a section in Luis Bunuel's autobiography (Mi Ultimo Suspiro) where he comments the internal functioning of the group and he makes a precise distinction between a surrealist aesthetic (which -he said- had transcended onto the rest of the arts) and the surrealist movement (which -he said- intended primarily to transform the world, not the arts. He states regretfully that the movement failed).
(Luis Buñuel. Mi Último Suspiro. Ed. Debolsillo. 2003. pp. 115-143, esp. 139-140.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.91.139.158 (talk) 07:35, December 9, 2005 (UTC)
While Cocteau was friends with many in the Surrealist movement, he was not himself a proponent of it. In fact, he was known for his resistance to it. He refused to be held down by the rules of the movement. A closer look would suggest that while he might be a "participant" in the movement, he was not a "proponent."
Mysticfeline 23:28, 6 February 2006 (UTC)Mysticfeline
In addition, its widely noted in academic studies that the surrealists themselves disregarded Cocteau's work, because of his bourgois connections. See Rosemont, Franklin (ed)., What Is Surrealism? (Pathfinder: New York) 1978, 2002 -Book One p62 etc.
Cocteau himself might have used Surrealist techniques and lauded the likes of Bunuel, but cannot be credited as a member of the surealist movement proper.
Prof Nebulous 19:48, 7 May 2006 (UTC)


"The word Surrealism was coined, in fact, by Guillaume Apollinaire to describe Parade, a work which was initially not well-received."

As this is not generally thought of as the origin of the term, I suggest that the following citation be added to provide further proof: http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/brandon-surreal.html

While not noted here, the more common history offered is that Apollinaire's play Les mamelles de Tiresias (indeed the french language wiki stub for Apollinaire's play as well as my college profs agree on this) is the first usage of the term, in the form "surrealiste." The above New York Times article provides sufficient proof that the word was used for the first time in reference to Parade, something a lot of people wouldn't agree with (I didn't until I read the NY Times article above). Tropbavard 16:14, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removing the references to Raymond Radiguet and Marie-Laure de Noailles

I am removing this because there is no evidence that Cocteau and Radiguet had a sexual relationship. In his "Portrait Souvenir de Jean Cocteau" (ed. Tallandier 1989 pp 60-68), Roger Stéphane transcribes an interview given at the French Radio by Jean Cocteau in 1963 (six months before his death) where he discusses his relationship with Radiguet, who spent most of his evenings either at the appartment of Juan Gris or at the appartment of Max Jacob, where he usually slept either on the floor or on the kitchen table. Cocteau also mentions Radiguet's girlfriend who later married the French film maker Réné Clair. Cocteau does not suggest that he was interested in anything other than Radiguet's talent as a writer. And is one trip to Arcachon with Auric and Mr and Mrs Valentin Hugo and a few nights at La Boeuf sur le Toit during a period of about two years really that important? Cocteau seemed to think that it was worth two pages out of one hundred and thirty in this book.....

I have also removed the following statement: "To Cocteau's distress and Paley's life-long regret, the fetus was aborted due to the intervention of Marie-Laure de Noailles, the eccentric arts patron who had loved Cocteau as a young woman and was determined to ruin his new romance." What is the source of this material? I have read quite a bit about Madame de Noailles and know people who knew her. I have never heard of this, other than Madame de Noailles friendship with Cocteau. Please provide a source! Musikfabrik 08:55, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I Don't Think So

could somebody explain why the passage "Self-proclaimed Surrealism leader André Breton, nonetheless, declared Cocteau a "notorious false poet, a versifier who happens to debase rather than to elevate everything he touches" (Breton, 1953)" appears in the EARLY LIFE section for jean cocteau?

the passage isn't only irrelevant, it's contradictory: a 1953 quote for the "early years" of a man born in 1889. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.119.132.42 (talk) 20:06, June 21, 2006 (UTC)

[edit] About the article

It looks like an yellow press article but not encyclopedic one. It deals more with who he slept with than with his artistic activities. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lucius S (talk • contribs) 11:19, June 24, 2006

[edit] Was he a supporter of Franco during the Spanish Civil war?

Orwell accuses him of being one in his essay,"Looking back at the Spanish Civil war". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mallu78 (talk • contribs) 08:06, July 26, 2006

[edit] Priory of Sion

Dont we need to mention Priory of Sion and Coctrau's alleged relationship with this institution here??? What say??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.18.49.67 (talk) 13:14, September 3, 2006 (UTC)

is there any inconclusive evidence involving the hoax of the priory of sion, is it just a hoex? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.49.150.82 (talk) 06:25, October 31, 2006 (UTC)
It is 100%, unambiguously, a hoax. Some guy made it up to justify his bogus claim to the throne of France.
By the way, I don't really know the formatting, or I'd fix it myself, but shouldn't the bulk of the article be removed from the table? It's been that way for months and is plainly a mistake. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Volfied (talk • contribs) 19:11, December 15, 2006
Other alleged famous grand masters of the order in recent years, apart from Cocteau are Victor Hugo and Claude Debussy. Leonardo da Vinci and Isaac Newton were earlier famous grand master. All this according to the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail. __meco 16:44, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Radiguet redux

The material below was deleted from Historical pederastic relationships by an editor who found it too long for that article. However, it would be a pity to have the material go to waste, as it is well sourced. Any objections if I integrate into the section on the friendship between the two? Haiduc 01:46, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Cocteau met the young poet in 1918 at 29, when the boy was 15 years old. The two collaborated extensively, socialized, and undertook many journeys and vacations together. Cocteau got the youth exempted from military service and exerted his influence to garner the "Nouveau Monde" literary prize for Radiguet's novel, Le Diable au Corps. Some sources suggest that their friendship was loving and sexual.[1][2] Their relationship has been placed in the context of "a series of younger lovers and collaborators". [1] An anecdote told by Ernest Hemingway has an enraged Cocteau charging Radiguet (known in the Parisian literary circles as "Monsieur Bébé") with decadence for his tryst with a model: "Bébé est vicieuse. Il aime les femmes." ("Baby is depraved. He likes women." [Note the use of the feminine adjective]). Radiguet, Hemingway implies, employed his sexuality to advance his career, being a writer "who knew how to make his career not only with his pen but with his pencil," a salacious and phallic allusion.[3][4] Cocteau however was guarded in his discussion of his relationships: "Cocteau never put his name to an openly, unashamedly homosexual text and invariably alluded to his male lovers - the most celebrated being the precocious novelist Raymond Radiguet and the actors Jean Marais and Edouard Dermit - as his 'adopted sons' (in the case of Dermit, even formally adopting him)".[5] In 1919 Radiguet's father discovered a "compromising correspondence" between Cocteau and his son, giving rise to an exchange of letters in November of that year between the two adults in which Cocteau compared the youth to Rimbaud. In mid-March 1921 he hastened from Paris to join Radiguet (among others, including Georges Auric and Monsieur et Madame Hugo Valentin), who had left alone for Carqueiranne. On the 30th of the same month he replied to his mother, who had commented on this voyage: "Have you not yet understood that my life is spent releasing my instincts, watching them, sorting them once they are out, and forging them to my advantage?" After Radiguet's death (of typhoid fever), Cocteau did not attend the funeral. However, in this version of the story, Cocteau takes to his bed prostrated with grief (see below to see what happened according to Cocteau)[6] After the death of Radiguet, Cocteau began to use opium, to which he became addicted. The people who wish to say that Cocteau and Radiguet had a relationship say that this was the direct result of Radiguet's death, but this reading of the story is contradicted by Cocteau himself (see below)[2]
Others contest this interpretation, claiming that it has not been confirmed in any correspondence or writings by Cocteau or those close to both of them, and that Radiguet had any number of well-documented liaisons with women and generally spent his nights alone at the apparments of Max Jacob and Juan Gris, sleeping on the kitchen table or the floor. Cocteau, speaking about Radiguet in a transcription of a television interview made three months before Cocteau's death claimed that he did not particularly care for Radiguet personally and only respected his talent as a writer. Upon Radiguet's death, which was due to typhoid fever complicated by heavy drinking, Cocteau was, in his own words, "paralyzed with stupor and disgust". He did not attend the funeral -- Cocteau did not attend anyone's funeral, as a rule -- but instead immediately left Paris with Sergei Diaghilev for Monte Carlo for a performance of Les Fâcheux by Auric and Les Biches by Poulenc. While Cocteau began to smoke opium after Radiguet's death, to which he became addicted, he himself said that this was pure coincidence and had nothing to do with Radiguet's death. [7]

[edit] "Astonish me"

Diaghilev did not tell Cocteau to "astonish me"; those words were given to either Stravinsky or Nijinsky. It was later written that the words "astonish me" were a source of great inspiration to Jean Cocteau. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mochsner (talk • contribs) 05:17, 22 April 2008 (UTC)