COCTEAU (Jean) (1889-1963), French poet, painter, draughtsma - Lot 103

Lot n° 103
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Résultat : 200EUR
COCTEAU (Jean) (1889-1963), French poet, painter, draughtsma - Lot 103
COCTEAU (Jean) (1889-1963), French poet, painter, draughtsman, playwright and film-maker. Autograph draft signed in the margin in pink felt-tip pen "JC, Milly 1963". 1 p. in-4°. Draft with corrections of a passage from Cordon ombilical, published by Plon in 1962. The poet confides his adolescent love affair with the actress Madeleine CARLIER, thirteen years his senior, a passion that lasted from 1906 to 1910, then evokes his refuge at the Hôtel Biron, RODIN and RILKE. "I had fallen head over heels in love with a young actress whose headdress foreshadowed that of Brigitte Bardot. Liane de Pougy compared her to a nectarine. Sacha Guitry and Charlotte Lysès lived in the building next to ours on rue d'Anjou. [...] Out of kindness for me, Sacha Guitry had given Madeleine Carlier the lead role in Le Veilleur de Nuit. [A three-act comedy by Sacha GUITRY, first performed at the Théâtre Michel on February 2, 1911, Madeleine did not play a role]. In other words, I hardly ever slept at home. The result was a family council. [3 illegible words crossed out]. I was 17, Madeleine was 30, not 20. And the poet's mother declared that she was "an old woman". This is followed by a passage of 6 lines (strikethrough) in which COCTEAU evokes the Hôtel Biron, with RODIN as a neighbor and his secretary Maria Reiner RILKE's lamp, "this lamp must have served as a beacon for me. [...] This refuge of the h[ôtel] Biron discovered by my family was another of the reasons [...] that decided me to take to the sea." He footnotes that "Le G[rand] Ecart received my affair with this ravishing young woman". Here is the text published by the poet in Le Cordon ombilical: "When I was writing Le Grand Écart in Le Lavandou, which, if it hadn't been for Jacques Chardonne, might still be sitting on my desk, I still believed in the power of memory. At seventeen, I was madly in love with Madeleine Carlier, an actress on the side, whom Liane de Pougy Ghika compared to a nectarine, and whose high, messy hairdo foreshadowed that of Brigitte Bardot. Madeleine was thirty years old and the family council was afraid to see me living with "an old woman" (sic). In short, I was happy to fix my teenage love and the despair that left me with long scars as Madeleine preferred one of my classmates to me."
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