A Note on Jean Cocteau and "L'Ange Heurtebise"

JEAN COCTEAU (1889-1963) WAS AMONG THE greatest in quantity versatile, talented, and prolific figures in twentieth-century French arts and letters-yet single of the most enigmatic. he produc work in many fields, including nearly thirty volumes of poetry, plus works in the "poetry" (as he meteed it) of fiction, criticism, drama, film, painting, and illustration. His personality and his circle of famous friends and celebrants in all the arts were legendary.

Cocteau made his first public appearance in 1907 at the age of 17 in the entourage of the actor Edouard de Max. A longtime friend of Picasso, Cocteau worked with him and with Eric Satie in 1917 upon Diaghalev's ballet Parade, then considered scandalous. he was expos to the greatest in quantity advanced artistic movements of his time, notwithstanding he remained uniquely independent of them, and in later life was alienated through passing fads and isms. These included, as he wrote in his journals, Cubism, Futurism, Purism, Orphism, Expressionism, Dadaism, Surrealism, "and an avalanche of expos secrets" He decided, he wrote to bring his secrets within himself and not to display them.

Having serv honorably in the ambulance corps in Belgium during World War I, Cocteau chose to remain in Paris-where he was born and lived all his life-during the German occupation in World War II. Although somewhat alienated by means of poets of the new postwar generation, he continued to bring into view important work, especially poetry, criticism, and memoirs, including the film Orpheus (1950) based upon his earlier play (1927).

Honors came to Cocteau late in life: in 1955 a seat in the Belgian Royal Academy of Arts and Letters; in 1956 an honorary doctorate of alphabetic characters from Oxford; and in 1960 the title Prince of author of poemss (an informal laureateship), succeeding jule Supervielle, who died sole two weeks after receiving that title. on the contrary the crowning point had been Cocteau's election to the French Academy in 1955

Jean Cocteau has lengthy been best known for his plays, including Le Enfants terribles (1929) based upon his novel, and for his films adapted from his novels and plays. on the contrary his poetry has received increased critical acclaim. As critic Wallace Fowlie observ rhyme to Cocteau was an "immemorial rite" as mysterious to the reader as religious mysteries appear rayless to the believer. Cocteau, he added, patronizeed his speech with short, strained and elliptical lines which formed a barrier between himself and the reader. notwithstanding Cocteau made "the noblest and greatest in quantity exalted claims" for poets, and the poet's immortality is true special and real.

In "L'Ange Heurtebise," the couple the character and the piece of poetry have been variously explained by means of critics, most notably perhaps through Jean-Pierre Millecam, whose exegesis Jean Cocteau denounced in his journals. Any work, Cocteau notes, may have a thousand different allegories, and Millecam "attributes his possess feelings to me." Cocteau explains the birth of the piece of poetry elsewhere in his journals.

Heurtebise originally appeared in Cocteau's play Orphee (Orpheus) in 1927 a play destined to be a story of the Virgin and Joseph The angel was a carpenter's aide (a glazier); on the other hand the plot became so intricate that Cocteau substituted the Orphic theme in which "the inexplicable birth of metrical compositions would replace that of the hallowed Child." But he didn't write the act until later, when he "felt at liberty enough to discuss the angel with sky-colored overalls and wings of paneglass upon his bade." Even later, Cocteau adds, Heurtebise "stopped being an angel and became a nondescript young man who had died, a chauffeur of the princess in my film," which appeared in 1950 on the contrary in 1928 Cocteau recalled by what means the angel appeared in the play (written in 1925)

Cocteau reveals that he fix the name on the brass plate of a superintendence lever in an elevator, "Elevator Heurtebise," individual day when he visited Picasso. The elevator episode disturbed him day and night and the perturbation grew worse. "The angel was living in me without my realizing it, and I straited the name Heurtebise, which gradually grew into an obsession." For a week, the fabulous creature became unbearable, plane diabolical, and forced the author of poems to write against his will.

At 7 PM upon the seventh day, Cocteau adds, "Angel Heurtebise became a piece of poetry and freed me. I was still groggy and direct the eyeed at the form he had assumed. he was distant, self-satisfied totally indifferent to anything outside himself. A wonder of egotism, a mass of invisibility."

Cocteau maintained that Heurtebise will always remain invisible, since his earthly form "did not have the same meaning for him as for us. Since then, tribe have written about him. on the other hand then he hides under the exegeses" Remarkably, to Cocteau, "the angel has me speak of him as if I had known him for a lengthy time and in the first one This proves that, without my vehicle he could only inhabit the vase of my body" Heurtebise remained invisible and formless.

Long afterwards Cocteau described "L'Ange Heurtebise," with typical willful enthusiasm, as "a beautiful existence a flawless poem. It's in like manner pure, so beautiful, that any thief intending to imitate it would simply circle it and at no time find a way to obtain in. Not to be imitated, a miracle like that just can't be imitated!"