Cocteau’s epitaph in Saint-Blaise-des-Simples Chapel in Milly-la-Forêt, through Wikimedia Commons. {Photograph} by Renaud Camus, licensed below CC BY 2.0.
Jean Cocteau wrote on something he may get his fingers on, wherever he may. Édouard Dermit informs us that he usually noticed Cocteau writing subsequent to him within the automotive, or whereas mendacity down, or when on the desk (between fruit and dessert programs), utilizing the smallest scrap of paper or fabric. This model of Secrets and techniques of Magnificence was composed in March 1945, on an extended journey again to Paris. Towards the tip of the textual content, he writes: “Why do these ideas come to me, to somebody who’s so reluctant to put in writing? It’s most likely as a result of … I’m writing them on the transfer, in a third-class carriage that retains jogging me. I reconnect with this expensive work [of writing] on the endpapers of books, on the backs of envelopes, on tablecloths: a fabulous discomfort that stimulates the thoughts.”
Cocteau was like a type of magicians who, having introduced that they’re going to reveal the key of 1 trick, instantly carry out one other. He provided up “secrets and techniques of magnificence” so often that the amount from which the next notes have been extracted may virtually be referred to as New Secrets and techniques of Magnificence. The e-book adopted within the custom of Cocteau’s Le Coq et l’Arlequin (The Cock and the Harlequin) in 1918, Le Secret professionnel (Skilled secrets and techniques) in 1922, Le mystère laïc (The secular thriller) in 1928, and Démarche d’un poète (A poet’s course of) in 1954, in addition to numerous shorter articles wherein the poet promised to disclose secrets and techniques about his performs or movies.
These notes remind us of the next strains from his e-book about Jean Marais: “Magnificence hates concepts. It’s ample to itself. A murals is gorgeous simply as an individual is gorgeous. The sweetness I converse of provokes an erection within the soul. One can’t argue with an erection.” Is it due to this fact pointless to aim to resolve Jean Cocteau’s secrets? We are going to content material ourselves with relating them to a solution as soon as given by the Dalai Lama, which Cocteau quoted on a number of events: “The key of Tibet is that there isn’t a secret. However it’s the one which should be defended with the best care.”
—Pierre Caizergues
Poetry can act solely as a bodily allure. It’s made up of a bunch of particulars that can’t be distinguished immediately. If this weren’t the case, then it will be not possible to anticipate anybody with considerations of their very own to enterprise into the labyrinth of a mode, to discover its each recess, and to lose themselves in it.
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Poetry stops wanting concepts. Concepts are deadly to it. Poetry is itself an thought; it can’t categorical concepts with out turning into poetic and thereby annihilating itself.
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Poetry will not be holy simply because it speaks of issues which can be holy. Poetry will not be stunning simply because it speaks of issues which can be stunning. If we’re requested why it’s stunning and holy, we should reply as Joan of Arc did when she had been interrogated for too lengthy:
“Subsequent query.”
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To learn poetry you should be impressed.
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The phrase poetry is way abused; it’s used for every part that appears poetic. However poetry can’t be poetic. Poetic issues purchase a borrowed radiance from poetry.
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A poet’s violence can’t be long-lived. Joan of Arc wasn’t round for lengthy.
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The poet is a servant of forces that he doesn’t perceive. He should preserve the home clear. His progress can solely be ethical.
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A poet can’t obtain seen success. That which is clandestine can’t change into official with out ceasing to be clandestine. Those that consider that they’re bringing a secret to mild are mistaken. They’re pushed out of the shadows the place poets dwell, and a brand new clandestinity re-forms behind them.
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Baudelaire’s contemporaries noticed solely grimaces in his work, and solely grimaces they admired. From behind these grimaces, the gaze traveled slowly towards us, like starlight.
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Slackness, lyricism, and phrases are the downfall of younger poets. I counsel them to observe an outdated wives’ routine, a quite simple type of hygiene: Write backwards, be a part of up your letters, write whereas trying on the paper within the mirror, make a geometrical drawing, place phrases on the factors the place the strains intersect and fill within the gaps afterward, flip a well-known textual content the other way up by inverting the which means, and so forth.
On this approach they may change into athletes and construct their psychological muscle tissue. Robust goodness is stronger than wickedness that passes for energy. One should overcome conformity to the latter. One should be good.
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The left can’t go proper. If it appears to be going proper, that’s as a result of it has change into proper; it’s now not left. It’ll by no means be left once more. That’s the tip of it.
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Poetry is topic to specific legal guidelines. A critical man who’s able to feeling like a poet may give the impression of being one just by understanding these legal guidelines and by learning the mechanisms that produce stunning or uncommon issues.
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Magnificence is lame. Poetry is lame. It’s from a battle with the angel that the poet emerges—limping. This limp is what offers the poet his allure.
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If poetry didn’t limp it will run, and it can’t run as a result of it counts its steps and strikes erratically.
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A poem stands in defiance of what man habitually considers to be the easiest way of expressing his ideas. One should due to this fact be very humble to be able to learn a poem with out antagonizing it.
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Cinematic poetry: I’m usually requested what I consider it. I believe nothing of it. I don’t know what it’s. I’ve seen movies made with out the slightest poetic concern that nonetheless exude poetry, and I’ve seen poetic films wherein the poetry merely doesn’t work.
Poetry in films derives from uncommon relationships between objects and pictures. A easy {photograph} can produce these relationships. I’ve pictures at house that have been taken within the warehouse the place the Germans melted down and destroyed our statues. Essentially the most mediocre statues grew to become nice.
Poetry works like lightning. Lightning strips a shepherd naked and carries his garments a number of miles away. It imprints on a ploughman’s shoulder the {photograph} of a younger lady. It may well obliterate a wall and go away a tulle curtain untouched. In brief, it creates uncommon issues. The poet’s strikes are not any extra premeditated than lightning.
Poetry borrows astonishing contrasts that happen by probability. It disorientates; it unintentionally establishes a brand new order.
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Poetry is a precision instrument. A precision shot. A protracted-range shot.
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Folks say to me, “You don’t change.” I reply, “I’m too distracted.”
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A poet should concern himself with poetry alone.
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Poets obtain solely love letters.
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A person with out a drop of passionate blood won’t ever be a poet.
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B. wrote poems earlier than he was shot. A person who desires to survive himself thinks solely of writing poems.
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Apollinaire spoke to me about “occasion poems”: every poem should be an occasion. Typically poets milk occasions for greater than they’re value. These opportunistic poems are all the time those that entice probably the most consideration.
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The absence of guidelines in poetry forces the poet to find strategies that bestow upon his work the mystique of a secret cult ritual.
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Type will not be a dance. It’s a course of.
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A poet needs to be recognizable not by his type however by the way in which wherein he seems at issues.
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A poem arises from a wedding between the aware and the unconscious; between will and an absence of will; between accuracy and vagueness.
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All stunning writing is automated.
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A poet should be a saint, a hero, however with out anybody understanding it. He should have no concern of dying, with which he should be on first-name phrases.
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A poet hates himself. He respects solely the car inside himself.
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A poet’s laziness, ready for voices: a harmful angle. It implies that he isn’t doing what he must do to be able to make the voices converse to him.
Uncover bodily and ethical hygiene. All the time be in a state of grace. The poet’s non secular workouts.
To sleep is to return to the steady. Don’t sleep an excessive amount of.
Translated from the French by Juliet Powys.
An tailored excerpt from Jean Cocteau’s Secrets and techniques of Magnificence, translated by Juliet Powys and with a foreword by Pierre Caizergues, forthcoming from ERIS in January.
Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) was a author, filmmaker, and visible artist. He was prominently related to the Surrealist, avant-garde, and Dadaist actions.
Juliet Powys is a translator of French and Italian.
Pierre Caizergues is a poet, an editor, and the director of the Jean Cocteau Committee.
