Poet, Novelist, Dramatist, Designer, Boxing Manager, Playwright, Artist, and Filmmaker
5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963
"An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture."
Jean Cocteau's 1913 cartoon of Stravinsky playing The Rite with Nijinsky's dancers multiplying movement in geometrical progression.
"A car can massage organs which no masseur can reach. It is the one remedy for the disorders of the great sympathetic nervous system."
"A film is a petrified fountain of thought."
"A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses."
"After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter."
"All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it."
"An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original."
"Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious."
"Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time."
"Being tactful in audacity is knowing how far one can go to far."
"Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie."
"Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort."
"One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends."
"Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for."
"You've never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive."
Preamble (A Rough Draft For An Ars Poetica) by Jean Cocteau
...Preamble
A rough draft
for an ars poetica
. . . . . . .
Let's get our dreams unstuck
The grain of rye
free from the prattle of grass
et loin de arbres orateurs
I
plant
it
It will sprout
But forget about
the rustic festivities
For the explosive word
falls harmlessly
eternal through
the compact generations
and except for you
nothing
denotates
its sweet-scented dynamite
Greetings
I discard eloquence
the empty sail
and the swollen sail
which cause the ship
to lose her course
My ink nicks
and there
and there
and there
and
there
sleeps
deep poetry
The mirror-paneled wardrobe
washing down ice-floes
the little eskimo girl
dreaming
in a heap
of moist negroes
her nose was
flattened
against the window-pane
of dreary Christmases
A white bear
adorned with chromatic moire
dries himself in the midnight sun
Liners
The huge luxury item
Slowly founders
all its lights aglow
and so
sinks the evening-dress ball
into the thousand mirrors
of the palace hotel
And now
it is I
the thin Columbus of phenomena
alone
in the front
of a mirror-paneled wardrobe
full of linen
and locking with a key
The obstinate miner
of the void
exploits
his fertile mine
the potential in the rough
glitters there
mingling with its white rock
Oh
princess of the mad sleep
listen to my horn
and my pack of hounds
I deliver you
from the forest
where we came upon the spell
Here we are
by the pen
one with the other
wedded
on the page
Isles sobs of Ariadne
Ariadnes
dragging along
Aridnes seals
for I betray you my fair stanzas
to
run and awaken
elsewhere
I plan no architecture
Simply
deaf
like you Beethoven
blind
like you
Homer
numberless old man
born everywhere
I elaborate
in the prairies of inner
silence
and the work of the mission
and the poem of the work
and the stanza of the poem
and the group of the stanza
and the words of the group
and the letters of the word
and the least
loop of the letters
it's your foot
of attentive satin
that I place in position
pink
tightrope walker
sucked up by the void
to the left to the right
the god gives a shake
and I walk
towards the other side
with infinite precaution
A rough draft
for an ars poetica
. . . . . . .
Let's get our dreams unstuck
The grain of rye
free from the prattle of grass
et loin de arbres orateurs
I
plant
it
It will sprout
But forget about
the rustic festivities
For the explosive word
falls harmlessly
eternal through
the compact generations
and except for you
nothing
denotates
its sweet-scented dynamite
Greetings
I discard eloquence
the empty sail
and the swollen sail
which cause the ship
to lose her course
My ink nicks
and there
and there
and there
and
there
sleeps
deep poetry
The mirror-paneled wardrobe
washing down ice-floes
the little eskimo girl
dreaming
in a heap
of moist negroes
her nose was
flattened
against the window-pane
of dreary Christmases
A white bear
adorned with chromatic moire
dries himself in the midnight sun
Liners
The huge luxury item
Slowly founders
all its lights aglow
and so
sinks the evening-dress ball
into the thousand mirrors
of the palace hotel
And now
it is I
the thin Columbus of phenomena
alone
in the front
of a mirror-paneled wardrobe
full of linen
and locking with a key
The obstinate miner
of the void
exploits
his fertile mine
the potential in the rough
glitters there
mingling with its white rock
Oh
princess of the mad sleep
listen to my horn
and my pack of hounds
I deliver you
from the forest
where we came upon the spell
Here we are
by the pen
one with the other
wedded
on the page
Isles sobs of Ariadne
Ariadnes
dragging along
Aridnes seals
for I betray you my fair stanzas
to
run and awaken
elsewhere
I plan no architecture
Simply
deaf
like you Beethoven
blind
like you
Homer
numberless old man
born everywhere
I elaborate
in the prairies of inner
silence
and the work of the mission
and the poem of the work
and the stanza of the poem
and the group of the stanza
and the words of the group
and the letters of the word
and the least
loop of the letters
it's your foot
of attentive satin
that I place in position
pink
tightrope walker
sucked up by the void
to the left to the right
the god gives a shake
and I walk
towards the other side
with infinite precaution
