COCTEAU JEAN (1889-1963).

Autograph MANUSCRIT, Clair-Obscur, 1952-1954; 352 pages in-4 or in-8, and 228 pages, in two hardback folders. Complete manuscript of the important poetic collection Clair-Obscur, accompanied by drafts, discarded pieces and drawings. The genesis of Clair-obscur was long and complex, as this manuscript allows to follow it. The idea for the collection took shape during Cocteau's trips to Spain in the summer and fall of 1953. To the poems written during this period, Cocteau would add slightly earlier pieces (from 1952) and complete the whole during 1954. On June 10, 1954, the poet, victim of a heart attack, will spend his convalescence in Santo-Sospir, where he will correct the proofs of Clairobscur, which will be published at the end of October by Éditions du Rocher. With Clair-obscur, Cocteau wants to explore the poetic mystery, seeking at the same time the concision and the precision in the language, at the same time as a contact with the darkness of the unconscious, with the "double design to hide the obscure under the clear and the clear under the obscure". The collection consists of three parts: Cryptographies numbering 92, 26 poems Miscellaneous, and 20 Tributes and Spanish poems, many inspired by the trip to Spain, and tributes to painters and writers. A. "Sketches for Clair-obscur". First draft manuscript and drafts. 296 pages in-4 (27 x 21 cm) and 56 pages in-8 (21 x 13,5 cm) on various papers, mainly on vellum from the Lalo paper mills, coming from blocks of which 3 cardboard backgrounds were also used as supports for the drafts, as well as an envelope, to which are added 5 ff. in-fol. (35 x 27 cm) of drawing paper coming from a spiral block. About thirty poems are accompanied by carbon copies. Most of the pages are written in blue ballpoint pen, about thirty in pencil, 4 in pale green ballpoint pen on lined paper. The whole is gathered in an ochre folder with the autograph title in blue pen: "Esquisses pour Clair-obscur". This strong file of more than 350 pages of sketches, notes, drafts and intermediate clearings, bearing more than a thousand words or corrected passages, traces the development of this complex work. It is accompanied by 5 original drawings; on some pages, small drawings, scribbles and undulations accompany and prolong the tormented writing of the drafts, which contrasts with the calligraphy of the finished manuscripts. The verses sometimes occupy the page diagonally or even in all directions, offering a tufted whole, of an astonishing graphic richness produced by the writing itself. B. Cleaned up manuscript. 228 leaves in-4 (27 x 21 cm) written on the front with blue ballpoint pen on ivory Lalo vellum watermarked GL Paris Renage, including the title page, a note on the numbering, and 222 pages paginated in pencil from 1 to 210 with bis and ter (and some inconsistencies) with numbering of the poems (also sometimes inconsistent); the whole in a green cardboard folder with elastic ribbons bearing the mention : "manuscript 1 (put in order)". The title page bears the outline of the collection: "Strophes / Miscellaneous / Tributes and Spanish Poems"; the second page bears the recommendation to "renumber the poems and repaginate". This clean-up includes more than 400 corrections with passages crossed out that present interesting variants. The collection will undergo new modifications during the typing and proofs; on the manuscript already, deletions of stanzas and poems are envisaged, confirming a requirement which will go as far as to prune the collection of almost a quarter of the volume. Let us note that the title page of the Strophes section (which will become the Cryptographies) carries the subtitle: "variantions sur des thèmes connus". The manuscript A makes it possible to reconstitute the laborious genesis of the collection, the texts frequently presenting dates of composition, located from August 1952 to July 1954. The "small preface" is fixed since the first drafts, with the famous and enlightening sentence: "The poetry is a language with share that the poets can speak without fear since the crowds have habit to take for this language a certain way to use theirs". In manuscript A, it is entitled Art poétique, and is completed by an autograph note that gives its source: "Sartre quotes a sentence from me where I say that as a child I did not believe that foreigners spoke a language but pretended to speak one. It is the belief of many people who speak about poets"... In manuscript B, the previous title is crossed out and replaced by Preface, with a paragraph that will finally be discarded: "Poetry obliges to knot and unknot the thread of the verb so that its ball unrolls and never unwinds until the street". The division of the book in three quite distinct parts is present very early, as indicates a handwritten draft of