COCTEAU, Jean.

Lot 1320
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Estimation :
1000 - 1500 EUR
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Result : 1 170EUR
COCTEAU, Jean.
Drinking water. Autograph manuscript signed of 11 pp. in-4 [270 x 213] : blue glossy paper boards, grey label printed on the first cover, smooth spine, silver silk lining and endpapers with blue felted stars (modern binding). "Paris has two rivers. The other is the boulevard. This river flows in a great disorder. It even happens that it stagnates or goes up towards its source. The theater called 'theater of Boulevard' and that, now, cannot locate itself any more on the boulevard itself, is in bad posture" (p. 1). From the outset, the author carries a reflection on the theater of his time: "I see that one often wonders why, for example, poet, I cultivate a certain comic in the theater. Besides that it would be necessary to agree and that this comic, come from a shortcut, is often not for me comic, the least of the world, it happens to me, indeed to obtain, under pretext bouffe, of powerful reliefs, that, in dramatic form, the room would not support. I flatter it, I distract it, I give it sugar, and, by dint of tricks, I administer the comforting drug, I hide the bitterness from it. There are, in The Brides of the Eiffel Tower, moments of scenic plenitude when I see Electra, Antigone, Oedipus, when the audience only sees a charming farce. [...] It is easy for me to break with routines. If my work scandalizes, it is interposed in spectacles which re-establish the balance and make it possible to wait, as for Parade, that three years transform the booing into ovations." The second half of the text is devoted to the two great men of theater that were Lugné-Poë and Jacques Copeau. The first was the founder of the theater of the Work, the second that of the theater of the Old Dovecote. "Do not be mistaken. With my showers, the water of these modest cisterns is the only drinking water. If you do not have the prudence to resist the Boulevard and if its miasmas seduce and contaminate you, I advise you to take a cure. Otherwise you will have the old age of Jézabel." An autograph letter signed on November 2, 1921, about an article to be published, is bound at the top. The manuscript was offered to Pierre Bergé by his friend Maïmé Arnodin (1916-2003), with a visiting card in her hand: "Un petit cahier bleu. Souvenir of a blue cross, from a friend who loves you." Founders of the Mafia agency, specialized in press and public relations and in advertising creation, Maïmé Arnodin and her partner Denise Fayolle revolutionized fashion and design in the 1960s. In 1977, Pierre Bergé entrusted them with the promotion of the perfume Opium and the campaigns for the beauty products of the brand Yves Saint Laurent. They were part of all the adventures of the fashion house.
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