COCTEAU Jean Lot n° 34

L.A.S. "Jean Cocteau", Le Calme Villefranche-sur-mer August 1924, to Henri MASSIS; 1 page in-4 very full, up to the margins. A few months after Raymond Radiguet's death (December 12, 1923). Cocteau thanks Massis for his article, which he read "through tears. Maritain will tell you of my distress. For 5 years, I had been giving up on myself, trying through Radiguet an experience that my dirty instruments would have prevented me from succeeding alone (yet in Thomas I made white. The Princess of Cleves and Thomas were the books that Radiguet loved most in the world). - I'm in pain. I remain without strength in the middle of a deadly void, on the rubble of a crystal factory. We were writing The Ball and Thomas on the same table - we wanted to make the "invisible" of the "celestial""... He reminds us that "already in my dedication of the Visits to Barrès in 1915 I greet in Radiguet the "contradictor-born of cursed poetry""... An L.A.S., Paris, August 5, 1920,[to Franz HELLENS], is attached, thanking him for his book Mélusine (1 page in-4).