COCTEAU Jean (1889-1963) Lot n° 37

Visit, autograph manuscript. S.l., [1923], 5 pages large in-4 in ink on strong and fine paper. Autograph manuscript with numerous erasures and corrections by Cocteau. Visite is a beautiful dreamlike and tragic text in which a soldier killed at the front addresses Jean Cocteau: "I have great sad news to tell you: I am dead, I can talk to you this morning because you are sleepy, you are sick, you have a fever" "Each one of us is a bottle that imprints a different shape on the same water. Now back at the lake, I collaborate in its transparency, I am us, you are me, the living and the dead are ready and far from each other like the side of a penny and the side facing a penny, the four images that a set of cubes offers. Our ray of light passes through the walls. Nothing stops it. We live in a vacuum [...]". Published in "Discours du grand sommeil" and reprinted in OEuvres poétiques complètes, pages 444-446.