COCTEAU Jean (1889-1963) Lot n° 359

7 autograph manuscripts, [for Discours du grand sommeil, 1915-1918]; 13 pages in-4. First draft manuscripts with numerous unpublished variants. Discours du grand sommeil is a poetic suite consisting of a prologue, the long poem with the title and ten separate poems. Remained unpublished, it was published in 1924 in Poésie 1916-1923 (Éditions de la Nouvelle Revue Française) It is a direct result of the war, and was dictated by the death of the young poet Jean Le Roy (to whom it is dedicated) and of the Nieuport fusiliers-marins, who were decimated the day after Cocteau left the front; The set includes the following manuscripts: - The epigraph (1 p.), which is more developed than in the edition: "Traduit de quoi? From this dead language, from this country where my friends died. Sometimes the translator is luckier. He finds rhythms, rhymes. Sometimes he is content to translate faithfully. Sometimes he gives himself over to a ring of aluminium with chiselling in the worst possible taste. - L'Enfant du Nord (published under the title Ballade de l'enfant du Nord; 4 p.), almost complete with numerous variants and corrections) : "Like lightning the shooting of the coins Of Marine a great pale bindweed in the windows the room moves" ... - Ode to the pipe (1 p. abundantly crossed out and corrected), elaborating the end of the poem: "Ah! Virgins to appease you" ... - Tour of the calm sector (1 p. abundantly crossed out and corrected), of which we have here 7 stanzas: "At the marine observation post one stuck one's eye as to a penholder To see the church in relief" ... - Deliverance of the souls (1 p. abundantly crossed out and corrected), for the work of about fifteen stanzas, on the death of Jean Stolz: "As the nose of the hare moves Moves the life and suddenly Does not move any more! A red blood flows from the nose on the naked neck of the Roman emperors"... - Despair of the North (2 p.), with the stanza "A child's boat" ...; three successively crossed-out versions of the stanza: "I am alone in another world than myself" ...; and on the reverse side, two crossed-out versions of an unretained stanza: "I pierce your mystery / Our sailors have left the water" ... - L'Adieu aux fusiliers marins (3 p.), a very corrected elaboration of the last ten stanzas of the poem: "A dog passes his eye to the sky He carries in his grave mouth the pipe of his brigadier who walks behind him" ... up to the final line: "Farewell sailors, naive worshippers of the wind".