COCTEAU (Jean) Magnificent praise addressed to... Lot 34

COCTEAU (Jean) Magnificent praise addressed to Marie Bell on 1 page (21x27) of 28 lines. Framed under glass. "Which racehorse would have the look, the moire, the caprices of a real tragedienne? Marie Bell has all this to the point of losing the race, if she wishes, or winning it by ten lengths if she finds the grass fresh, the sun bright, the jockey light. [We saw her under the purple of Phèdre, under the finery of Prouhèze, under the sails of Armide. We saw her, in the city, in pants and leopard coat. We saw her rehearsing with her cigarette smoker and her basset hound under her arm - and we never lost the feeling of being in front of a racehorse whose nostrils smoke and whose side eye does not accept any order. And yet docile - docile and obedient like a little girl and stubborn like a mule and laughing and serious - in short, a woman, with all the wonder and danger that entails. Marie Bell shows us this feminine archetype in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra - in a sublime play that Gide read and reread while herbivating and hunting butterflies on the banks of African rivers. Jean Jacques Rousseau and the encyclopedists were mixed in his strange person, making him cruel and credulous. He was the hunted man and the man who hunts. He stalked himself and ran away - and while he confessed and hid, he waved a green net. He catches beauty like a skull butterfly. Long live Marie Bell who removes the pin, frees the butterfly from its cork and allows it to fly again. Jean Cocteau (with his star) 1952 ". Text corrected by Cocteau's hand.