Rights sold to Czech Republic (Rubato), Russia (AST), Spain (Planeta), UK (Peter Owen)
In 1928, five years after Raymond Radiguet’s death, while the opium addict Jean Cocteau was on a detoxification treatment at a clinic, he still drew and wrote. To him, it was all the same thing, the same creative act: “Writing, for me, is drawing, connecting up the lines in such a way that they make writing, or un-connecting them so that writing becomes drawing.”
And so, with each passing day, each moment, a book is born before our eyes, a book comprising notes, word games, a poet’s opinions. As well as commentaries about literature and writers (Proust, Raymond Roussel) there are views on film (Keaton, Chaplin, Eisenstein, Buñuel), poetry, art and the creative process itself.
The searing theme of opium returns again and again on every page. “Everything that we do in life, even loving others, we do on an express train hurtling towards death. Smoking opium means jumping off the moving train; it means worrying about something other than life and death.” With this work, Jean Cocteau joins in the great tradition of visionary poets, de Quincey, Baudelaire and especially Rimbaud.
Jean Cocteau (1889 – 1963) was a prolific and bafflingly versatile artist. As a graphic artist, designer, playwright, filmmaker and writer, and a close friend of many major European creators (from Picasso to Coco Chanel via Marcel Proust), he numbers among those who influenced an era. From amongst his tumultuous personal relationships and his critically acclaimed artistic collaborations, one particularly notable example was the work that brought him together with Raymond Radiguet to write Le Diable au corps.
On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of his death, éditions Stock will be republishing several of the artist’s books.
L'auteur
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