Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)
The extraordinary versatility of Jean Cocteau has been both the basis of his widespread fame as well as the cause of the more carping view of him as a jack-of-all-trades who was aware of and involved in the broad spectrum of the tumultuous avant-garde during the first half of the twentieth century. He experimented with audacity in just about every artistic medium, and there have been few others who could do so much so well. If the results, as is sometimes claimed, were uneven, it must be admitted that given the range they cover, their quality is remarkably high. Above all, they are never uninteresting.
In this country, Cocteau is probably best known as a film-maker. His Blood of a Poet (1930) set the stage for his remarkable and highly influential films of the 1940s, notably Orpheus and Beauty and the Beast. Nevertheless, Cocteau liked to think of himself, first and foremost, as a poet, and he believed that it was his poetic gift that lay behind all the forms of creativity that he embraced in the written and the visual arts. During the 1920s he was, for many, the leading figure of the avant-garde.
Les Enfants terrible (1929) was his first successful novel, and in 1950 it joined his distinguished series of films. It was preceded by the dramatic work Orphée (1926) and followed, in 1936, by La Machine Infernale, which links the myths of Oedipus and Orpheus. In the spirit of the Surrealists, Cocteau made extensive and free use of Greek mythology, bringing to it an intensity and originality that rendered its timeless, universal concerns meaningful to his contemporaries.
Cocteau seems to have known, and was known by, just about every creative personality of his time. It is, in fact, difficult to find a memoir ranging from Edith Wharton to Charlie Chaplin that doesn't mention him in some significant way. He collaborated with such figures as Picasso, Diaghilev, Stravinksy, Kurt Weill, and the composers known as "Les Six" (Auric, Durey, Honegger, Milhaud, Poulenc, and Tailleferre), who considered him their spiritus rector, and who, as a group, set his Les Mariés de la tour Eiffel to music. With the young novelist Raymond Radiguet he fashioned the libretto for an opéra-comique, Paul et Virginie (1920), and for Stravinsky he wrote the text of the oratorio Oedipus Rex (1927). The manuscripts for both works are included in this exhibition (courtesy of the Syracuse University Library), and Paul et Virginie, with a new score composed by Charles Kalman, is being given its world premiere within the framework of this symposium.
In addition to his literary efforts, Jean Cocteau was a painter, muralist, photographer, sculptor, ceramist, and decorator. He was honored by election to the Académie Française and awarded the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Oxford [see his letter and drawing relevant to this honor in the exhibition] and the Norton Chair at Harvard. He died, at the age of seventy four, in 1963.
Cocteau's World: A Symposium
Jean Cocteau, one of the twentieth century's most remarkable creative talents, will be the focus of a multi-faceted symposium at Penn State. The program will include lectures, exhibitions, concerts, films, and theatre and will feature the world premiere production of an original musical drama, Paul and Virginie, written by Cocteau and Raymond Radiguet in 1920.
Cocteau's World: A Symposium was hosted by Penn State's Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies from March 16 to 18, 2000. Besides the premiere performance of Paul and Virginie, the symposium included a performance of the music of "Les Six," the group of world-renowned composers who considered Cocteau their spokesman. Three of Cocteau's films were also screened.
