The Journals of Jean Cocteau

New York: Criterion Books, 1956. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. Good. [8],250 pages. Frontispiece. Illustrations Footnotes. . Cover has some wear and soiling. No dust jacket present. Editor's Note. Selected Bibliography. Index. There are nine sections in the Contents: Childhood and Early Influences, The Writer's Character, Testimonials, Theatre, Films, Aesthetics, Moral Essays, France, and New York. Among the sub-topics listed are: Marcel Proust, Gide, Surrealists, Guillaume Apollinaire, Diaghilev, Nijinsky, Self-Commitment, Raymon Radiguet, Jacques Maritain, Picasso, Reading, Beauty, Injustice, Opium, Friendship, Death, Frivolity, Youth, Sexual Habits, and Responsibility. Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (5 July 1889 - 11 October 1963) was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager, playwright and filmmaker. Along with other Surrealists of his generation (Jean Anouilh and René Char for example) Cocteau grappled with the "algebra" of verbal codes old and new, mise en scène language and technologies of modernism to create a paradox: a classical avant-garde. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Colette, Édith Piaf, whom he cast in one of his one act plays entitled Le Bel Indifferent in 1940, and Raymond Radiguet. His work was played out in the theatrical world of the Grands Theatres, the Boulevards and beyond during the Parisian epoque he both lived through and helped define and create. His versatile, unconventional approach and enormous output brought him international acclaim. Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998) was an American writer and professor of literature. He was the James B. Duke Professor of French Literature at Duke University where he taught from 1964 to the end of his career. Although he published more than twenty books, he was devoted to teaching, particularly undergraduate courses in French, Italian, and modernist literature. Took his A.B. at Harvard College in 1930, then a Master's in 1933 and a Ph.D. in 1936, also at Harvard. Before coming to Duke in 1964, he taught at Bennington College, University of Chicago, and Yale University. Fowlie was also noted for his correspondence with literary figures such as Henry Miller, René Char, Jean Cocteau, André Gide, Saint-John Perse, Marianne Moore, and Anaïs Nin. He is best known for his translations of Arthur Rimbaud, which were appreciated by a younger generation that included Jim Morrison (whose work Fowlie also became a scholar of) and Patti Smith. In 1990, Fowlie consulted with director Oliver Stone on the film The Doors. From the forties onward, Fowlie filled a vacuum in academia. There was room for a great teacher and explainer of significant modern French poets and writers in America and England. For several decades, Fowlie was the pre-eminent critic of French literature in America, something which earned him a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship in 1947.[4] He published book after book on the great French writers he revered, including Mallarmé and Rimbaud. He was the first translator of Rimbaud in English: his Rimbaud, Complete Works, Selected Letters appeared in 1966. This work aligned him with his friend Henry Miller, whose work he championed, and brought Rimbaud to a new generation of fans — and with it the acknowledgment and gratitude of rock stars Patti Smith and Jim Morrison. Morrison wrote Fowlie a letter which he forgot about until his students played him the music of the Doors. He quickly recognized Rimbaud's influence in the lyrics. Then he remembered and retrieved the letter. As an octogenarian, he published Rimbaud and Jim Morrison: The Rebel As Poet.