Abstract EN:

A parallel between author and work allows us to penetrate into the creator's fate in relation to that of his works, and reveals why, in the case of Jean Cocteau, the shape of his work does not always coincide with the bulk of his figure. His progress towards a literary achievement goes through different stages of apprenticeship and evolution: an apprenticeship of new artistic values, codified by the new spirit, is not incompatible with reverting to a classical vision of art. The urgency of an unusual reading-over of Cocteau’s work through the meanders of hundreds of critical appraisals it raised in the press, and within the limits of half a century, proceeds from an ideal of literary fairness towards Cocteau. If reviewers of Cocteau’s works are motivated more by their personal sensibility than by the political line of their paper, it is owing to the fact that Cocteau adopts a calchas attitude. Ill interpreted, such attitude nevertheless contributes to Cocteau’s greatness, whose only engagement is to his own work. The myth of his work (consubstantial with the myth of poetry) is inherent to Cocteau. His successive assumptions and allegiances, in the presence of an out-world, which he calls the unknown, reveal his status of an author (consubstantial with the myth of a poet) under the features of a hero (Orpheus) from Greek tragedy. On the other hand, Cocteau’s myth is inherent to journalistic criticism, taken off-balance, in a perspective of mythical fight, by the diversity of his work. Far from being prejudicial to Cocteau, the dividing between praisers and disparagers has generated an exchange more useful to the displaying of his work than to the critical appreciation of his judges.