Word: cocteau
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...volume of poetry, La Lampe d'Aladin. Its success plunged the reedy young poet into the world of Proust, Picasso, Diaghilev and Stravinsky. Many give him credit for scattering ideas in a dozen surrealistic arts, but it will never be clear precisely who inspired (or copied) whom. Of Cocteau's ballet, Parade, Andre Gide wrote: "Cocteau knows the sets and costumes are by Picasso and the score by Satie, but he wonders if Picasso and Satie...
Living to Shock. Turned down for military service during World War I, Cocteau roamed the battlefields on his own, caring for the French wounded. After the death of his lover, Novelist...
Raymond Radiguet, Cocteau took to opium, later kicked the habit and led a campaign against dope addiction. At moments he could be as sentimental as any Piaf song, which is why it was difficult to take him seriously as a poet of evil. Yet guardians of public morality damned his books (Les Parents Terribles), plays (The Infernal Machine), and films (Beauty and the Beast) as immoral and unhealthy...
...Cocteau never stopped trying to shock the bourgeois out of their lethargy, and complained when they grew increasingly unshockable. "I have never caused scandal without premeditation," he said. "I deem it indispensable." Eight years ago, this determined, dedicated enfant terrible applied to the stodgy, conservative French Academy. "Since it is now fashionable to laugh at the academy," he said, "I have remained a rebel by joining...
Grief for the Academician and the former street singer was nationwide-the French only bury their politicians but mourn their artists. With the deaths of Piaf and Cocteau, France had been robbed of two incomparable figures, whose joint epitaph might well be Piaf's defiant song, Je ne regrette rien...