The Difficulty of Being With La difficulté d'être (1947) Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) has written a collection of short autobiographical essays on the apparent model of the classic French moralists. Of these I have read but Montaigne and a little of de La Rochefoucauld, so I can hardly draw lines of influence and style for Cocteau's essays. With titles like "De l'amitié" and "Des moeurs", etc. he deliberately alludes to Montaigne (*), but he delivers essays which are notably shorter and less erudite than the latter's. And, frankly, in the end, these allusions and the cover blurbs talking about Pascal and Chamfort are quite misleading.I have the possibly mistaken notion that sincerity is essential for moralizing essays and find that Cocteau occasionally escapes into what seems to me to be a pose. Nonetheless, there are many passages in this book which seem quite sincere to me: when he sketches the nature of Erik Satie and what he meant to Cocteau; when he does the same for the precocious little genius, Raymond Radiguet; when he evokes what the Comédie-Française in Paris meant to him, etc. But, really, although Cocteau does some moralizing - some offering of advice in the game of life - in this book, his central theme is himself, his life, his work, his friends. This is as close an approximation to an autobiography that we have from Cocteau, with the possible exception of Opium and Portraits-Souvenir which are concerned with limited portions/aspects of his life. Read from this point of view, the book is quite interesting; read from the point of view of moral essays, quite a bit less so. As autobiography I find it engaging, even though I have a fairly good idea of the course of his life; nothing quite replaces seeing someone else's life through their own eyes (despite the, shall we say, corrections that person makes in the story). How much more engaging will it be for those who yet know little about Cocteau's life? Imagine for a moment this anecdote, told in the book: Serge Diaghilev having challenged Cocteau in the Place de la Concorde late one night with "étonne-moi!" (amaze me), Cocteau, Picasso and Satie put together a little thing called "Parade",(**) which generated such a reaction from the audience that only the sight of Guillaume Apollinaire, with his head still heavily bandaged from a war wound and in uniform, dissuaded the ladies of the audience from stabbing out the authors' eyes with their hatpins! According to other witnesses, perhaps the ladies wouldn't have resorted to their hairpins, but physical harm was imminent...He writes beautifully about his aesthetics of writing, theater, and cinema. And there are other stories of Nijinsky, Diaghilev, Apollinaire, Picasso, Proust, hints of how such a multi-talented artist juggled so many balls, and yet more... These essays have been translated into English and are available in multiple editions.(*) It's not a good idea to ask to be compared to Montaigne.(**) A "cubist" theater piece/ballet (1917) for which Satie wrote the music (which included foghorns and typewriters, at Cocteau's insistence); Picasso made the sets, costumes and props; Cocteau was responsible for the story and characters; Léonide Massine did the choreography, and Ernest Ansermet conducted the orchestra. In this linkhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WATQDq...you will find a little video about the scandal of "Parade" which includes a recording of Cocteau himself relating a few anecdotes in connection with it. And in this cliphttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Chq1T...you will find excerpts from a recent recreation of the piece. One can well understand why a 1917 audience might have thought it was being made into an ass. Rating http://leopard.booklikes.com/post/686...
This book is like sitting down across from Jean Cocteau and talking for him for hours. I wish. "I had come to imagine us so clearly, youth matching my youth, standing at a street corner, sitting in a square, lying face down on a bed, elbows on a table, gossiping together. And I leave you. Without leaving you, needless to say, since I am so closely merged with my ink that my pulse beats into it. Do you not feel it under your thumb, as it holds the corner of the pages? That would astonish me, since it throbs under my pen and produces that inimitable, wild, nocturnal, ultra-complex hubbub of my heart, recorded in Le Sang d’un Poète. ‘The poet is dead. Long live the poet.’ This is the cry of his ink. This is what his muffled drums beat out. This is what lights his funeral candelabra. This is what shakes the pocket in which you put my book and makes passers-by turn their heads and wonder what the noise is. This is the whole difference between a book that is simply a book and this book, which is a person changed into a book. Changed into a book and crying out for help, for the spell to be broken and he reincarnated in the person of the reader. This is the sleight-of-hand I ask of you. Please understand me. It is not so difficult as it seems at first sight. You take this book out of your pocket. You read. And if you manage to read it without anything being able to distract you from my writing, little by little you will feel that I inhabit you and you will resurrect me."and sometimes, so did Jean Cocteau.
What do You think about The Difficulty Of Being (1995)?
In this book, Cocteau has put together small essays on various topics. Some of these essays are very personal and honest in nature (like On Childhood). These are lovely to read, specially because the writer seems to be speaking from the heart. These are short, and ideas don't appear to be grandstanded.But in the later essays, the voice begins to get impersonal, and the ideas insincere. For example the ideas on lines, beauty, etc. are a bit preachy and also dense. It is at this point that my interest began to wane off.In both kinds of essays however, Cocteau shows an uncanny capacity to observe the world around him and within him. He finds patterns, and commits them to paper in a concise manner. I have read some beautiful quotes in this book to which I will have to return.
—Madhuri
Quite interesting. Interesting enough to keep me going.I let out a few "hmm"s and "ahh"s, and then I reached the section titled: ‘On Beauty’What Cocteau had to say about beauty intrigued me.This, especially: Beauty in art is a stratagem that she uses to immortalise herself. She travels, she pauses on her way, she fertilises human minds. Artists provide her with a vehicle. They do not know her. It is by them and outside them that she pursues her mission. Should they try to get hold of her by force, they only produce an artifice.[...] Let no one think that beauty lacks a critical faculty nor that she is proof of one. Neither the one nor the other. She goes straight to the point, whatever that may be. She always seeks out those who espouse her, thus ensuring her survival.I also enjoyed reading his thoughts on youth. Unfortunately, I can't access the quote I wanted to share at the moment. I will update this as soon as I can.This, on Jeanne d'Arc, made me smile too:Joan of Arc is my great writer. No one finds truer expression than she does in form or in substance. Without any doubt she would have been blunted had she adopted a style. As she is, she is style itself, and I never tire of reading and re-reading the reports of her trial. Antigone is my other saint. Those two anarchists measure up to the seriousness I like, which Gide denies in my work, my own brand of seriousness that does not conform to what is usually called by this name.Toward the end, Cocteau says that “ink as persuasive as [his] can never quite be at peace.” I love that.All 'round good read.
—Yossie
The Difficulty of Being, ended up being more interesting than I thought it would be. A memoir as it is described, about his creative development, bits about childhood and some of his inner criticisms. A highly quotable book throughout and there were many times lots of tid-bits of worthy wisdom in a few words that I wanted to collect in some kind of quote scrapbook. Usually, in this kind of work there are more interesting sections than others. I found his take on Dreams completely wonderful and also his thoughts of Death and on chronic pain, describing it as an invading army striking and taking up camp across various parts of his body. At times, I lost footing of what he was writing about and found it difficult to find what direction he was taking his thoughts. However, in the end, I left with some great observations on life, and his humour was actually warming when he talked about his appearance and his nose taking on a Roman appearance and his hair having a mind of its own. I search for myself. I thought I recognized myself, I lost sight of myself, I ran after myself, I caught myself up, out of breath - Jean Cocteau
—Julie
