When me and my sister were younger – like four and five, or five and six – we used to play these epic games in the back seat of our parents' car on long journeys. The car was a big old Citroën estate, like the vehicle from Ghostbusters, and the back seat folded down to form a huge play area (this was before anyone bothered about seat-belts in the back).The games we played were incomprehensible to everyone but ourselves, and now we're older they've grown incomprehensible to us too. All I can remember are a few titles. One game was called ‘Baby in Australia’, which – bizarrely – was about a baby travelling around the United States having adventures. It was like Rugrats meets The Littlest Hobo. I'm not quite sure why we gave this such a confusing name. Another, more logically titled, game was called ‘Strongbaby’ (one word), and involved a baby with superhuman strength. I'm not certain now to what use an infant would really put Hulk-like strength, nor for that matter why we were both so obsessed with babies. But mothers and fathers reading this will readily appreciate that our own parents were happy to tolerate what appeared to be incipient psychological problems on the grounds that it kept us quiet for the length of a three-hour jaunt up the A1M.I hadn't thought about this for years. Then I read Les Enfants terribles and it all came flooding back. If you've read the book this may sound alarming, but fortunately in our case it apparently never went further than a lot of weirdly regimented transport-based role-plays. For Paul and Élisabeth, the central characters of Cocteau's dark and dreamy novel, the shared world of childhood fantasy takes on a more all-consuming and sinister aspect.Orphaned twins, they construct a haven of their own in their dead mother's apartment on the rue Montmartre (just round the corner from where I work), where their room is all low lighting, red textiles, pictures pinned up from newspapers, and a collection of hoarded ‘treasure’ brought back from the outside world. Here, in the middle of the night, the teenagers play what is only ever referred to as ‘the game’, a sort of never-ending psychological test of one-upmanship which governs their entire lives: the game is nothing less than a ‘semi-consciousness into which the children plunged’, which ‘dominated space and time; it initiated dreams, blended them with reality’.Outsiders are brought into this private world, but they are always ultimately cat's-paws used by one sibling to get at the other. The self-imposed rituals are about domination, and there is a crackle of erotic charge everywhere: indeed at times this reads like the most literary treatment of D/S ever made. This is not to say that the book is about sex; it is much more oblique and remarkable than that. In one extraordinary scene, Élisabeth waits until Paul is just dropping off to sleep, and then, at three in the morning, she suddenly produces a bowl of crayfish from under her bed and starts eating them, ignoring Paul's anxious requests for her to share.‘Gérard,’ [she says to Paul's schoolfriend who is with them,] ‘do you know of anything more depraved that some sixteen-year-old kid reduced to asking for a crayfish? He'd lick the rug, don't you know, he'd crawl on all fours. No! Don't give it to him, let him get up, let him come here! He's so vile, this gangling great oaf who refuses to move, dying for nice food but not able to make the effort. It's because I'm ashamed for him that I'm refusing to give him a crayfish….’ —Gérard, connaissez-vous une chose plus abjecte qu'un type de seize ans qui s'abaisse à demander une écrevisse? Il lécherait la carpette, vous savez, il marcherait à quatre pattes. Non ! ne la lui portez pas, qu'il se lève, qu'il vienne ! C'est trop infecte, à la fin, cette grande bringue qui refuse de bouger, qui crève de gourmandise et qui ne peut pas faire un effort. C'est parce que j'ai honte pour lui que je lui refuse une écrevisse….An hour later, when Paul finally gives up and goes to sleep, Élisabeth wakes him and forces him to eat the crayfish, ‘breaking the carapace, pushing the flesh between his teeth’ as Paul struggles to chew while half-asleep: ‘grave, patient, hunched over, she resembled a madwoman force-feeding a dead child.’It's an incredible scene the like of which I've never read anywhere else, and all described in this beautiful, verbally rich, precise Coctellian prose. The oppressive and erotic atmosphere is picked up on later by one of Élisabeth's friends, who is pining submissively after Paul: she ‘thrilled to be a victim because she felt the room to be full of an amorous electricity whose most brutal shocks were made inoffensive’. The novel's dénouement is going to prove her horribly wrong on this point.The conclusion is dark and very French: the quasi-incestuous power-play cannot survive impact with adulthood, and implodes with considerable collateral damage. But how difficult for a writer to enter into this private world of childhood fantasy, and how perfectly Cocteau pulls it off. Some of his lines froze me with horrified delight: when the children find their mother dead in her room, the body is described as a ‘petrified scream’ – ‘ce Voltaire furieux qu'ils ne connaissent pas’. He combines the eye of a poet with a good novelist's willingness to examine the psychic areas usually left unexamined.This year marks fifty years since Cocteau's death, and it's a good excuse to try him out if you haven't yet (as I hadn't until recently). Reading this is like having a beautiful dream that modulates into a beautiful nightmare. I kind of want to send a copy to my own sister, but I can't help feeling like that might be in bad taste.
When I read the synopsis of the book, I was highly intrigued and bought it on the spot. But when I started reading the first chapter of the book, I thought I had gotten stuck with the most ridiculous book on the planet.The first chapter involves Paul getting hit with a snowball (with a stone hidden inside it) to the chest by his crush/obsession, the feminine-looking Dargelos. Apparently, Paul becomes so ill that he is bed-ridden and advised by the doctor not to go back to school - or leave the house - leaving his sister to not only care for him, but for their sick mother as well. End of the chapter, "The Game" is revealed, which can only be played in their shared bedroom, and it involves the siblings trying to annoy each other until one of them leaves the contest with the last word, ideally having caused a display of angry frustration from the other.Having read all that, I sat there thinking what a ridiculous, silly book this is. How soft is this boy that he can't go back to school? And with Paul obsessing over Dargelos (sobbing uncontrollably upon knowing he won't be able to see him again because he can't go back to school), and Gerard obsessing over Paul, I was left with the impression that they were homosexual. Only to have Gerard develop an infatuation with Elizabeth soon after, which left me confused.I realized, halfway through the second chapter, that I needed to stop over-analyzing and instead delve into the story until I am lost in it. That worked wonders for me, because as soon as I came up for breath, I realized I had devoured the whole thing in less than two hours. And it left me speechless.After Paul and Elizabeth's mother dies, they are left to fend for themselves, with the help of a nurse and Gerard (plus Gerard's father). Elizabeth takes up a job as a model, and meets Agathe, who moves in with them and becomes part of their family. As their family grows, and the siblings grow up, it becomes harder to stay in the private world (and the Game) that they shared for so long. But attempting to keep each other in The Game comes with a huge price, one that will leave you breathless with shock and sadness in the end.Jealousy, intimacy, superiority, love, obsession with a subtle, yet consistent, hint of incest - this story has everything. It will confuse you, yet astound you. So just sit there and enjoy the ride.
What do You think about The Holy Terrors (1966)?
Iako je pored poezije, pisao drame, romane, pripovetke, režirao filmove i slikao, za sebe je uvek govorio da je primarno pesnik. Kada se pojavio na francuskoj kulturnoj sceni u drugoj deceniji 20. veka pojedini su u njemu videli oličenje modernosti, originalnosti i šarma. Edit Vorton je oduševljeno za Koktoa govorila da je za njega svaki veliki stih svitanje, svaki sumrak temelj nebeskog grada. Dok je za jedne Kokto bio i ostao protejski plesač na visokoj umetničkoj žici, drugi su u njemu videli frivolnog dendija, neozbiljnog estetu i trgovca plagijatora koji je straćio svoje talente. Ja naravno spadam u prvu grupu.Les enfants terribles ili Derlad izašli su 1929. i do dan danas ostaju najpoznatije romaneskno ostavenje Žana Koktoa. U romanu pratimo život dva tinejdžera, Elizabete i Pola, od njihove rane adolescenicije do prvih godina mladosti. Ovo nije topla priča o odrastanju, naprotiv ovo je uznemirujući narativ o osobama koji odbijaju da odrastu. Kokto detinjstvo prikazuje kao nešto animalno, instiktivno, nesvesno, sa puno opresivne erotske sublimacije (uključujući I homoerotičnost i incestuoznost). Svest maloletnika slična je svesti aktivnog konzumera opijuma. Kao središte njihovog odnosa postavljena je igra. Igrom je označena dečija sposobnost stanja polusvesti odnosno budnog sanjanja, san koji vas odnosi iznad svakog domašaja i koji predmetima ponovo daje njihov istinski smisao. U igrama učestvuje i njihov prijatelj Žerar a nešto kasnije i Agata. Oboje zauzimaju podređenu ulogu u odnosu na Pola i Elizabet. Sa dna, glava izvijenih nagore, oni su obožavali svoje idole, Agata mladića od snega (Pol), Žerar devicu od čelika (Elizabet). Te igre uključuju i nasilno ponašanje, verbalno vređanje, krađe, erotiku itd. Sazrevajći bez roditelja, bez škole i pravih kontakata sa spoljašnjim svetom, ovi likovi uspevaju da stvore svoj sopstveni svet u sobama pariskog stana. Ako vam čitava priča o incestuoznom bratu i sestri, mladiću koji im se beskrajno divi, i igrama koje se odugravaju u pariskom stanu, zvuči pozntao, razlog je verovatno u tome što su Derlad poslužila kao direktna inspiracija Žilberu Aderu u pisanju romana Sanjari i Bernardu Bertolučiju u snimanju istoimenog filma. Bertolučijevi Sanjari imaju čak i direktne aluzije na Koktoa i na filmsku adaptaciju Les enfants terrible Žan Pjera Melvila.Derlad su pre svega roman o erosu i tanatosu. O Erosu koji donosi pustoš i koji se potvrđuje u traganju za lepotom. Kako pripovedač u jednom trenutku ističe: Ogromne su privilegije lepote. Ona dejstvuje čak i na one koji je nisu svesni. O Tanatosu koji potvrđuje eros i koji se uvek nalazi na njegovom drugom polu. Divan lirizam pojedinih delova romana je ono najlepše što Derlad imaju da ponude. Ti poetični delovi se u nekada približavaju nadrealizmu (pokretu u okviru koga je i sam Kokto u jednom trenutku delovao). Na kraju kako Kokto sam ističe Prave drame se odigravaju sasvim drugačije no što se to zamišlja. Njihova jednostvanost, njihova veličina, njihove bizarnosti nas poraze.
—Teo
This is a novella by Avante-garde writer, playwright etc Cocteau in 1929 apparently over a week whilst he was coming off opium. The story is about orphaned brother Paul aged 14 and older sister Elisabeth aged16 who live with the soon to die bed-bound mother. They play a sibling-rivalry game, perhaps representing life, of, in essence, who can wind the other up the most and have the last word; mainly in the ‘Room’ but does extend outside. They are provided funds by friend Gerard’s rich uncle and the nice doctor. The dynamic starts when Gerarde fancies Elisabeth and new entrant model Agathe fancies sickly Paul. Paul may also fancy a boy called Dragelos.This is a strange, fanciful story which is well written and interspersed with some interesting sparse pen-line drawings by the author. The ending is clever and sharp but to get the most out of it one must remember the basis of the story (as the thrust of the action, e.g. poison collecting, might, as in my case, mean you get a bit ‘distracted’).Some quotes:“The play began. But not one of the protagonists, it must be remembered, was consciously concerned with make-believe. In their archaic unawareness their play became legend of eternal youth. Without their knowing it, the play – the Room-swung on the edge of myth”“Elizabeth has chosen him, not for his fortune or his animal spirits or his well-cut suits; not even for his sex-appeal; it was for his death that she had chosen him”I usually find that quick reads tend to do well for scores and Les Enfants is no exception. Easily 4 stars.
—Howard
I finished this short novel/novella (second read-through) earlier tonight. I have much I could say about it, but I feel that if I go into an in-depth analysis of the relationships between the various characters -- Elizabeth (or Lise, the passive-aggressive sister), Paul (her "weak" brother, with whom she shares a "strong physical resemblance"), Gerard (their friend, who is enamored with Paul), Dargelos (with whom Paul is enamored, and who, though off-screen most of the time, is key to the way in which events will unfold), Agatha (an orphan employed as a mannequin when we first meet her, and a tragic figure; she greatly resembles -- physically, that is -- Dargelos, not insignificantly), Michael (the rich Jewish American who makes a brief, but significant, appearance), etc. -- I will ruin this short but amazingly complex work for anyone who wishes to discover it on his/her own. Suffice it to say that this book will appeal to those who appreciate Greek tragedy tuned to a decidedly modern key (I couldn't help thinking of Alain Robbe-Grillet's The Erasers -- here, as in that work, things already seem to be preordained from early on in the novel, and references to Greek mythological figures occasionally surface as little hints of what's to come). Its central characters are self-absorbed, spoiled, "social misfits"; they are thieves, dreamers whose dreams are unsavory, and love will eventually tear them apart (please allow me the Ian Curtis reference). Any "good" synopsis of the novella would probably talk about the "Room" in which the three -- later four -- perform their childish "plays," about the "Game," about the near-incestuous relationship strongly hinted at between brother/sister (Paul and Elisabeth), about the pranks the children play on others, the rituals and the objects they steal/collect, about the death of various family members and the significance of said deaths, and perhaps even about what happens at the end. But I won't go there. Best to discover these things for oneself. I might also briefly mention, for those interested in POV, that this novella is written in a close third-person style that allows the narrator to freely weave in and out of the minds of all of the characters, not just the main characters, and also to interject, from time to time, a comment or three of his own (i.e. to remind us that we're watching a bona fide tragedy unfold before our eyes!). Finally, the illustrations, by Cocteau himself, are quite wonderful, and add to the ambience of the narrative.
—Marc
