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Résumé :
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Jean Cocteau's reputation has always suffered from the scope of his wildly varied activities. Multi-talented, artistically inclined chameleons are not always taken seriously, and his admission to the Académie française wastherefore a surprise to many. Yet whoever considers his free fall through the art world will see how seriously Cocteau operated. He has doubtlessly proved himself to be a poet first and foremost, but his entrance into the world of the avant-garde took place in a different field. This Parisian son of a man of independent means grew up in an artistic but conventional environment connected mainly to the music and theatre world. The young Cocteau therefore spent more time in the wings than in school, leading to his expulsion from the lycée-Condorcet in 1904.
Cocteau's first work was conventional: articles, drawings, a magazine produced together with the interesting printer-poet Bernouard, three collections of poetry, and three trivial works, according to his own later judgment. Meanwhile he grew acquainted with a new world of Cubism, Picasso, Satie's music, Milhaud, Stravinsky, and Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, for which he designed a few sets. He finally saw the light in 1913 during the premiere of Stravinsky's Sacre du Printemps. That very year, Le Potomak came into being: a happy combination of prose and drawings that was to become a turning point in his life. The ballet Parade (1917), on which he collaborated with Satie and Picasso, also became a memorable theatrical scandal, similar to Sacre. From then on, it would be hard to keep up with Cocteau's activities.
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