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Authors: Jean Cocteau
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experience as they grow old.
Youth is not what my friends want of me and theirs onlyinterests me in so far as it reflects their shadow. Each one uses it to his advantage, enjoys his fun where he finds it. Tries to remain worthy of the other. And time flies.
‘Our attempt at culture came to a sad end
,’ said Verlaine. Alas how many failures I record! There was reason enough for flight. But the soul is tenacious. Destroy its niche, it rebuilds it.
Garros’s plane is on fire. It crashes. Jean le Roy arranges my letters fan-shape on his mess-tin. He grasps his machine-gun. He dies. Typhoid carries off Radiguet. Marcel Khill is killed in Alsace. The Gestapo tortures Jean Desbordes.
I know quite well that I used to seek the friendship of machines that spin too fast and wear themselves out dramatically. Today paternal instinct keeps me away from them. I turn towards those who are not marked with the evil star. Cursed be it! I detest it. Once again I warm my carcase in the sunshine.
ON DREAMS
A SESSION AT DR B ’ S, WITH NITROGEN PROTOXYDE , comes to my mind. The nurse is giving this to me. The door opens. Another nurse comes in and says the word Madame. I leave our world, not without believing that I am countering the gas with a superior lucidity. I even seem to have the strength to make some very subtle remarks. ‘Doctor, take care, I am not asleep.’ But the journey begins. It lasts for centuries. I reach the first tribunal. I am judged. I pass. Another century. I reach the second tribunal. I am judged. I pass, and so it continues. At the fourteenth tribunal I understand that multiplicity is the sign of this other world and unity the sign of ours. I shall find on return one body, one dentist, one dentist’s room, one dentist’s hand, one dentist’s lamp, one dentist’s chair, one dentist’s white coat. And soon I must forget what I have seen. Retrace my steps before all these tribunals. Realize that they know that it is of no importance, that I shall not talk about it because I shall not remember. Centuries are added to centuries. I re-enter our world. I see unity reforming. What a bore! Everything is one. And I hear a voice saying at the door: ‘… wishes to know if you will see her tomorrow.’ The nurse is finishing her sentence. Only the name of the lady has escaped me. This is the duration of the centuries from which I’m surfacing, this the expanse of my dizzy journey. It is the immediacy of the dream. All we remember is the interminable dream that occurs instantaneously on the brinkof awakening. I have said that my dreams were usually of the nature of caricatures. They accuse me. They inform me of what is irreparable in my nature. They underline organic imperfections I will not correct. I suspected these. The dream proves them to me by means of acts, apologues, speeches. It is not like this every time, unless I flatter myself, not having unravelled the meaning.
The swiftness of the dream is such that its scenes are peopled with objects unknown to us when awake and about which in a trice we know the minutest details. What strikes me is that, from one second to the next, our ego of the dream finds itself projected into a new world, without feeling the astonishment which this world would rouse in it in a waking state, although it remains itself and does not participate in this transfiguration. We ourselves remain in another universe, which might suggest that when falling asleep we are like a traveller who awakes with a start. Nothing of the kind, since the town, where he did not believe himself to be, surprises this traveller, whereas the extravaganzas of a dream never disconcert the waking man who falls asleep. So the dream is the sleeper’s normal existence. This is why I endeavour to forget my dreams on waking. The actions of a dream are not valid in a waking state, and the actions of the waking state are only valid in the dream because it has the digestive faculty of making them into excrement. In the
Youth is not what my friends want of me and theirs onlyinterests me in so far as it reflects their shadow. Each one uses it to his advantage, enjoys his fun where he finds it. Tries to remain worthy of the other. And time flies.
‘Our attempt at culture came to a sad end
,’ said Verlaine. Alas how many failures I record! There was reason enough for flight. But the soul is tenacious. Destroy its niche, it rebuilds it.
Garros’s plane is on fire. It crashes. Jean le Roy arranges my letters fan-shape on his mess-tin. He grasps his machine-gun. He dies. Typhoid carries off Radiguet. Marcel Khill is killed in Alsace. The Gestapo tortures Jean Desbordes.
I know quite well that I used to seek the friendship of machines that spin too fast and wear themselves out dramatically. Today paternal instinct keeps me away from them. I turn towards those who are not marked with the evil star. Cursed be it! I detest it. Once again I warm my carcase in the sunshine.
ON DREAMS
A SESSION AT DR B ’ S, WITH NITROGEN PROTOXYDE , comes to my mind. The nurse is giving this to me. The door opens. Another nurse comes in and says the word Madame. I leave our world, not without believing that I am countering the gas with a superior lucidity. I even seem to have the strength to make some very subtle remarks. ‘Doctor, take care, I am not asleep.’ But the journey begins. It lasts for centuries. I reach the first tribunal. I am judged. I pass. Another century. I reach the second tribunal. I am judged. I pass, and so it continues. At the fourteenth tribunal I understand that multiplicity is the sign of this other world and unity the sign of ours. I shall find on return one body, one dentist, one dentist’s room, one dentist’s hand, one dentist’s lamp, one dentist’s chair, one dentist’s white coat. And soon I must forget what I have seen. Retrace my steps before all these tribunals. Realize that they know that it is of no importance, that I shall not talk about it because I shall not remember. Centuries are added to centuries. I re-enter our world. I see unity reforming. What a bore! Everything is one. And I hear a voice saying at the door: ‘… wishes to know if you will see her tomorrow.’ The nurse is finishing her sentence. Only the name of the lady has escaped me. This is the duration of the centuries from which I’m surfacing, this the expanse of my dizzy journey. It is the immediacy of the dream. All we remember is the interminable dream that occurs instantaneously on the brinkof awakening. I have said that my dreams were usually of the nature of caricatures. They accuse me. They inform me of what is irreparable in my nature. They underline organic imperfections I will not correct. I suspected these. The dream proves them to me by means of acts, apologues, speeches. It is not like this every time, unless I flatter myself, not having unravelled the meaning.
The swiftness of the dream is such that its scenes are peopled with objects unknown to us when awake and about which in a trice we know the minutest details. What strikes me is that, from one second to the next, our ego of the dream finds itself projected into a new world, without feeling the astonishment which this world would rouse in it in a waking state, although it remains itself and does not participate in this transfiguration. We ourselves remain in another universe, which might suggest that when falling asleep we are like a traveller who awakes with a start. Nothing of the kind, since the town, where he did not believe himself to be, surprises this traveller, whereas the extravaganzas of a dream never disconcert the waking man who falls asleep. So the dream is the sleeper’s normal existence. This is why I endeavour to forget my dreams on waking. The actions of a dream are not valid in a waking state, and the actions of the waking state are only valid in the dream because it has the digestive faculty of making them into excrement. In the
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