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Authors: Jean Cocteau
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world of sleep this excrement does not appear to us as such and its chemistry interests us, amuses us or terrifies us. But transposed into the waking state, which does not possess this digestive faculty, the actions of the dream would foul life for us and make it unbreathable. Thousands of examples prove this, because in recent times a good many doors have been opened to these horrors. It is one thing to look for signs in them and another to allow the oil stain to spread over to the waking state and extend there.Fortunately our neighbour’s dream bores us if he recounts it to us and this fact stops us from recounting our own.
What is certain is that this enfolding, through the medium of which eternity becomes liveable to us, is not produced in dreams in the same way as in life. Something of this fold unfolds. Thanks to this our limits change, widen. The past, the future no longer exist; the dead rise again; places construct themselves without architect, without journeys, without that tedious oppression that compels us to live minute by minute that which the half-opened fold shows us at a glance. Moreover the atmospheric and profound triviality of the dream favours encounters, surprises, acquaintanceships, a naturalness which our enfolded world (I mean projected onto the surface of a fold) can only ascribe to the supernatural. I say naturalness, because one of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing in it astonishes us. We consent without regret to live there among strangers, entirely separated from our habits and our friends. This is what fills us with dismay at the sight of a face we love, and which is asleep. Where, at this moment, stirs the face behind this mask? Where does it light up and for whom? This sight of sleep has always frightened me more than dreams. I made the verses of
Plain-Chant
about it.
A woman sleeps. She triumphs. She need no longer lie. She is a lie from head to toe. She will give no account of her movements. She deceives with impunity. Taking advantage of this licentiousness, she parts her lips, she allows her limbs to drift where they will. She is no longer on guard. She is her own alibi. What could the man watching her blame her for? She is there. What need has Othello of that handkerchief? Let him watch Desdemona sleeping. It is enough to make one commit murder. It is true that a jealous man never ceases to be one and that afterwards he would exclaim: ‘What is she doing to me there among the dead?’
Emerged from sleep the dream fades. It is a deep sea plant which dies out of water. It dies on my sheets. Its reign mystifies me. I admire its fables. I take advantage of it to live a double life. I never make use of it.
What it teaches us is the bitterness of our limitations. Since Nerval, Ducasse, Rimbaud, the study of its mechanism has often given the poet the means of conquering them, adapting our world otherwise than according to the dictates of good sense, shuffling the order of the factors to which reason condemns us, in short making for poetry a lighter, swifter and newer vehicle.
ON READING
I CANNOT READ OR WRITE. AND WHEN THE CENSUS form asks me this question, I am tempted to answer no.
Who knows how to write? It is to battle with ink to try to make oneself understood.
Either one takes too much care over one’s work or one does not take enough. Seldom does one find the happy mean that limps with grace. Reading is another matter. I read. I think I am reading. Each time I re-read, I perceive that I have not read. That is the trouble with a letter. One finds in it what one looks for. One is satisfied. One puts it aside. If one finds it again, on re-reading one reads into it another which one had not read.
Books play us the same trick. If they do not suit our present mood we do not consider them good. If they disturb us we criticize them, and this criticism is superimposed upon them and prevents us from reading them fairly.
What the reader wants is to read himself. When he
What is certain is that this enfolding, through the medium of which eternity becomes liveable to us, is not produced in dreams in the same way as in life. Something of this fold unfolds. Thanks to this our limits change, widen. The past, the future no longer exist; the dead rise again; places construct themselves without architect, without journeys, without that tedious oppression that compels us to live minute by minute that which the half-opened fold shows us at a glance. Moreover the atmospheric and profound triviality of the dream favours encounters, surprises, acquaintanceships, a naturalness which our enfolded world (I mean projected onto the surface of a fold) can only ascribe to the supernatural. I say naturalness, because one of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing in it astonishes us. We consent without regret to live there among strangers, entirely separated from our habits and our friends. This is what fills us with dismay at the sight of a face we love, and which is asleep. Where, at this moment, stirs the face behind this mask? Where does it light up and for whom? This sight of sleep has always frightened me more than dreams. I made the verses of
Plain-Chant
about it.
A woman sleeps. She triumphs. She need no longer lie. She is a lie from head to toe. She will give no account of her movements. She deceives with impunity. Taking advantage of this licentiousness, she parts her lips, she allows her limbs to drift where they will. She is no longer on guard. She is her own alibi. What could the man watching her blame her for? She is there. What need has Othello of that handkerchief? Let him watch Desdemona sleeping. It is enough to make one commit murder. It is true that a jealous man never ceases to be one and that afterwards he would exclaim: ‘What is she doing to me there among the dead?’
Emerged from sleep the dream fades. It is a deep sea plant which dies out of water. It dies on my sheets. Its reign mystifies me. I admire its fables. I take advantage of it to live a double life. I never make use of it.
What it teaches us is the bitterness of our limitations. Since Nerval, Ducasse, Rimbaud, the study of its mechanism has often given the poet the means of conquering them, adapting our world otherwise than according to the dictates of good sense, shuffling the order of the factors to which reason condemns us, in short making for poetry a lighter, swifter and newer vehicle.
ON READING
I CANNOT READ OR WRITE. AND WHEN THE CENSUS form asks me this question, I am tempted to answer no.
Who knows how to write? It is to battle with ink to try to make oneself understood.
Either one takes too much care over one’s work or one does not take enough. Seldom does one find the happy mean that limps with grace. Reading is another matter. I read. I think I am reading. Each time I re-read, I perceive that I have not read. That is the trouble with a letter. One finds in it what one looks for. One is satisfied. One puts it aside. If one finds it again, on re-reading one reads into it another which one had not read.
Books play us the same trick. If they do not suit our present mood we do not consider them good. If they disturb us we criticize them, and this criticism is superimposed upon them and prevents us from reading them fairly.
What the reader wants is to read himself. When he
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