Professional Secrets: An Autobiography of Jean Cocteau Drawn from His Lifetime Writings

HarperCollins Publishers [Published Date: 1972]. Soft cover, 331 pp. First Harper Colophon Edition, 1972]. Black and white illustrations and photo reproductions. For over half a century, Jean Cocteau was the master bricoleur Jack-of-all-trades in the arts of Western Europe. His trademark, handwritten name with a tailpiece star, became as famous as his name, and his collected works, as Auden said, would require "not a bookshelf, but a warehouse." Besides some fifty volumes of poems, plays, novels, memoirs, diaries, and criticism, he also made drawings, paintings, tapestries, pottery, movies, murals, stage sets, ballets, opera libretti, cabaret songs (music as well as words), and one season he designed a line of Christmas cards....Drawing upon some thirty of Cocteau's books, as well as memoirs by friends and confreres, Professional Secrets follows the trajectory of a living myth. From a bewitched and stage-struck childhood, with Bernhardt and Mistinguett and Proust and Rilke in the wings; to the turning point in 1913 when Diaghilev smiled at the young Cocteau and said, "Etonne-moi. . . Do something that will surprise me. . .", it moves through a series of events and encounters that stand like so many heraldic signs: the opium cures, the love for Raymond Radiguet, the religious crises, the psychosomatic illnesses, the world travels, the friendships with Picasso and Stravinsky, Satie and Chaplin, Colette and Gide; and the incessant, inspired work in theatres, film studios, and alone at a writing table, in the middle of the night, using paper and ink as "the only means I have to forget my ugliness and to become beautiful. . ."