Plain Song and Angel Heurtebise

A BILINGUAL EDITION. In 1925, Jean Cocteau, a leading artist of the French avant-garde, was standing in an elevator when an angel spoke to him and divulged his name: it was the same as that of elevator manufacturer, Heurtebise. In a haze that lasted seven days, Cocteau wrote this long poem about the Angel Heurtebise, who was not only a guardian angel and muse, but also the reincarnation of Cocteau's dead lover Raymond Radiguet, and a kind of demon. This character appeared throughout Cocteau's works.