COCTEAU (Jean). Clair-Obscur. Important first... Lot 103

COCTEAU (Jean). Clair-Obscur. Important first draft manuscript and drafts. Dated August 1952 to July 1954. 296 in-4 sheets and 56 in-8 sheets, on various papers, and 5 folio pages, folded; all in an ochre binder-folder bearing the autograph title in blue pen: Esquisses pour Clair-obscur. Clair-obscur is a collection of poems published in 1954. Very important autograph set of poems, sketches, notes, drafts overloaded with strikethroughs and intermediate corrections and clean-ups, with 3 original drawings, including a very fine profile and a beautiful Spanish scene; on a few leaves, drawings, scribbles and undulations. The "little preface" is laid down in the very first drafts, with the famous and enlightening phrase: "Poetry is a language apart that poets can speak without fear, since the crowds are wont to take for this language a certain way of using their own". Handwritten outline: "1. Small preface - with star and note at the end of the book / 2. of non-Spanish poems / 3. Spanish suite (dated). 4. it should end with a masterpiece - but there it is! On a draft of the first 3 stanzas of Hommage à Goya: "Hommage à Goya was written the same day, but Hommage à Gréco had been in my head since Toledo". Drafts for Hommage à Pouchkine: 10 sheets, 9 of them dated, from June 25 to July 5, 1954; the last sheet, giving "another version of the final stanza", still heavily crossed out, reads: "à peu près définitif / 5 juillet 1954 / mon anniversaire".