Cocteau, Jean, French poet, painter and playwright (1889-1963). "Peut-être un gand vapeur qui fait escale aux rives". Autograph poem.

€ 1.500,00

Unpublished sonnet from Cocteau's youth, describing a return to the Greek gods and mythology by invoking an upstream journey on a steamboat from the underworld to the Ionian Sea in order to find "Minerva dozing among the olives". However, the speaker realizes that his fantasy of a return to pre-historical bliss must be an "ominous delight", as his "infidel feet" enter an abandoned temple to offer his sacrifices to the goddess and to a time when "Heroes bloomed like aphodels", the flowers connected to the underworld in Greek mythology. The first stanza in the French original: "Peut-être un grand vapeur qui fait escale aux rives | Mènera-t-il un jour mon tumulte enfin las, | Vers Minerve assoupie au milieu des oliviers | Dans sa chaude cibé que je ne connais pas".

Well preserved.