Jean Maurice Eugene Clement Cocteau
(July 5, 1889 - October 11, 1963) France
Author, poet, painter, sculptor, playwright, film maker,
stage director, actor and choreagrapher
Jean Cocteau was born in Maisons Lafitte, Paris, and died 74 years later in the town of Milly La Foret, Fontainbleau. During his life Cocteau managed to write novels, poetry, plays and journals. He painted, drew, choreographed, directed, wrote and produced films and became accomplished in all these areas. He also designed postage stamps for the French government, stained-glass windows for churches, and fashions for the house of Schiaparelli. He was "probably the most versatile artist of the 20th Century."
 Cocteau's first book of poems, "Aladdin's Lamp", was published when he was only 19. The inspiration for the collected poems in "The Cape of Good Hope" (1919) was a "friendship with aviator Roland Garros."
One of Cocteau's mentors was the gay French writer Andre Gide, with whom he at one point fought for the affections of a young man, Marc Allegret (the three-sided affair became the central plot of Gide's The Counterfeiters).
Later, in 1917, Cocteau fell deeply in love with a 15-year-old fan of his poetry, Raymond Radiguet. Once Radiguet reached the age of majority, their relationship grew more intimate, and Cocteau's work grew more creative. Cocteau was devastated when Radiguet, then a poet and actor, died six years later of typhoid fever. Typically, biographies of Cocteau refer to Radiguet as simply a "protege."
From 1937 to Cocteau's death in 1963, he was the lover of the actor Jean Marais, then 24 years old. You can read some of the poems that Cocteau wrote for his "Jannot" that is his beloved Jean Marais, showing all the love and admiration he had for him, in the last of these pages.
Cocteau also had a "love affair with the camera" and had a knack for promoting himself. A photographer once remarked to Andre Maurois, "If I were to take a picture of a village wedding, Jean Cocteau would appear between the bride and groom." And he was right: Cocteau was photographed everywhere, by everyone, in all guises and poses.
Cocteau's White Paper on Homophobia
(Drawings by Cocteau)
Jean Cocteau never officially acknowledged his authorship of the homosexual novel Le Livre Blanc, even though he allowed it to be included in the authorized bibliography that accompanied his Complete Works. Perhaps Cocteau did not wish to hurt his mother, but this persistent anonymity in the history of homosexual literature is typical of the curious bold- yet-cowardly paradox of the homosexual imagination, similar to E.M. Forster's suppression of his homosexual novel Maurice. On the one hand, Cocteau was compelled to write the work as a vindication of his own self-worth, as proof of his integrity. But on the other hand it was written in 1928 when coming out would have been regarded as ostentatious as well as a serious tarnish to his literary reputation.
 During the same period Marcel Proust had "boldly" written a work in which he disguised his boyfriend Albert as the heroine Albertine, upon the premise that one can say anything one wishes as long as one reverses the gender of the pronouns. He was of course mistaken: one cannot say anything one wishes if one is forced to lie. Andr* Gide was virtually the only French writer of the period who nearly came out, but even he was more than coy in the homoerotic passages in his works. So we can note and then dismiss Cocteau's action as one "typical of the circumstances of his age." It is typical, however, that Cocteau's anonymity was a deliberate design suited to his purpose. The title of the book -- Le Livre Blanc -- is equivalent to the English phrase "White Paper," and the purpose of the book is to present an impersonal and objective report, "compiled by committee" as it were, rather than a personal narrative.
Cocteau's intention has largely been ignored by most readers and critics, who respond to the work as though it were a "confession" of his homosexuality rather than a "white paper" on homophobia. It has been read as an apology rather than as a challenge, and scholars have busied themselves with biographical speculation rather than sociological analysis.
Each episode in the novel is an illustration of social injustice, and Cocteau's message is quite clearly stated:
My misfortunes are due to a society which condemns anything out of the ordinary as a crime and forces us to reform our natural inclinations.
And his sociological comments about homophobia are both penetrating and revealing, as in his evaluation of his father as a typical latent homosexual:
There exist pederasts [the French apply pédé to all "queers" regardless of age-preferences] who are unaware of their own nature and live to the end of their days in a state of uneasiness which they ascribe to poor health or a jealous nature. ... My father was no doubt unaware of his inclination and instead of pursuing it he strenuously followed another without knowing what made his life so unbearable. ... Had he even discovered his tastes or found the opportunity to develop them, he would have been astonished. At that period people killed themselves for less. But no; he lived in ignorance of himself and accepted his burden.
The point of this passage is not to analyze homosexuality or to provide a sensational personal account of how a young man may become homosexual due to his father's latent homosexuality, but to expose the subtle workings of homophobia in the lives of people.
Even the opening pages of his book indicate that its proper subject is not homosexuality, but homophobia. Most readers are startled by the erotic details of the first scene -- the vision of the farm-boy bathing naked in a pool, the sunburned face and hands contrasting with the whiteness of his body like "sweet chestnuts bursting out of their husks," the penis in the midst of the "dark patch" of his pubic hair -- which causes the narrator to faint in an ecstasy of joy and fear. Readers are so shocked -- or titillated -- by this description that it colors their reading of the remainder of the story. Thus Le Livre Blanc has achieved a wholly unwarranted reputation as an underground erotic classic.
The first portion of the book is designed not so much to record the first stirrings of desire, as to record the first experiences of homophobia. It is not insignificant, for example, that the pool in which the farm-boy bathes "did not belong to the chateau" -- that is, it is outside the limits of "the park," the proper social sphere whose boundaries, set up by his homophobic father, the hero will transgress. The pool represents an outcast space of potential homosexual experience, just as the homosexual himself is a pariah, an out-law. The narrator faints because his blood pounds "as though I had committed a murder," when he is startled by a hare while out hunting. By fainting, he has indeed accomplished the murderous goal of his hunt to annihilate his homosexual desires -- out of sight, out of mind.
 This is one of "the three incidents" of his childhood that are impressed upon the narrator's memory, partly because they are homoerotic incidents, but mainly because they are homophobic incidents. The narrator's guilt has already been firmly internalized by the time of the "first incident" with the farm-boy, but in the "second incident" we see how that guilt is supported by external pressures. The narrator recalls seeing two naked gypsy lads climbing trees and joyfully gambolling about, symbolizing an example of homosexual freedom and exuberance and lack of convention. This is contrasted with the repressive homophobia of his nursemaid, who is "terrified" by the scene and sternly admonishes the young narrator to avert his eyes. He nevertheless takes a peek, and "my disobedience gave the scene an unforgettable aura." It is the aura of homophobic oppression and the possibility of rejecting that oppression.
The "third incident" of this series of childhood memories illustrates the wider social ramifications of homophobia. The narrator recalls being fond of their table servant Gustave, whom on one occasion he had the courage to grope. Gustave's homophobic reaction is first embarrassment, then repulsion. This prompts a counter-reaction, a typical "heterosexual" subterfuge whereby the narrator seeks an excuse to become intimate with Gustave by showing him a picture of a woman he has drawn. But the ruse does not work, and a few days later Gustave is dismissed for stealing some wine. The is not a mere accident of the narrative, but symbolically underscores the father's own inner conflicts and repression.
The episodes concerned with the narrator's experience in the Lycée Condorcet illustrate how homophobia in one's peer group not only instills guilt and shame in the homosexual, but also contributes to his alienation from society. The homophobic attitudes in the young peer group are fostered bythe agents of society, in this case by the "sarcastic teachers." They keep an eye out for boys who may be playing with themselves at their desks or simply have an erection in the nature of things, and then "suddenly question a boy who was on the point of orgasm," sadistically forcing him to stand up and stammer an answer "while trying to turn a dictionary into a fig-leaf." And of course the other boys reinforce the teacher's shame-instilling technique by laughing at the boy's predicament, making him even more embarrassed.
Instead of encouraging the recognition of masturbation as a joyful and natural discovery proper to adolescent development, the atmosphere of this "educational" institution brands it as a "vice" to be practiced furtively: "Nothing but pockets with holes in them and soiled handkerchiefs." Thus school becomes a memory of sordidness: "The classroom smelt of gas, chalk and sperm."
Cocteau is one of the first authors to record how this kind of commonly experienced school situation paradoxically causes young homosexuals to be more prudish than their fellows. The narrator is "nauseated" by this situation of furtive masturbation not because it is a "vice" -- as the other boys believe it to be -- but because "it was the cheap parody of a type of love that my instinct respected." Such "clandestine play" degrades his ideal of homosexual love because it is more shameful than celebratory, and consists more of mockery than respect.
(continues)
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