COCTEAU (Jean).

Zola, the poet. Without place or date [1958]. Autograph manuscript signed "Jean Cocteau", 4 pages in-4. Autograph manuscript signed of an article published in Les Cahiers naturalistes in 1958. How I would like to plead Zola's cause and put on the table of the judges something to confuse them and convince them that this great realist was a great poet. How I would like to plead the cause of true realism and say: "Realism consists in painting with exactitude the objects of a world proper to the artist and without the slightest relation to what one is accustomed to take for reality." [...] What, it is from this coarse Zola, from this block of peat, from this obscure monster, enemy of all grace, that come out the white horses of the mine, the locomotive carries under the snow, the child who bleeds on the images of Epinal, the drunkard who flames, thousand and thousand examples of a learned lyricism analogous to the naive lyricism of Fantomas, which enchanted Guillaume Apollinaire and which I estimate that it must always be used as a guide. [...]