Jean Cocteau - La danse de Sophocle + Le Grand écart [reliure art déco] - 1926

Two-volume Reunion

Jean Cocteau

The Dance of Sophocles

Paris, Mercure de France, 1912, small-format 216 pp

FIRST EDITION of the current print run after only 7 copies on fine paper

A few foxings

Copy enhanced by a presentation inscription on the front free endpaper, signed Jean, which does not appear to be the known autograph signature of Jean Cocteau.

What strikes one about Cocteau’s early poetry collections is the extraordinary fluidity of the rhythms. The very young poet respects the ancient instrument of verse: the selection of the classical, cesured alexandrine, no odd lines or false meters, few bold enjambments, practice of diaereses and inversions. Yet he manages to set the mill of verse to the tone of polite conversation.
In his review of La Danse de Sophocle in La NRF (September 1912), Henri Ghéon notes that if Cocteau chose “the Parnassian and neo-classical craft of verse,” he also displays a quality “which none of our modernist poets, except André Salmon, possesses to the same degree—a sort of boldness in the use of words, which makes all, even the most current, the least antiquated by long usage, take in the verse a brightness, a patina, a relief that lift them out of ordinary conversation.”

Half-leather binding with corners, smooth spine adorned with black bands, title and author in gilt, red head, covers and spines preserved

Ex-libris of Château d'Arcangues

Jean Cocteau and Jean Marais were very close friends of Guy d'Arcangues and loyal hosts at the château.

Guy d’Arcangues is the son of Pierre d’Arcangues (1887-1973), who was for forty years the mayor of the village of the French Basque Country that bears his name and with whom he actively helped shape its face, and of Maria Luisa de Aramayo.

Guy d’Arcangues was deeply marked by the war years. He was only 17 when he faced German troops occupying the family château alone. He recounts this period in an emotional novel, Les Tambours de septembre, published shortly after his death. Later he was imprisoned at Fort du Hâ in Bordeaux, before being deported to a labor camp in Silesia in place of his father, who was also imprisoned. A play, Le Héros, and especially a magnificent narrative, Le Silésien, bear witness to this ordeal.

After the war, Guy d’Arcangues became the young artistic director of the casinos of Biarritz, before becoming a journalist for Paris Match, Vogue, Le Temps de Paris, Adam or Jours de France in the 1960s. President of the tourism and festivities committee of Biarritz from 1971 to 1977, he relaunched the city’s tourist activity by inviting prestigious guests such as Frank Sinatra.

A key figure of the Basque gentry throughout the second half of the 20th century, Guy d’Arcangues never abandoned writing, regularly confiding for nearly sixty years in an still-untitled diary. But it is especially through poetry that he found his main source of inspiration, alternating between light and elegant observations and more contemplative descriptions, painting another, nuanced portrait of the man who called himself an “opportunist.”

Guy d'Arcangues rests in Arcangues cemetery.

The genealogy of this family belonging to the French nobility traces back to the year 1516. In 1782 King Louis XVI authorized him to bear the Spanish title of Marquis of Iranda following an alliance. In 1789 he participated in the nobility assemblies of Labourd. In 1863 Emperor Napoleon III confirmed the authorization of the title of Marquis of Iranda. The title Marquis d’Arcangues is a courtesy title; neither the fief nor the Château d’Arcangues was ever raised to a marquisate.

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Jean Cocteau

The Great Disparity

Paris, Mercure de France, 1924, small-format 203 pp

FIRST EDITION of the current print run with mention

A few foxings

Perhaps fashion has changed, but of late it was common to mark the progress of the son of the house with a pencil stroke on the doorframe. These marks show him growing like a tree that simply needs protection from disease, cataclysms, and inclement weather to reach maturity.
This applies to the body, but the growth of the soul within does not follow such a tidy, regular curve; from childhood to adolescence there are sometimes difficult steps to climb. If Mrs. Forestier always successfully guards her son Jacques against health fluctuations, her care itself rushes him toward matters of the heart by placing him as a boarder on Rue de l’Estrapade with Professor Berlin.
There, his comrade Mahieddine introduces him to Louise and Germaine, First friends, first loves: Jacques brings a seriousness of a novice to this beginning of adult life, where a lightness equal to that of his partners would have been needed to undertake, without harm, the leap necessary to go from one shore to the other of the great gap between childhood and manhood. It is in a very pure style that Jean Cocteau tells this new “education in sentiment.”

Half-leather binding with corners, smooth spine adorned with black bands, title and author in gilt, red head, covers and spines preserved

Ex-libris of Château d'Arcangues