The two principal schools of French style have often been ascribed to the Latin rhetorical style, as illustrated in the sermons of Bossuet and the rich periodic prose of Chateaubriand, and to the Greek tradition, in which the sentence is brief and concise, as in Voltaire and Stendhal. In his Académie speech of welcome, André Maurois placed Cocteau in this second lineage. The Cocteau sentence is swift and seemingly lucid, but the content is mysterious and enigmatical. Cocteau's style became a manner of expressing complicated matters with discerning simplicity….

The poems of Vocabulaire (1922) contained the key words of Cocteau's poetic experience, symbols and characters projected out of his imagination that were to form in time his mythology—episodes, myths, and characters charged with the duty of narrating the poet's drama. Kidnapers, sailors, angels and cyclists appear and disappear as if searching for their poet. (p. 245)

Les Enfants...