SOURCE: Winegarten, Renee. “In Pursuit of Cocteau.” American Scholar 58, no. 3 (summer 1989): 436-43.

In the following essay, Winegarten reexamines Cocteau's achievements in light of the publication of his diaries and letters.

In general a purely poetical subject is as superior to a political one as the pure everlasting truth of nature is to party spirit.

—Goethe, May 4, 1827, quoted in Eckermann, Conversations

What to do about Jean Cocteau? What to do about the critical dilemma of the respective claims of art and politics posed by his life and his work? These questions are renewed by the publication of his diaries for 1951-53 (a belated attempt to emulate Gide's), and of his letters to his friend and onetime companion, the actor Jean Marais (Le Passé Défini, vols. 1 and 2, Gallimard; Lettres à Jean Marais, Albin Michel). It is surely time to reconsider Cocteau's position: last year marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of his...