SOURCE: Archambault, Paul J. “The Jean Cocteau Collection: How ‘Astonishing’?” Syracuse University Library Associates Courier 23, no. 1 (spring 1988): 33-48.

In the following essay, Archambault examines the Cocteau collection at the Syracuse University Library, concluding that Cocteau “perhaps put talent into his work and genius into his life.”

Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) is reputed to have been the most ‘astonishing’ of French twentieth-century artists. In one of his many autobiographical works, La Difficulté d'être, he tells how, one day in 1909, he was walking on the Place de la Concorde with Sergei Diaghilev, who had captivated Paris the previous year with his Ballets Russes, and Vaslav Nijinsky, his greatest dancer. For nearly two years the young Cocteau had been seeking to win Diaghilev's admiration. “Nijinsky”, he writes, “was brooding as usual. He walked ahead of us. Diaghilev was amused by my simperings: when I questioned him about his reserve (I was...