Jean Cocteau: the mathematics of the verb and drawing

Authors

  • Silvia Baroni Università degli Studi di Bergamo

Abstract

In an interview of the 1962, Cocteau stated that “painting and writing can’t be compared”: an artwork is immediately detectable, whereas poetry is a harder work both to be assembled as to be deciphered. In fact, although the literary work and the picture are born from an internal and bad-known “we”, writing, contrary to painting, has no command on this creative force. Despite these essential differences, Cocteau’s multifaceted production shows an intense connection between the two kind of arts: not only the same themes and characters recur in them, but there’s no text that is not accompanied by any of his illustrations. The purpose of the article is to describe the evolution of Cocteau’s consideration about the supremacy of the poetic word on the drawing, to trace those theorems that make a sort of “mathematic” of the written and the drawn line. In particular, the analysis is conducted by the example of one of the most famous novels of the author: Les Enfants terribles.

Author Biography

Silvia Baroni, Università degli Studi di Bergamo

Laureata nel 2015 in Culture Moderne Comparate all’Università degli Studi di Bergamo, Silvia Baroni è dottoranda in Studi letterari e culturali, XXXI ciclo, presso il Dipartimento di Lingue, Letterature e Culture moderne (LILEC) dell’Università di Bologna. La sua ricerca verte sulle illustrazioni della Comédie humaine di Honoré de Balzac. Altri campi d’interesse sono: la letteratura comparata europea del XIX-XX secolo, le relazioni tra arte e letteratura, l’evoluzione del personaggio nella forma romanzo e il genere autobiografico. Ha pubblicato un articolo intitolato “La Vieille fille di Balzac. Feuilleton ou pas? ‘Querelle’ sulle origini della letteratura seriale francese” per Between, vol. VI, n. 11, maggio 2016. È membro della Société des Amis d’Honoré de Balzac et de la Maison de Balzac.

Published

10-11-2016

How to Cite

Baroni, S. (2016). Jean Cocteau: the mathematics of the verb and drawing. Elephant & Castle, (15). Retrieved from https://elephantandcastle.unibg.it/index.php/eac/article/view/257