The Difficulty of Being by Jean Cocteau Read Free Book Online

is subject to rules. Its waves roll in and roll out at my command. A new house reacts to the same effects. But let one of those effects be unduly prolonged and the actor falls into the trap. With difficulty he refuses the rescuing hand of laughter. Such cruel laughter should wound him; it flatters him. ‘I suffer and I make them laugh,’ he tells himself, ‘at this game I win.’ The rescuing hand is quickly offered and quickly grasped, the author forgotten. The boat drifts and you will soon be wrecked. If the actors listen to these sirens, the drama becomes melodrama, the thread connecting the scenes is broken. The rhythm is lost.
    From afar I supervise my crew badly. The ‘imponderables’ escape me. What am I to change? Here are the interpreters who check over and perfect the machine. Here are those who live on the stage and try to conquer the machinery. Diderot speaks lightly. He was not born on the boards.
    I know authors who supervise the actors and write them notes. They achieve discipline. They paralyse. They lock the door that might have suddenly blown open.
    Two great schools of acting confront each other on the stage. They, the authors, prevent the one from embellishing its straight line with some inspired invention, they wake the other from its hypnosis. I prefer to risk the chemistry. Either red or black will come up.
    Writing this paragraph I seem to be in the dressing-room of my actor Marcel André, with whom I like to discuss such things. Yvonne de Bray and Jean Marais are on the stage. Their temperaments harmonize. One wonders by what mechanism they respect the dialogue they are living, forgetting that one wall of the room they are in is missing. Marcel André is speaking. I listen to him. I also listen to the silence of the house. He, for his part, is listening for the call-bell that will bring him into the play. We are only half alive.
    Delicious moments of suffering that I would not exchange for anything.
    Why do you write plays? I am asked by the novelist. Why do you write novels? I am asked by the dramatist. Why do you make films? I am asked by the poet. Why do you draw? I am asked by the critic. Why do you write? I am asked by the draughtsman. Yes, why? I wonder. Doubtless so that my seed may be blown all over the place. I know little about this breath within me, but it is not gentle. It cares not a jot for the sick. It is unmoved by fatigue. It takes advantage of my gifts. It wants to do its part. It is not inspiration, it’s expiration one should say. For this breath comes from a zone in man into which man cannot descend, even if Virgil were to lead him there, for Virgil himself did not descend into it.
    What have I to do with genius? It only seeks an accomplice in me. What it wants is an excuse to succeed in its evil deeds.
    The main thing, if our action is divided, is not to fuse our efforts. I never settle for one of its branches without amputating others. I prune myself. It is even pretty rare for me to draw in the margins of a piece of writing. That is why I have published albums of drawings relating to my writings but not together. If I did publish them together, the drawings were made a long time afterwards. In
Portraits-Souvenir
I drew on the spot. The articles appeared in
Le Figaro
, and articles and drawings of that kind can be done with the same ink.
    Still less could I direct theatre and cinema as a team, for they turn their backs on one another. While I was making my film
La Belle et la Bête
, the Gymnase was rehearsing my play
Les Parents Terribles
. The cast accused me of being inattentive. Even though I was no longer actually filming, I was the slave of a task in which the language is visual and is not crammed into a frame. I own I had the greatest trouble on earth in listening to an immobile text and giving it all my attention. Once a work is completed, I have to wait before undertaking another. The completed work does not release me quickly. It moves its chattels slowly. The