Interview by Thomas Riboulet for BLE Lorraine.
A polymath who brought poetry into everything he created, Jean Cocteau left an indelible mark on Lorraine and on Metz in particular. The city possesses his final great work, listed by Atlas Obscura among the world’s places to see before one dies. To make this remarkable heritage better known, art historian and Cocteau specialist Christian Schmitt created the fifteen-minute documentary Jean Cocteau: I Trace the Invisible, available on YouTube. It explores the originality of the stained glass at Saint-Maximin, conceived around the theme of immortality.
Why did you decide to make this documentary?
Christian Schmitt: Cocteau’s work in Metz remains largely unknown to the public, hence the need to use different media. In 2012, when I submitted the manuscript of I Trace the Invisible for publication, I barely realised how little visibility these windows had in Metz.
Even Pierre Bergé, who then held the moral rights to Cocteau’s work, told me through his secretary that my research had enabled him to discover this late work for the first time. What, then, of the people of Metz and the local Church, who found it difficult to understand why goddesses and figures from Greek mythology should appear in a Christian building?
Cocteau did not allow himself to be constrained. He gave free rein to his imagination and paid little attention to those who preferred tradition to modernity. Many therefore chose not to discuss the work. By placing my documentary on YouTube, I wanted to reach the widest possible audience.
What fascinates you about Cocteau and his work?
As a child I was first captivated by his film Beauty and the Beast, and from that day the poet never ceased to attract me. I still remember his death on 11 October 1963. I was twelve and asked my mother whether Piaf or Cocteau, who died on the same day, would be remembered the longest. Her answer impressed me deeply and still resonates like a revelation: “Cocteau, without hesitation, because he is a poet.” Yes, Cocteau is and always will be a poet. His entire body of work is poetry.
He was often criticised as a jack-of-all-trades. He answered his detractors with striking images: he might change vehicle, but when he painted, he painted; when he drew, he drew; when he worked in cinema, he left theatre aside, and when he turned to theatre, he abandoned film. He never did these things all at once.
I know of no other creator who excelled in so many fields: poetry, the novel, theatre, cinema, drawing, painting and stained glass. His genius sometimes seemed limitless. What distinguished him early from his contemporaries was his unique ability to surprise continually.
He followed Diaghilev’s famous instruction, “Astonish me,” delivered one evening on the Place de la Concorde. He also heeded Raymond Radiguet’s advice to remain “at the avant-garde of the avant-garde”.
What bond did Cocteau form with Metz?
Cocteau always possessed a privileged relationship with Lorraine and Metz. Several eminent Lorraine figures first drew him towards the region. The foremost was Joan of Arc. Cocteau understood before many others that this young heroine was also a great writer with a sublime style. He admired the concise force of her words at her trial.
He also esteemed the Lorraine writer Maurice Barrès, whom he met in 1914. Above all, friends brought him closer to the region: Jean Desbordes, born at Rupt-sur-Moselle and met in 1925, whom he saw as a second Radiguet; the young Metz poet Georges Coanet, who invited him to Metz in 1950; and Pierre Chanel, a man of letters living in Nancy.
His most surprising encounter was with Édouard Dermit in a Paris gallery in 1947. The young iron miner from Bouligny in the Meuse became Cocteau’s adopted son. Metz was then Dermit’s favourite city, where he spent many weekends with friends. From 1947 until Cocteau’s death in 1963, Dermit shared the poet’s life at Milly-la-Forêt and took part in many of his activities. He appeared in Les Enfants terribles, Orpheus and Testament of Orpheus. After his death in 1994, Dermit was buried beside Cocteau in the chapel at Milly.
Cocteau’s memorable presence in Metz in 1962 made this bond tangible. In June and September he undertook two important projects: the sets and costumes for the lyric drama Pelléas and Mélisande, performed in Metz on 22 and 23 September, and his visit to Saint-Maximin, which began the stained-glass project.
What makes the Saint-Maximin windows so original?
In chapels and churches at Villefranche-sur-Mer, London and Milly-la-Forêt, and in the wedding hall at Menton, Cocteau’s drawing can sometimes appear fixed within an endlessly repeated model. Metz reveals a new Cocteau. The forms are complex, stylised, varied and unique. The breath inspiring them seems almost divine.
Their graphic language gives access to an invisible world, capable of unfolding limbo in the manner of Gérard de Nerval. In the central apse window and the first bay on the south side, Cocteau uses pictograms such as the man with raised arms, as well as anthropomorphic and animal forms. Similar figures occur in Dubuffet and Bissière, in Keith Haring’s Radiant Baby and in Basquiat. Their schematic power reaches back through comics to prehistoric cave imagery.
As Peter Halley observed of Keith Haring, the artist drew upon the past in order to imbue present and future with a mythical feeling. Cocteau pursued the same powerful artistic aim.
His motifs remain distant from conventional religious culture. They draw on pagan symbolism, Greek mythology, animism, Freemasonry and esoteric traditions including alchemy and Kabbalah. Yet Cocteau was simply right too soon. Contemporary stained glass would later move away from religious narrative towards lyrical abstraction, as in Manessier and Bazaine, or towards monochrome austerity, as in Raoul Ubac at Nevers and Pierre Soulages at Conques.
Pierre Bergé said that Cocteau introduced speed into art. His imprint on the twentieth century is therefore immense: he borrowed many things, but transformed them, surpassed them and sometimes anticipated them.