Jean Cocteau: Poet’s Quotes and “The Cat Friend’s Club”

Jean Cocteau, a multi-talented person who is a well-known writer, designer, artist, and filmmaker. Of all, his novel Les Enfants Terribles (1929) and film Beauty and the Beast (1946), Orpheus (1949) would be the best-known works. And yes, he was a cat lover as well. He even supported founding Cat Friend’s Club.

Jean Cocteau, Cultural Roots

Cocteau was born into a wealthy family in 1889 near Paris. He’d been taken to theaters, concerts by his parents.

His father committed suicide when Cocteau was nine. It’s said this incident generated fear and yearn for the death in Cocteau all at the same time.

The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.

Jean Cocteau Quotes (goodreads)

The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth[1]

Cocteau always thought poetry is born of the marriage between the conscious and the unconscious.

He explained a poet is nothing more than a laborer of schizophrenic. And it is nothing to be ashamed of to have a quality of a madman which everybody has within.

I’ve always preferred mythology to history. History is the truth that becomes an illusion. Mythology is an illusion that becomes reality.

Jean Cocteau Quotes (goodreads)

Exceptional Artisan of Beautifier

He loved beautiful people regardless who he or she was and loved them thoroughly.

Cocteau was a genius bringing out their beauty to its ultimate form in a movie or in a play.

Until he died in 1963 at age 74, he met and loved a lot of talented people such as Pablo Picasso, Coco Chanel, Edith Piaf and more.

All the works he created sparked controversy and still inspires us today.

Art is science made clear.

Jean Cocteau Quotes (goodreads)

One of the things he loved dearly is…cats.

The Cat Friends Club

Cocteau designed the membership pin for The Cat Friends Club which sponsored cat shows.

Cat Show in 1871: The Day Changed the Perception of Cats

Provocative Works and Cats

I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.

Jean Cocteau Quotes (goodreads)

Sparking imagination and provocative itself, his works and cats have a lot in common.

He believed the secret of poetry is to take things from the places in which habit has set them and reveal them from a different angle as though we see them for the first time.

Cats have the same ability as he stated. Their curiosity never lets them take things for granted, but see them as if it were the very first time.

Amazement and freshness never make them dull creatures. Just like Cocteau’s works evoke so many emotions in us, so do cats.

Be yourself. The world worships the original.

Jean Cocteau Quotes (goodreads)

References

Cover Photo: Writer Jean Cocteau with his cat, Karoun. Photo by Jane Brown. (Chase Jarvis Photography)

meeting with remarkable people [016] (BOOK CLUB KAI)

[1]Jean Cocteau Quotes

ジャン・コクトー 〜20の顔を持つ男〜 (hananoe.jp)

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Also published on Medium.