As I hinted in my review of “Letter to the Americans” earlier in the month, there was every chance of me returning to another Jean Cocteau book before too long; and truth be told, I have been planning to read “Les Enfants Terribles” since we decided on the #1929 Club six months ago. I first read the book in my early twenties and it was one of those pivotal books of my life, leading me to a lifelong love of the man and his art. I was a tiny bit nervous about revisiting a book which had meant so much to me after so long a gap, but I needn’t have been – it’s just wonderful!
“Enfants”, here in a wonderful translation by the esteemed novelist Rosamund Lehmann, was one of only a handful of novels Cocteau published; and in fact he only published one more novel during his lifetime. To be honest, it’s a novella rather than a novel, and it tells the story of the titular children, siblings Elisabeth and Paul. They have no father; their mother is ill and bedridden, with the eldest of the two, Elisabeth, taking care of her. Paul attends school, where he is obsessed with the powerful figure of another schoolboy, Dargelos; and completing the set-up is Gerard, another of Paul’s school friends, who is obsessed with the siblings.
There was snow that evening. The snow had gone on falling steadily since yesterday, thereby radically altering the original design. The Cité had withdrawn in Time; the snow seemed no longer to be impartially distributed over the whole warm living earth, but to be dropping, piling only upon this one isolated spot.
The book opens with snow descending on Paris, and the schoolboys have a snowball fight; an iconic moment, as I’ll mention later. Paul is wounded by a snowball thrown by Dargelos, and carried home; and from then on Elisabeth cares for him as well. The siblings have an unnaturally strong bond, still sharing a bedroom and retreating into their own world, symbolised by the Room, which is their refuge, a haven they’re created as a form of survival. Often they quarrel, but underneath the bond is unbreakable. Gerard is gradually allowed access to their world, although more as an audience than anything else. As the siblings grow older, things change around them – their mother dies, Gerard’s uncle steps in to support them financially, and there is even a marriage. Nothing, however, seems to change the structure of the siblings’ life. But the introduction into their circle of Agathe, who so closely resembles Dargelos, will change the Room forever with catastrophic consequences.
Elisabeth crossed the dining-room and went into the drawing-room. Here too the snow had been about its magic work. The room hung in mid-air, miraculously suspended, changed, unfamiliar to the child who stood there, stock still, staring, behind one of the armchairs. The lamplit brightness of the opposite pavement had printed on the ceiling several windows made of squares of shadow and half-shadow curtained with arabesques of light; upon this groundwork the silhouetted forms of passers-by circled diminished as in a moving fresco.
For a book of its length (my Folio Society edition runs to 117 pages), “Enfants” is a powerful and memorable piece of writing, and I understand why it affected me so strongly when I first read it. Cocteau’s writing is stunning and lyrical, and despite the darkness of the subject matter, it has great beauty. Cocteau was a visual artist, and his writings have a filmic quality, with vivid set pieces ready to be transferred to a movie setting. It’s not surprising, therefore, that “Enfants” was indeed filmed in 1950 by Jean-Pierre Meville, starring Nicole Stephane and Edouard Dermithe, and you can either find it on DVD or track down a copy online. However, a pivotal scene from the book, that of the snowball fight with Dargelos, features in one of Cocteau’s earliest films, “The Blood of a Poet”, and that whole moving picture is itself a surreal treat, featuring many tropes which would end up in Cocteau’s later cinematic works.
Paul marvelled at the fact of their encounter; but his sudden clairvoyance was confined to one sole area, that of love. Otherwise a greater marvel might have felled him utterly: namely, Fate the lacemaker implacably at work, holding upon her knees the cushion of our lives, and stuffing it with pins.
What I loved most about “Enfants”, I think, was the way the narrative simply sucked me into its world and took me along with it. I empathised completely with the siblings and their wish to build their own world, with their own heroes and villains, and ignore the sordidness of the outside world. I was very much of that mindset myself when I first read the book, creating a world for myself filled with books and art and clothes and design from the past which appealed to me, pulling it all together into a kind of personal mythology. “Enfants” spoke to me very strongly at the time as the siblings were doing much the same thing; and I still relate to it nowadays, as I try to fill my everyday existence with literature and paintings and creativity and things which make me happy in the face of the relentness nastiness of real life. Whether it’s an obsession with fountain pens or nature or books or mid-century modern design, these things help to keep me happy, and I saw this in the lives of the siblings; because the bleakness of their background and the forces around them hit me more this time round.
Hollow, leaden, buoyant, Elisabeth advanced along the corridor, her white wrap, billowing round her ankles, seeming to float her onward like a cloud: one of those foamy cloud-cushions devised by primitive painters to bear some Being of the angelic order. Only a faint humming persisted in her head; and in her breast nothing any more but an axe thudding out its mortal strokes.
Impoverished, cooking and cleaning and caring for a sick mother, with no father figure for support, the siblings live in a precarious world, which is why I guess they constructed the Room around them, for support and survival. Their life is full of the potential for tragedy, and indeed events do lead inexorably to a dramatic climax; but it’s hard to see that they would ever have been able to live a normal existence. Life throws them a few chances and they take them; but the unnaturally strong bond between the two will eventually bring their downfall.
They lived their dream, their Room, fancying they loathed what they adored.
I’ve wanted to re-read “Enfants” for many years, and I’m so glad the #1929Club gave me the courage to do so, because it was a wonderful and hypnotic experience. Cocteau apparently wrote the book in the midst of a phase of opium addiction, and there are indeed some beautifully written, hallucinatory sequences. Yet it’s also a book about how we cope with life and the world around us, about the strength of sibling relations and about the structures we build around us for self-preservation. “Les Enfants Terribles” is a dark and stunning and beautiful book which has haunted me from the time I first read it – and it still does!
*****
I wanted to say also a little about the edition I read, which was a beautiful copy from the Folio Society. My original read, all those years ago, was a lovely vintage Penguin Modern Class, which as you can see from the photo below I still have!
But I didn’t want to risk any damage, as older Penguins can be fragile, so I chose to revisit the book with the Folio copy I picked up some years back – and that was a lovely experience too. The Folio is a gorgeous hardback with a stunning cover design, and has an extra treat inside. The Penguin contains many illustrations by Cocteau for the book (I haven’t counted them…) but the Folio instead gathers all the illustrations together at the end, and this is the complete set of drawings for the book, originally published by Cocteau together in 1934.
These are just wonderful – a real treat – and so if you are planning to read “Enfants” I do recommend tracking down a copy of the Folio – it can be found online at remarkably reasonable prices….
*****
Without wanting to make this post interminable, you can find some interesting uploads of Cocteau’s films online to give you a taste of his work – here are some clips from “Blood of a Poet”:
and here is “Les Enfants Terribles”:
And finally, in the 1980s, when I was first discovering French art and literature, the wonderful David Sylvian released a song which is still one of my favourites and which references many of the artworks I love!
MarinaSofia
Oct 29, 2022 @ 07:31:35
What a lovely tribute to an amazing book! Now I want to reread it… and watch the film.
kaggsysbookishramblings
Oct 29, 2022 @ 11:05:18
Thank you! I adored it – and I *have* managed to track down the film as you’ll have seen…
Lory
Oct 29, 2022 @ 07:45:42
So glad this was the right book at the right time for you. Gorgeous Folio edition too (but I often cling to my old paperbacks, I appreciate them as well!) I love your description of how a rather dark and disturbing story can also illuminate how we cope with the world around us. For me all literature worth reading is about survival and supports our living and managing to somehow sustain ourselves in this world. I did not manage to complete anything for the Club this time but it’s fascinating to see the range of choices as always.
kaggsysbookishramblings
Oct 29, 2022 @ 11:04:51
It was – the perfect read, just when I needed it, and I was so happy I sitll loved it. I totally agree about the importance of literature – it’s always been my coping mechanism, and still is. As for 1929 it’s proved to be such a great year for books – I’ve loved seeing what everyone’s been reading!
peterleyland
Oct 29, 2022 @ 07:48:29
How interesting. I have that original Penguin copy of the book Karen. I read it as a teenager just before university. Perhaps it’s time to re-read, your review is so fulsome, as an antidote to these challenging times.
kaggsysbookishramblings
Oct 29, 2022 @ 11:00:26
I hope you enjoy the re-read if you get to it, Peter. It was a pivotal book for me when I was younger and I was so happy to find it still affected me the same way. I love Cocteau in all his ways!
Lisa Hill
Oct 29, 2022 @ 08:23:23
It doesn’t sound as if the fatherlessness comes from WW1, but when you think how many families were shattered by that war, the story of siblings being dependent on each other for a sense of family makes a lot of sense in 1929.
kaggsysbookishramblings
Oct 29, 2022 @ 10:59:29
It does – I think the post-War world was fractured for a long time, and traditional structures were coming apart. I didn’t pick up on that aspect so much back in the day when I first read the book, but did notice it more this time round.
Lisa Hill
Oct 29, 2022 @ 11:11:45
The value of a second reading… though I know what you mean about feeling wary about re-reading a book you loved, anxious that it might not be the way you remembered it and feeling disappointed.
kaggsysbookishramblings
Oct 29, 2022 @ 11:13:40
Yes, those re-reads do bring more. I tend to be wary when I’ve loved a book first time round, but luckily most of my more recent re-reads have been a joy!
BookerTalk
Oct 29, 2022 @ 10:24:17
You’ve sold me on this. It can be my first experience of Cocteau.
kaggsysbookishramblings
Oct 29, 2022 @ 10:58:36
Hurrah! My work here is done!! 😀
neeruahcop
Oct 29, 2022 @ 10:42:28
Never heard of the author or book though I have heard of the title (must be thru the movie). It does seem a little unsettling.
kaggsysbookishramblings
Oct 29, 2022 @ 10:58:22
I suspect he’s best know for his films nowadays (and I would highly recommend Orphee and La Belle et Le Bete of those). But I love his writing too, and I find this is a book which haunts me.
Roger
Oct 29, 2022 @ 17:51:31
The phrase “enfant terrible” existed long before Cocteau wrote his novel. Elisabeth and Paul live up to all the OED definitions: “A child who embarrasses his elders by untimely remarks; transf. a person who compromises his associates or his party by unorthodox or ill-considered speech or behaviour; loosely, one who acts unconventionally.”
Cocteau wrote a play (also filmed), Les Parents Terribles, in which it is the older generation which isbadly-behaved.
kaggsysbookishramblings
Oct 29, 2022 @ 18:51:20
Oh yes, of course it did. And of course the two titles characters do live up to the definition wonderfully. I have Les Parents… somewhere in the house too, in both written and filmed form!
Margot Kinberg
Oct 29, 2022 @ 12:15:26
I’m so glad for you that your re-read was just as powerful as your first reading. There are some books that are like that – that move us from the very beginning. I can see, too, how the writing style drew you in – such lovely portraits painted with words. It’s not hard to see he was a visual thinker.
kaggsysbookishramblings
Oct 29, 2022 @ 12:39:39
Thanks Margot, and you’re right – he really does paint word-pictures. I so loved revisiting this one!
Roger
Oct 29, 2022 @ 17:36:24
The film is interesting, but it just doesn’t work – depict the characters through actors and they lose credibility.
Encouragement to read more Robertson Davies – a snowball plays an important part in the Deptford Trilogy!
kaggsysbookishramblings
Oct 29, 2022 @ 18:52:24
Ah, I don’t need much encouraging to read RD – just more time!!! 🤣
Ms L S Johnson
Oct 29, 2022 @ 17:48:48
I love his drawings!
kaggsysbookishramblings
Oct 29, 2022 @ 18:51:54
Me two – what a wonderful polymath the man was!
Liz Dexter
Oct 29, 2022 @ 18:12:20
How wonderful that this was still as good as you remembered it: it is a risk, isn’t it. And how lovely to learn about how it echoed and shored up your way of living your life, then and now.
kaggsysbookishramblings
Oct 29, 2022 @ 18:50:07
Yes, always a risk, but looking back this book was so important to me personally and still resonated, which was wonderful!
Calmgrove
Oct 29, 2022 @ 20:16:33
Oh, you’ve absolutely sold this to me! It’s weird, I read a Cocteau work at school but I can’t remember which – possibly Antigone? – but not this. Amazingly, the opening scene reminded me of the opening of Robertson Davies’s Fifth Business, so I wonder if Davies was deliberately referencing this.
kaggsysbookishramblings
Oct 29, 2022 @ 20:33:57
I absolutely adore this book, which is probably obvious, but I do hope you get a chance to read it! And your the second person to reference a RD snowball fight, so I really am obviously going to have to read him further. A snowball fight appears in this book and also a Cocteau film so I can’t help thinking RD was definitely referencing JC!
Julé Cunningham
Oct 30, 2022 @ 01:09:22
What a lovely post this has been to read! Your love of Cocteau’s work shines through as does the deep influence he had is shaping your taste and interests. Somehow I think it’s fitting that you read it in a particularly beautiful Folio edition.
kaggsysbookishramblings
Oct 30, 2022 @ 13:53:54
Thank you! It was a very personal post to write, because his work is so important to me. It was a happy revisit and a joy to read such a lovely edition.
Simon T (StuckinaBook)
Oct 30, 2022 @ 11:03:12
Oh you’ve definitely persuaded me! It sounds wonderful – and it’s amazing how cheaply old Folios can be found, isn’t it, considering how expensive they are new. Well done for braving a much-loved re-read, because we all know the danger of finding it not as wonderful as we remembered. Thank goodness it was just as good!
kaggsysbookishramblings
Oct 30, 2022 @ 13:45:21
It’s such a wonderful book – I love Cocteau and was just so happy that I reconnected so strongly with this book. I’m amazed the Folio is available at such a reasonable price, too!!!
#1929Club – your reviews – Stuck in a Book
Oct 30, 2022 @ 13:05:37
madamebibilophile
Oct 30, 2022 @ 13:51:42
How lovely that revisiting this was still such a wonderful experience for you Kaggsy! The Folio edition looks gorgeous too – I rarely buy those I see in charity shops because they take up so much shelf space, but maybe I should…
kaggsysbookishramblings
Oct 30, 2022 @ 13:55:12
It was – it was sheer joy to revisit the book and find out I still loved it so much. I don’t often buy Folio Editions, but I do like to have them for really special books if I can!
Janakay | YouMightAsWellRead
Oct 30, 2022 @ 15:35:37
What a fabulous experience — to revisit a “formative to you” work and find that it affects you as powerfully as ever! I’m totally unfamiliar with Cocteau’s written work (and have only heard about, not experienced his films) but like many of your readers my interest is definitely aroused. This one goes on the TBR! What a wonderful image BTW, of fate as a lace maker . . .
I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to join in the 1929 year but I’ll stay posted for the next yearly celebration!
kaggsysbookishramblings
Oct 30, 2022 @ 18:05:33
It’s a risk, but I loved it as much as ever, and I highly recommend both his books and his filmes. And yes, do stay posted for the next club – you’ll have six months’ notice!!
1streading
Oct 30, 2022 @ 16:07:26
Thanks for the review – a famous book about which I really didn’t know anything!
kaggsysbookishramblings
Oct 30, 2022 @ 18:02:17
Ah, I think it’s just wonderful!! 😀
Jane
Oct 31, 2022 @ 16:11:39
I can’t believe I haven’t read this but it’s going straight on the list, thank you. It’s brilliant when a book is just as wonderful second time around isn’t it?
kaggsysbookishramblings
Oct 31, 2022 @ 18:40:01
It is – feels a bit risky when you’ve loved it so much first time, but this lived up to my memory of it. A fascinating book!
heavenali
Oct 31, 2022 @ 17:24:59
It can be nerve wracking reading an old favourite, but what a beautiful edition. Your enthusiasm for this comes across beautifully. I must say I have never read Jean Cocteau, but this sounds wonderful. I love stories about siblings. I had no idea Rosamond Lehmann was a literary translator as well.
kaggsysbookishramblings
Oct 31, 2022 @ 18:38:02
It’s always a risk, but fortuntely this one was a treat. And wasn’t Lehmann a talent!!
Rounding up my 2022 reading! 😊📚 | Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings
Dec 31, 2022 @ 07:00:35