JEAN COCTEAU’S APPLES Grove Koger
Les pommes des Hespérides: Notes pour un film / The Apples of the Hesperides: Notes for a Film By Jean Cocteau; ed. by Bosquet Équarrisseur; trans. by Anthony Coleman Éditions Villefranche 47,50 € / $52.95 Shortly before his death in 1963 at the age of 74, Jean Cocteau began working on a new project, a film based on the Greek myth of the Golden Apples of the Hesperides. Thanks to Cocteau’s adopted son, Edouard Dermit, we have known for some time that Cocteau made rough drafts of several scenes for the film, as well as a number of pen-and-ink sketches, but, until now, that has been virtually all we knew. The project was fated to remain unfinished, and, with the passage of time, interest in Cocteau’s multitudinous artistic productions has faded. Students still watch Orphée in film school, but does anyone else, anywhere? Therefore, it’s all the more surprising, if highly welcome, to have this final testament from the man who spent his life meeting Serge Diaghilev’s famous challenge, “Astonish me!” Fragmentary as it is, it exhibits Cocteau’s lifelong fascination with myth, the wellsprings of art, and the inadequacy of ordinary human perception. As to the first, he once remarked that “I do nothing but follow the rhythm of fables,” and regarding the last, “To see within, turn your eyes to the horizon.” Even if, it seems, you have no eyes with which to see. According to the Greeks, the Hesperides were the “daughters of the evening,” maidens who guarded the golden apples that grew on a tree in the far west and that gave the sunset its colors. For his eleventh labor, Héraclès was required to steal them. In Cocteau’s ironic version, this myth is subsumed into the story of a petty thief also named Héraclès. It seems that he has seen a painting in a Marseilles gallery that depicts the apples and that, he knows, a wealthy businessman will pay a high price for. He steals it, but in making his getaway by car, he runs over a young boy in the street. The boy dies and Héraclès is arrested a few days later in a bar. Cocteau apparently completed only a few rudimentary 112
