One of the most wide-ranging artists of the 20th century, the playwright, painter, essayist and filmmaker Jean Cocteau redefined the term eclectic… By the age of 19, he was a famous poet at the center of Paris’s artistic ferment. His friends included Diaghilev, Stravinsky, Picasso, Apollinaire, Satie, Gide and Colette”(New York Times). In Cocteau’s masterful one-act play, Orphée, written in 1925, lines such as those spoken by Orpheus’ guardian angel—“I’m entrusting you with the secret of secrets. Mirrors are the doors by which Death comes and goes”—capture the brilliance of his lyrical prose and a lifelong fascination with creative vision. The play’s miraculous events were, according to Cocteau, partly inspired by his friend Picasso’s comment: “Everything is a miracle: it’s a miracle not to melt in the bathtub, like a lump of sugar” (Steegmuller, 363). Orphée, first published in French in 1927, later became the basis for Cocteau’s 1949 film of the same name, a work central to his cinematic Orphic trilogy that included Le Sang d’un Poète (1930)and Le Testament d’Orphée (1960), his final film. In addition to signing his name herein, Cocteau has drawn a star, his frequent symbol. This first edition in English was translated by Carl Wildman, who produced and played the character of Orphée for the London production of 1931.
