Researchers note that few artists of the 20th century had such a close and extensive connection with the music and musicians of their time as Jean Cocteu. As already mentioned, he was a close friend of Edith Piaf. He cooperated with Igor Stravinsky, writing a libretto for his opera Oedipus Rex. He also worked again with Erik Satie, whose music he admired. Cocteau met Satie in 1915, he was struck by the composer’s strange and original personality, and it was Cocteau who advised Diaghilev to involve Satie in the production of the ballet “in a new spirit”.
In 1920, Cocteau served as the ideological inspiration for the group of composers The Six, which was called “The five and Erik Satie”. The group existed for only a few years, and the composers wrote music for the Cocteau ballet Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel in 1921.
Cinema
The avant-garde revolution, taking place in art through the 20th century, did not miss cinema. In 1929 Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali produced a surrealistic film An Andalusian Dog. A year later Jean Cocteau created his debut film The Blood of a Poet, the beginning of The Orphic Trilogy.
Paying great attention to Greek mythology, which was the basis of the European cultural code in general, Cocteau placed ancient characters within the contemporary environment. Moreover, he analyzed the figure of a poet and his relations to his oeuvres. The Orphic Trilogy is full of transforming subjects, masks, and mirrors. The episode with going through the mirror refers to Lewis Carroll and his book Through the Looking-Glass. Carroll’s Alice was replaced in Cocteau’s movie by Orpheus-Poet.
Being a multitalented artist and working with different mediums, Jean Cocteau contributed a lot in literature, cinema, painting, and theater. He did not limit himself, which is why his work touched so many -isms of Avant-garde art. However, Jean Cocteau did not belong to any artistic school. In his creative path, he tried to avoid clichés and stereotypes. He created his own myth full of prominent friends, famous lovers and opium addiction. Ultimately, Jean Cocteau was a poet. Poetry was his way of seeing the world, a special language in which all poets express themselves, the highest form of expression through which people can transform the world around them.