Louis ARAGON (1897-1982). L.A.S. "Louis A.", Monday [February 1919], to Jean Cocteau; 2 pages in-4, envelope. Curious letter concerning the preparation of the first issue of Littérature - which appeared on March 1, 1919 (the same day this letter arrived in Paris), and from which the Dadaists excluded Cocteau and Max Jacob, while Cocteau inundated Aragon with letters to get his collaboration accepted. ... "But you can see that I didn't think you were capable of such vileness since I was still writing to you. If I had admitted them, silence and contempt. Only you're looking for people to blame: there are others farther away than those you're thinking of, and from whom I'd be ready to admit anything, because I don't know how to love half-heartedly. I recognize here a malice that has already been used against those I love. I'm reluctant to show you its face. Beyond the misunderstandings, there is one cleanliness: I am not a vice officer. Aragon is in Germany "among factories and railroads. My friends write to me; a magazine in the colors of the day, my name next to theirs when I return. Immediately, happy to compromise myself, I demand that they bind me to them from the first step. Everything happens outside me, in the land of trust. Suddenly, an adventure to weep over. My friends listen to other people, think I'm being tricked, torn away from them. I no longer know in what tone to cry out the truth"... Aragon begs Cocteau to have faith in him until he returns, and "to love, a little, in spite of himself, my friend André [Breton], the image of all purity"...