Jean COCTEAU (1889-1963). Autograph manuscript signed, Le Crépuscule des Dieux, [1923]; 3 1/2 pages in-fol (some erasures and corrections). Cocteau proclaims his enthusiasm after reading Élémir Bourges's book Le Crépuscule des Dieux, which he has just discovered (the article was published in the magazine Le Divan in April 1923). After explaining this late reading by the silence and misunderstanding surrounding Bourges, Cocteau thinks "that misunderstanding protects beautiful things, a little like absorbent cotton and cold protect primeurs. The Bourges novel came to me so fresh in the long run, because of the ice of the general public [...] this book is of the breed of books that have fallen from the sky. [...] If I had to find ancestors for Crépuscule, I'd write: Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Gobineau. With Raymond Radiguet's Le Diable au Corps, a white stone has fallen from the sky. Immediately, the cooks set to work. One finds small spots. Another matched it to neighboring stones. Still others, unable to relate it to anything, declare that it's a poor stone, just any stone, for the incomparable eludes critics whose work relies solely on comparisons. Twilight of the Gods is not a white stone, but with it, a chandelier descends from the heavens. A chandelier of crystals, gas and candles. A chandelier before which I stand speechless, like a poor child crying before a Christmas tree. For a child, a Christmas tree quickly becomes a forest. I enter. [...] All poetry touches me whose starting point is anti-nebulous. But I feel that in the palace towards which I am walking, carriages will be born of pumpkins, jacks of mice and horses of rats. [...] The wax figures move. A kind of royal rococo richly contours places and souls. Perspectives of egoism, love, incest and death, come and go, like the stained glass of a kaleidoscope, on motifs by Wagner or Offenbach. From one end of the book to the other, I'm going to be dazzled by this fabulous toy, by this pièce montée of sugar and poison"... As a "late admirer", Cocteau went with Lucien Fabre to visit Élémir Bourges, "and, for the first time, I didn't find it ridiculous to call a writer: mon cher maître". Attached is the L.A.S. sending this article (1page in-4), requesting that he review the proofs with L. Fabre, "as I wrote this article while suffering from a fever and it must be full of ridiculous mistakes".