Jean COCTEAU. Autograph manuscript signed, Paris en marche, [January 1937]; 7pages large in-4 on strong paper spine headed Chez Joséphine restaurant. Beautiful text on the Comédie-Française. Cocteau has just returned from his "world tour", and realizes that Paris is changing, particularly at the Comédie-Française - which admittedly staged its Voix humaine with Bérard's set - since the appointment of Édouard Bourdet "at the head of the House of Molière", who has "surrounded himself with Copeau, Jouvet, Baty, Dullin, in short, directors who shake off the yoke of routine, and suddenly, as if by magic wand, the old house is awakened from its slumber and offers us show after show of the highest order". Cocteau refers in particular to Molière's Misanthrope, directed by Jacques Copeau (December 7, 1936), an "evening of bonfire", where "a kind of joyous electricity ran through the artists, irritating them, exalting them, pushing them to surpass themselves", with Aimé Clariond and Marie Bell. Then it was a "moonlit evening" with Musset's Le Chandelier, directed by Gaston Baty (December 18), "with its system of stages and architectures as precise as a mechanical clock and an illusionist's act", with Julien Bertheau and Madeleine Renaud, who "leave Musset's dialogue, struck in new metal, an unforgettable memory". Finally, Cocteau announces that Louis Jouvet is preparing Corneille's L'Illusion comique (February 15, 1937), with Christian Bérard, "who possesses the genius of theater, inventing sets and props that will resurrect the 'machines' of the ballets of Louis XIV's Versailles. I believe that this show, after the fire of Le Misanthrope and the moonlight of Le Chandelier, will be the show of the rainbow, and that the new director will win a definitive victory"...