Le Grand Écart

Jean Cocteau had described to his mother the outlines of the character he was contemplating for La Moitié d’ombre, the first title of Le Grand Écart: “it will be a heart rich and pure, mixed with the baseness of a city, walking along the edge, like sleepwalkers along the edge of a roof. A sensibility that longs vaguely, and finds a brief answer and spends itself as though it were a maternal love.” Fifteen years after his affair with the actress Madeleine Carlier, Cocteau wove a brief novel on the framework of this unhappy love, like an epilogue to Thomas l’imposteur.