Énigme
One of 137 hors commerce copies (no. [8]7), numbered by the poet in blue pencil, with his star in the same pencil on the leaf preceding the numbering.
A strange and precious publication. This poem, one of Cocteau’s finest, condenses its mystery into a brief text, without key or resolution, true to its title: Énigme.
The frontispiece, also engraved, depicts a crowned escutcheon and a man’s profile signed “Jean,” accompanied by the emblematic star that marks his graphic work throughout.
The print run was announced at 137 hors commerce copies, though the author himself considered this figure uncertain. In a letter addressed to the BnF in 1952, Cocteau confessed:
“Very young people produced this edition. It seems to me that the paper of the Réverbères is a very ordinary paper, of the wrapping-paper type. […] I no longer own a single copy myself.”
All copies were numbered by Cocteau’s own hand in blue pencil, often accompanied by his handwritten star: here, our copy bears no. [8]7, numbered and marked with this same star on the preliminary leaf.
The extreme fragility of the paper and the technical difficulty of printing have made this booklet one of the rarest of Cocteau’s works to find complete and in good condition, and “the print run may have been smaller than announced” (Cocteau, OC, La Pléiade, 1999).
A very fine copy.
Jean Cocteau et son temps, cat. BnF 1966, no. 401; D. Gullentops in Jean Cocteau, Œuvres poétiques complètes, coll. Pléiade, Gallimard, 1999.