The Difficulty of Being by Jean Cocteau

Author:Jean Cocteau [Cocteau, Jean]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 978-1-61219-291-8
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2013-05-27T16:00:00+00:00

* I have kept ‘Death’ in the feminine throughout this chapter. E.S.

† Angélique Arnauld, 1591–1661, Abbess of the Abbey of Port-Royal. E.S.

‡ It needs the thundering genius of Chateaubriand for me to endure Rancé. (Abbé Armand de Rancé, reformer, 1626–1700. E.S.)

ON FRIVOLITY

FRIVOLITY IS A CRIME IN THAT IT APES LIGHTNESS, that, for instance, of a fine March morning in the mountains. It leads to that disorder, invisibly unclean, worse than any other disorder, fatal to the harmonious functioning of the constitution (like eczema) through the almost pleasurable itch induced on the derm of the intelligence, by the fantaisiste, that rascal so readily confused with a poet.

If you consult Larousse you will see there that Rimbaud is a poète fantaisiste, and there is a certain redundancy in the intent of the one guilty of this insertion. For most people a poet is necessarily a fantaisiste, unless the most dubious lyricism or bogus profundity earn him a respect that matches his vapidity.

Frivolity is nothing but a lack of heroism and a kind of refusal to give oneself away in any respect. It is a flight mistaken for a dance, a slowness seeming a swiftness, a heaviness appearing like this lightness of which I am speaking and which is only met with in souls that are profound.

It may happen that certain circumstances, for instance Oscar Wilde’s imprisonment, open the criminal’s eyes to his crime and force him to repent of it. Then he will admit that ‘all that is understood is right, all that is not understood is wrong,’ but he only admits it because he is made aware of it by discomfort. The same is true of Pascal’s accident in his carriage.* One cannot imagine without horror a spirit of his quality in love with itself and with life to the point of attaching such extraordinary importance to being saved from death.†

I accuse of frivolity anyone who is able to apply himself to solving problems of local interest without the least sense of absurdity, a sense that might make him think, and direct his efforts towards a peace, for instance, instead of a war. For unless he is criminally frivolous, this dangerous person only finds excuses in personal interest, whether for profit or for fame. And patriotism is a poor excuse, since there is more nobility in displeasing the masses who are its dupes than in duping them in the name of greatness.

Frivolity, already odious when it works on a superficial level, since there are in that field heroes of a charming lightness spoilt by frivolity (certain Stendhal characters among others), becomes monstrous when it proliferates to the point of tragedy and, through the easy charm it exerts over all lazy minds, entices the world on to ground where true seriousness seems like a childishness which must give way to the circle of grown-ups.

So one has to witness, helplessly, all that frenzy of catastrophes, of red tape, of controversies, of murders, of trials, of debris, of murderous toys, at the end of

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