Secrets of Beauty

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“Discomfort is the hallmark of the poet. His world is almost uninhabitable. People sense this. They enter it as little as possible, as quickly as possible, and only out of curiosity.” Widely celebrated for his work in the fields of literature, cinema, and the visual arts, Jean Cocteau was one of the twentieth century’s outstanding creative practitioners. In this collection of brief—often aphoristic—meditations, Jean Cocteau reflects on the fundamental solitariness of the artistic vocation. As well as offering fascinating insights into Cocteau’s own achievements, Secrets of Beauty is a moving testament to the artist’s need and obligation to pursue an independent path, and to the disjunction between art and “the inflexible everyday world”. Juliet Powys’s translation skilfully captures the wit and subtlety of the original French text—a vital contribution to aesthetic theory that deserves to be read as a significant work of literature in its own right.