The White Paper

by Jean Cocteau

  The

  ANONYMOUS

  White

  Paper

  WITH A PREFACE AND

  ILLUSTRATIONS BY

  JEAN COCTEAU

  de l'Academie Francaise

  THE MACAULAY COMPANY

  NEW YORK

  The White Paper, whence does it come, who wrote it? Did I? Perhaps. Another? Probably. Do we not become others the moment after we've done writing? A posthumous book? That too is probable; are we not today yesterday's dead? Antehumous? The thought is not impossible. We have our ears glued to mothering wombs these days, eager to detect the first peep of the prenatal poem that will break the record in the child prodigy-class. Would The White Paper be autobiographical then? In which case I refuse its paternity, for what I find charming here is that the author talks without talking about himself.

  Were I, now, to write an autobiographical book, it wouldn't be limited to describing what by common consent is called vice. It would abound in sexual commonplaces which as inked out by me would assume some singular delineations.

  Too many and too limiting are the circumstances which, clearly, disqualify The White Paper from appearing under my signature. However, indeed as I were, and as I own, still tempted to lay my name thereto, as theft doth tempt our fingers unto the seizure of an object that the perilousness and the gratuity of the act gild glisteningly.

  Am I jittery? I'm not the jittery sort. Ah, but is it opportune to don the bright weeds of youth's turpitudes in that temple where rectitude's air and an austere guise are meet? But let us rather smile upon these sumptuary scruples which more befit a dear old fool dreaming of the good old lawless days. We reject them; but, tell me now if we have not often dreamt of falling asleep, of writing while in sleep, and of waking on the morrow to find the work written and with no other thought than to have to attend to the job of correcting proofs?

  A dream of this sort invites me to preface this famous White Paper, where the stylistic quality of the prose transcends the matter it treats.

  Immortality and unseemly behavior are just about the only things people unhesitatingly allow us, generously disdaining to take security for the loan. But my affection for what is upright in a man and my repugnance for eccentricity, in a word, my fight with the angel of the strange obliges me to dread that which excites scandal, scandal always having had at me without cause. On the other hand, I highly approve of the theory, that love begets respect, and that respect paralyzes desire, and that the erotic achieves best expression if none but the senses are allowed entry into the picture, the heart being left outside it.

  The heart is one thing. The sex is another. Certain objects overwhelm the one, certain objects arouse the other; without, in all this, the intelligence playing any part at all.

  I will go further. I have frequently maintained that a moral sexuality governs our emotion when we are in the presence of works of art, and that we are as completely powerless to restrain this uplifting of the soul as we are to dominate that bodily erection provoked in us by certain animate forms. Therefore be not uneasy if you End it in you to attribute this book to me. I'd not be in the least bit ashamed of it. And I simply beg the unknown author's forgiveness for thus taking unfair and usurping advantage of his anonymity.

  I have even, yes, in several preceding editions accompanied this text with drawings which are patent evidence of the fact that if I do not specialize in a taste for my own sex, I do nevertheless recognize therein one of the sly helping hands fond nature is wont to extend to humans.

  Ni vu ni connu, je t'embrouille. In whatever the appearance it adopts, all hail to His Most Holy Majesty, Genius. And, furthermore, as Poincare said, it may be that my modesty halts where yours begins.

  Jean Cocteau

  The White Paper

  As long ago as I can remember, and even looking all the way back to that age when the senses have still to come under the influence of the mind, I find traces of the love I have always had for boys.

  I have always loved the stronger sex, the one I consider it legitimate to call the fairer sex. The misfortunes I have had at the hands of a society which views the unusual as the fit object of condemnation and obliges us, if they be rare, to rectify our inclinations.

  I recall three critical, three decisive incidents. My father lived in a little chateau near S***. Attached to that chateau was a park. At the further limit of the park, beyond where the chateau property stopped, were a farm and a watering-place. In return for some daily milk and butter and eggs, my father enabled the farmer to avoid the cost of fencing his animals off our land.

  One August morning, I was prowling about the park with a toy rifle that fired caps and, playing at hunting, using a hedge for a blind, I was waiting for some animal to pass, when from my hiding-place I spied a young farm-boy leading a draft horse down to water. Wishing to ride out into the pond and knowing that people never ventured to the far end of the park, he peeled off his clothes, sprang upon the horse and guided it into the water a few yards from where, concealed, I was watching. The sunburn on his face, on his neck, his arms, his feet, contrasting with the whiteness of the rest of his skin made me think of chestnuts splitting out of their husks: but those were not the only dark patches on his body. My gaze was drawn to another, from out of whose midst an enigma and every one of its details rose into the plainest view.

  My ears rang. The blood rushed to my head, my face turned scarlet. The strength drained out of my legs. My heart beat like the heart of a murderer preparing to kill. Without realizing what was happening, I stood up, reeled, and fainted dead away, and it was only after a four-hour search that they found me. When I'd recovered my wits and was on my feet again, I took instinctive care not to disclose what had caused my weakness and taking the risk of sounding ridiculous, I declared that I'd been frightened by a hare that had bolted from a thicket.

  The second time it was the following year. My father had given some gypsies permission to camp in that same remote spot in the park where I had lost consciousness. I was taking a walk with my maid. All of a sudden, letting out a great shriek, she grabbed my hand and began to drag me after her, ordering me under no circumstances to look back. The weather was sparkling clear and hot.

  Two young gypsy lads had undressed and were climbing in a tree. A spectacle rendered unforgettable by my maid's shock and as though permanently framed by my disobedience: even if I live to be a hundred, thanks to that shriek and that mad dash I shall always see a covered wagon, a woman rocking a new-born infant, a smoking fire, a white horse grazing and, climbing a tree, two bronzed bodies each thrice-spotted with patches of black.

  The third time it had to do with a young hired man whose name, if I'm not mistaken, was Gustave, who waited on the table. Aware of my glances, it would be all he could do to keep a straight face while serving. From returning again and again to dwell upon those memories of the farm-boy and of the gypsies, I'd come to have the keenest wish to touch my hand to what my eye had seen.

  My scheme was wonderfully naive. I'd make a drawing of a woman, I'd take the picture and show it to Gustave, I'd make him laugh, once I'd encouraged him I'd ask him to let me touch the mystery which, seated at the dining table, I'd been trying to visualize behind the suggestive bulge in his trousers. Now, the only woman I had ever seen wearing a slip was my maid; I supposed that artists invented the firm breasts they put on women, and that in reality all women had flabby ones. My sketch was realistic. Gustave burst out laughing, asked who my model was; taking advantage of a new fit of mirth, with breathtaking courage I had proceeded halfway to the mark when he turned very red, batted my hand aside, pinched my ear, by way of excuse saying he was ticklish and, deathly afraid of losing his job, conducted me to the door.

  Several days later Gustave sto
le some wine. My father fired him. I interceded, I wept, I tried everything, and failed. I accompanied Gustave to the railroad station, carrying the checker set and checkerboard I'd given him as a present for his little boy whose photograph he had often showed me.

  My mother died in giving birth to me and I had always lived alone with my father, a sad and charming man. His sadness dated back to before the loss of his wife. Even when happy he had been sad and that is why, in an effort to understand his sadness, I sought beyond his bereavement for its deeper-lying roots.

  The homosexual recognizes the homosexual as infallibly as the Jew recognizes the Jew. He detects him behind whatever the mask, and I guarantee my ability to detect him between the lines of the most innocent books. This passion is less simple than moralists are wont to maintain. For just as homosexual women exist, women with the outward aspect of Lesbians but who seek after men in the special way men seek after women, so homosexual men exist who do not know what they are and who live out the whole of their lives in a restlessness, in an uneasiness they ascribe to some lack of vitality, or to a sickly or retiring nature.

  It has always seemed to me that my father and I too closely resembled each other not to have this essential feature in common. He was probably unaware of his true bent; at any rate, instead of pursuing it, he struggled along another path without knowing what it was that made the way so dreary and life to hang so heavy upon him. Had he discovered the tastes he never had the chance to cultivate and which his phrases, his gestures, certain of his movements, a thousand details about his person revealed to me, he would have been thunderstruck. In his day, a man would kill himself for slighter cause. But no; he lived, living in ignorance of himself, and he accepted his burden.

  To this exceeding blindness it may be that I owe the fact that I was brought into the world. Well, I deplore it, for it would have been to the benefit of us both had my father known the joys; that would have spared me much sorrow.

  I entered the Lycee Condorcet in the third form. There the boys' senses awakened and, uncontrolled, grew like a baneful weed. It was nothing but holes poked in pockets and soiled handkerchiefs. Drawingboards on their laps, the pupils went particularly wild in art class. Sometimes, in ordinary class, an ironical teacher would suddenly call upon a pupil on the verge of a spasm. The pupil, his cheeks aflame, would slouch to his feet and, mumbling whatever came to his head, would endeavor to transform his dictionary into a fig-leaf. Our hilarity would increase his embarrassment.

  The classroom smelled of gas, chalk, sperm. That mixture turned my stomach. I must say this: that which was a vice in the eyes of all my classmates, not being one in mine or, to be more exact, being the base parody of a form of love my instinct was to respect, I was the only one who appeared to disapprove of the situation. The result was perpetual sarcasm and assaults upon what the others took to be my modesty.

  But Condorcet was a day-school. These practices never led as far as love affairs; they seldom got beyond the confines of a routine, clandestine sport.

  One of the pupils, his name was Dargelos, enjoyed a great prestige because of a virility considerably in advance of his years. He exhibited himself cynically and made a business of putting on a show which he even presented to pupils in another class in exchange for rare stamps and tobacco. The seats surrounding his desk were at a premium. I still have an image of his brown skin. By the very short shorts he wore and the socks dragging around his ankles one could tell that he was proud of his legs. We all wore short pants, but thanks to his man's legs, only Dargelos was barelegged. Unbuttoned at the throat, his open shirt revealed a strong neck. A thick lock of hair hung over his forehead. That face—with its somewhat heavy lips, its somewhat slitted eyes, its somewhat snub nose—had every last one of the features of the type that was to be my undoing. Oh, it is cunning, the fatality that disguises itself, and gives us the illusion of being free and, when all is said and done, each time lures us straight into the same old trap.

  Dargelos' presence drove me out of my mind. I avoided him. I lay in wait for him. I dreamt of a miracle which would bring his attention to bear on me, disencumber him of his vainglory, reveal to him the real meaning of my attitude which, as things stood, he had necessarily to view as some sort of preposterous prudishness and which was nothing short of an insane desire to please him.

  My sentiments were vague. I could not manage to specify them. They caused me either extreme discomfort or extreme delight. The only thing I was sure of was that they were in no way comparable to those my comrades experienced.

  One day, unable to bear it any longer, I declared what the trouble with me was to a pupil whose parents knew my father, and whom I saw on and off outside of school hours. "But you're a complete idiot," said he, "there's nothing to it. Invite Dargelos to your place some Sunday, get him out there in the park, and the trick's done. It's automatic." What trick? I'd not been plotting any trick. I mumbled something about this not having any connection with the sort of pleasure anyone could take right there in class and, unsuccessfully, I endeavored to clad my dream in the form of words. My friend shrugged his shoulders. "Why go looking for difficulties where there aren't any?" he asked. "Dargelos is bigger than we are"—he employed other terms—"but all you have to do is flatter him and you've got him wrapped around your finger. If you like him, all you need to do is let him pitch it at you."

  The crudeness of this recommendation stunned me. I realized that it was impossible to make myself understood. Supposing now that Dargelos agrees to a rendezvous, what, I wondered, what will I say to him, what will I do? I'm not interested in fiddling around for five minutes, what I want is to live with him for the rest of my life. In short, I adored him, and resigned myself to suffer in silence, for, without giving my malady the name of love, I fully sensed that a whole world lay between it and our classroom exercises and that, in the class, it would evoke no response.

  This adventure which didn't have a beginning did have an end.

  Urged on by the pupil in whom I had confided, I asked Dargelos to meet me in a vacant classroom after the five o'clock study hall. He turned up. I'd counted on some god-sent inspiration that would dictate to me what to do. Face to face with him, I lost my bearings completely. All I saw were his sturdy legs and his scraped knees blazoned with scabs, mud and ink.

  "What do you want?" he asked me, smiling cruelly. I surmised what he was imagining and that, insofar as he was concerned, my request could mean that and nothing else. I tried to invent some answer.

  "I wanted to tell you," I mumbled, "to look out for the monitor, he's got it in for you."

  The lie was absurd, for Dargelos' charm had bewitched our masters too.

  The privileges of beauty are immense. It gains its way even with those who seem the least responsive to it.

  Dargelos leaned his head a little to one side and grinned.

  "The monitor?"

  "Yes," I persevered, from my terror deriving the strength to continue, "the monitor. 'I'm watching Dargelos. He's going just a bit too far. I've got my eye on him'—I heard him say that to the headmaster."

  "Ah. So I'm going just a bit too far, am I," said he, "well, old man, I'll give that monitor an eyeful. And as for you, if all you want is to worry me with crap like that, I can warn you right now that the next time you do I'll plant a foot in your ass."

  He disappeared.

  For the space of a week I complained of cramps so as not to have to go to school and endure a glance from Dargelos. When I returned I learned that he was sick in bed. I didn't dare ask how he was getting on. There was whispering. He was a Boy Scout. They referred to an unwise dip in the mid-winter Seine, mentioned pneumonia. One afternoon during the geography lesson we were

  informed of his death. My tears forced me to leave the room. Youth is not the age of compassion. For a good number of pupils, this announcement, which the teacher rose to his feet to make, was simply a tacit authorization to do nothing for the rest of the day. And on the next day the renewed practice of the
ir habits healed whatever may have been their grief.

  Nevertheless, the coup de grace had just been delivered to erotism. Too many little pleasures were spoiled by the troubling phantom of the superb animal of delights whose figure made an impression even on our notion of death.

  Summer vacation over, and now, having moved into the second form, a radical change seemed to have occurred in my classmates. Their voices were different, they were smoking. They were shaving a hint of beard, they went out bareheaded, were wearing knickers or long trousers. Onanism yielded to braggadocio. Dirty post cards were circulating. En masse, all these lads were turning towards women like plants turn towards the sun. It was then that, in order to keep in step with the rest, I began to play out of tune with my nature, and to warp it.

  Rushing headlong towards their truth, they swirled me towards falsehood. What interested them repelled me; I blamed that upon my ignorance. I admired their dash, their composure, their unselfconsciousness. I forced myself to follow their example and to share their enthusiasms. I had continually to vanquish my disgust and my shame. This discipline finally bore fruit and made the task fairly easy. When things were at their worst, I'dtell myself that debauchery was rough going for everyone, but that the others faced up to the job with a better grace than I.

  On Sunday, if the weather was fair, the whole band of us would set off with our rackets, giving it out as our intention that we were off for an afternoon of tennis at Auteuil. The rackets were stowed along the way with the concierge of one of the boys whose family lived in Marseille, and from there we hastened in the direction of the rue de Provence whorehouses. Halting before the leather drape at the entrance, the timidity proper to our youth would reassert itself. We'd pace to and fro, up and down, deliberating whether to enter that doorway as bathers hesitate about plunging into cold water. We'd toss coins to decide who was to lead the way in. I'd be in a panic over the possibility that fate designate me. Whoever was chosen to go first finally sneaked along the wall, slunk inside, the rest of us on his heels and in single file.