The White Paper

by Jean Cocteau

His face, with its rather thick lips, slightly narrow eyes and somewhat flat nose, was characteristic of the type which for me was to prove fatal.

When fatality appears in disguise it gives us an illusion of freedom and in the end always leads us into the same trap.

My urge would not be to amuse myself for five minutes but to live with him for ever.

I could see nothing except his strong legs and his scarred knees, emblazoned with scabs and ink.

Beauty holds vast privileges. It acts even on those who appear to take the least notice of it.

In spite of everything, eroticism had received its death-blow. Too many little pleasures were disturbed by the ghost of the handsome animal whose charm had moved even death itself.

It was then, in order to follow the others, that I began to falsify my nature.

Nothing is more intimidating than children and whores. Too much separates us from them. We don't know how to break the silence and put ourselves on their level.

It would be tedious to describe that delightful Sodom where the fire of heaven falls without danger, striking by means of caressing sunshine.

Some nocturnal salt transforms the most brutal jailbird, the roughest Breton, the most savage Corsican, into those tall, flower-decked girls with low decolletes and loose limbs who like dancing and lead their partners, without the slightest embarrassment, into the shady hotels by the port.

Branches grew in them, hardness crushed hardness, sweat mingled together and the couples would leave for the bedrooms with clock-case lampshades and eiderdowns.

A straight nose might have made him colourless. The carafe had added the final thumb-stroke to the masterpiece.

Next, with my fountain-pen I crossed out the ominous tattooing. Beneath it I drew a star and a heart. He smiled. He understood, more with his skin than with anything else, that he was safe, that our encounter was not like those he was used to: brief moments of self-gratification.

Then, with the terrible slowness of a player who is cheating, he tested my sleep, coughed, touched me, listened to my breathing, brought his face close to my right hand which lay wide open near my face and gently leaned his cheek against it.

I was the indiscreet witness of this attempt by an unlucky boy who could feel a lifebelt coming close to him on the open sea, and I had to restrain myself from losing my head, pretending to wake up and ruining my life.

No, I thought, we don't belong to the same order. He's already beautiful enough to move a flower, a tree or an animal. Impossible to live with.

The clients were sure of their tastes, quick and discreet. I must have been a problem for these young men who were accustomed to precise demands. They looked at me without understanding; for I prefer talk to action.

Nothing beautiful exists without effort.

What men believe to be indecent, surely you see it as we see the amorous exchanges of pollens and atoms!

As I went back home, along walls over which came the smell of gardens, I thought how admirable was the economy of God. It gives love when one lacks it, and, in order to avoid a pleonasm of the heart, refuses it to those who have it.

We were like dahlias leaning over when soaked with water.

Love breaks me in two. Even when I'm calm I live in constant fear that this calm might cease and this anxiety prevents me from enjoying its pleasures.

Waiting is one form of torture; possession is another, through fear of losing what I possess.

Perhaps it will help to make people understand that in exiling myself I am not exiling a monster, but a man whom society will not allow to live, since it considers one of the mysterious cogs in God's masterpiece to be a mistake.

The world accepts dangerous experiments in the realm of art because it does not take art seriously; but it condemns them in life.