“The greatest masterpiece of literature is just am out-of-place dictionary out of order.” (Jean Cocteau, Le Potomak, 1919)



Jean Cocteau traversed the 20th century with unusual grace and immeasurable lightness, inevitably finding himself at all its most important cruxes, without ever becoming an institutional figure. Novelist, playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker, performer, designer, man of fashion and costume, author of articles, songs, texts for cabaret, but above all poet.
To this kaleidoscopic figure who traversed, innovated and shaped the arts of the 20th century, Electa dedicates the fifth volume of the Enciclopedia A-Z series, after Rodari, Savinio, Steinberg and Woolf. The volume deftly traces, in 124 entries, the freedom, life, arts and uniqueness of Cocteau. He embodied in himself an infinity of roles in all the arts, with a voracity that was already postmodern, in an attempt to redefine characters and identities. The first reagent of his sensibility was dance and, immediately after, performance. On stage he was an actor of himself, not only a character in his stage plays, but the spokesman of his Word, the truest incarnation of himself, pursued throughout his life. Cocteau A-Z recounts well known and less familiar aspects of the artist’s life: bullfighting, journalism, boxing teaming up with Panama Al Brown, the theatre, Edith Piaf and Coco Chanel, opera, dance, provocation, all the way to his official consecration as an Academic of France, albeit with the accolade bestowed with a fabulous sword adorned with jewels designed by himself and Cartier. He produced countless works, projects and exhibitions: a creative vortex that exploded at the beginning of the century and unfolded through the following decades. The volume is enriched with illustrations and photographs, some rare, that narrate one of the “key figures” in defining the development of the arts in the 20th century.