Jean Cocteau

Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau  5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. Cocteau is best known for his novel Les Enfants terribles (1929), and the films Blood of a Poet (1930), Les Parents terribles (1948), Beauty and the Beast (1946), and Orpheus (1949). Read more on Wikipedia

Maurice Sachs introduced Lowry to Jean Cocteau who gave Lowry tickets to see his latest play La Machine Infernale which opened  10  April  1934 at the Comedie des Champs-Elysees (Louis Jouvet theater) in Paris. The play had a big affect on Lowry because the idea of the universe in the play as an infernal machine and of time as a "folded eternity" "chimed with Lowry's own obsessions - Nordahl Grieg's Moloch of fate and the time theories of J.W. Dunne and Ouspensky." (Gordon Bowker Pursued By Furies Pg. 178).

Lowry used a phrase of Cocteau's twice in letters - one to Conrad Aiken 9th April 1940 and to Albert Erskine 5th July 1946 - "Our books detest us". Sherrill Grace has pointed out that Lowry probably got the quote from Julian Green's book Personal Record 1928-1939 rather than Cocteau; Green writes: "This has reminded me of a curious remark which was made by Cocteau in my presence some time ago: "Our books detest us". (Pg. 297).

Maurice Sachs

Maurice Sachs (born Maurice Ettinghausen, 1906, Paris - 14 April 1945, Germany) was a French writer. He was the son of a Jewish family of jewelers. Sachs was educated in an English-style boarding-school, lived for a year in London and worked in a bookshop, and returned to Paris.


In 1925 he converted to Catholicism and decided to become a priest, though this didn't last upon meeting a young man on the beach at Juan-les-Pins.

After involvement in a number of dubious business activities, he travelled to New York, where he passed himself off as an art dealer. Returning to Paris, he associated himself with leading homosexual writers of the time - Cocteau, Gide and Max Jacob - with all of whom he had stormy relationships whose precise nature is unclear. Read more on Wikipedia

Lowry was eager to get Ultramarine published in France, and through Kathleen Coyle met Maurice Sachs from Nouvelle Revue Francaise. Sachs had recently returned from America with his partner Henry Wibbels after running an art gallery in new York. Sachs was on the editorial board of Nouvelle Revue Francaise, he was soon talking of Ultramarine being translated by Gide. (Gordon Bowker Pursued By Furies Pg. 173).

Maurice Sachs introduced Lowry to Jean Cocteau who gave Lowry tickets to see his latest play La Machine Infernale which opened  10  April  1934 at the Comedie des Champs-Elysees (Louis Jouvet theater) in Paris. The play had a big affect on Lowry because the idea of the univers in the play as an infernal machine and of time as a "folded eternity" "chimed with Lowry's own obsessions - Nordahl Grieg's Moloch of fate and the time theories of J.W. Dunne and Ouspensky." (Gordon Bowker Pursued By Furies Pg. 178).

Lowry left Paris in early May with Maurice Sachs and Henry Wibbels  to stay in Saint-Prest. They stayed at the Hotel du Pont. In an unpublished letter written from the hotel to Jan referenced by Gordon Bowker, Lowry wrote to her describing that the Hotel du Pont was the perfect place for them to live. However, he also stated things were not working out as on of his companions was romancing the gardener, the other pursuing an oboe player (Gordon Bowker Pursued By Furies Pg. 179).

The exact nature of Lowry's relationship with Lowry is unclear. Bowker suggest that Sach's was stringing Lowry along with promises of publishing Ultramarine for sexual motives. They had a violent argument when Lowry was drunk and Sach lost interest in both Lowry and Ultramarine. (Bowker Pg. 180). However, Lowry claimed later that he had a contract with Nouvelle Revue Francaise and had drunk the advance away. (Lowry, Haitian Notebook - conversation with Philippe Thoby-Marcelin)

Chartres

Chartres is a commune and capital of the Eure-et-Loir department in northern France. It is located 96 km southwest of Paris. Chartres is built on the left bank of the Eure River, on a hill crowned by the famous Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres, the spires of which are a landmark in the surrounding country. To the south-east stretches the fruitful plain of Beauce, the "granary of France", of which the town is the commercial centre.

The town is the setting for Lowry's short story 'Hotel Room In Chartres' based on a visit made by Lowry and Jan Gabrial to the town and Rouen in 1934; "We've been to Chartres and to Rouen". Jan Gabrial Inside The Volcano Pg. 57). Lowry refers to several location in the city in the short story: Grotte Luminaire, Café Jacques Restaurant Bar du Cinéma, St Piat Chapel, La Gare Chartres and Chartres – Champhol Aerodrome.

Lowry visited the city again with Maurice Sachs and Henry Wibbels in May 1934 when they stayed in the village of St Prest walking across the fields to Chartres. A walk that Jacques Laruelle recalls in Under The Volcano, a memory evoked by his passion for Yvonne:

walking over the meadows from Saint Pres, the sleepy French village of backwaters and locks and grey disused watermills where he was lodging, he had seen, rising slowly and wonderfully and with boundless beauty above the stubble fields blowing with wildflowers, slowly rising sunlight, as centuries before the pilgrims straying over the same fields had watched them rise, the twin spires of Chartres Cathedral. His love had brought a peace, for all too short a while, there was strangely like the enchantment, the spell, of Chartres itself, long ago, whose every side-street he had come to love and cafe where he would gaze at the Cathedral eternally sailing against the clouds, the spell not even the fact he was scandalously in debt there could break.

Lowry also mentioned Chartres cathedral in his 1940 version of Under The Volcano; " his wife, his child, his fishing trip, his career, his sun and moon on the twin spires of Chartres cathedral, his immortal, posthumous work on 'Hidden Knowledge,' which would never be written. Why?" (Pg. 93)