"HAVEN'T YOU RECEIVED 4 LETTERS FROM ME, 2 LETTERS FROM PICASSO?" COCTEAU, JEAN. Autograph Letter Signed, "Jean," to André Gide ("Dear André"), in French, in pencil, requesting that he make no more sacrifices on his behalf, expressing surprise that he had been asked to lecture on painters and that [Guillaume] Apollinaire had written him about morality, joking about the "great talent" of [André] Suarès, asking whether he received letters from Picasso and himself, looking forward to his new writing, and mentioning his recent work including Parade. 4 pages, 4to, written on a single folded sheet; minor smudging and faint soiling to first and terminal pages, horizontal fold. Np, [1919]
"Don't break any more lances for me I beg you, or if you break any don't tell me just as I avoid telling you the battles that I wage for you and others. . . . [W]hat surprises me is to see that one asks me to lecture on painters (which . . . I do not do) and that Apollinaire writes to me that I take with him the moral direction of our social circle. I have nothing to complain about . . . apart from receiving 'great talent' (good term for Suarès) from the height of the Eiffel Tower on my poor Roman skull. If Cap [his Ode à Picasso: Le Cap de Bonne-Espérance (1919)] and Potomak [Le Potomak (1919)] are works of 'great talent' I'll burn them. "So haven't you received 4 letters from me, 2 letters from Picasso? . . . "Mad impatience to see your new work. I can report a few poems and the Parade, beautiful like a puppet."
