The Holy Terrors: (Les Enfants Terribles)

by Jean Cocteau

Book Overview

Written in a French style that long defied successful translation--Cocteau was always a poet no matter what we was writing--the book came into its own for English-language readers in 1955 when this translation was completed by Rosamund Lehmann. It is a masterpiece of the art of translation of which the Times Literary Supplement said: It has the rare merit of reading as though it were an English original. Lehrmann was able to capture the essence of...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0811200213
• ISBN13: 9780811200219
• Release Date: January 1966
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.1" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Excellent translation of Les enfants terribles.

Whilst one can seldom recapture all of the cultural and linguistic nuances in undertaking such a translation, this work admirably maintains the integrity of the original work.

I love this book

The book starts out as an innocent coming-of-age story but transforms itself into a macabre phantasmagoric thriller towards the end. Breathtakingly beautiful Cocteau's style illuminates the themes of teenage friendship and love, jealousy and cruelty, his imagination creating grotesque and twisted but eminently fascinating and haunting images.

at last!

This restoration is awesome. As for the eternal, unresolved debate over whether this is "a Cocteau Film" or "a Melville Film"--I consider it to be Cocteau's masterpiece. That's not easy to say when you consider ORPHEUS and LA BELLE ET LA BETE, is it? Look what we're getting in pristine condition: Cocteau, Stephane, Dermithe AND Bach/Vivaldi...wow

cocteau and melville's famed collaboration

at last, at last, at last. i for one have been waiting for a top notch dvd package for 'les enfants terribles' for the north american market for about as long as dvds have been around. the wait is over and it proved worthwhile. this movie is so interesting and so good and such a pleasure to watch for a whole gaggle of reasons. let us try to enumerate them as succinctly as possible. i suppose it only makes sense to begin with the text from which the film was adapted. 'les enfants terribles' is such a singular and exhilirating and heady jumble of words. you know when you read something and you finish and you think that this may not be the best thing i have ever read or the most challenging or lyrical or whatever but that you cannot think of one thing that could be added or taken away from the work to make it work any better than it does? this is how i feel about 'les enfants terrible', that it is almost one of these near-perfect works--like kafka's metamorphosis except not nearly as good. i suppose i should admit that on balance i feel that most of cocteau's work (i am talking about the written word here) is somewhat overrated--messy, effete, pompous, whatever you want to say. 'les enfants terribles' stands alone for me because of its ability to do things that were not done before--it was something of an existential novel before such things existed. important narrative points about the book: a brother (paul) and sister (elisabeth or lise) share a paris apartment with their invalided mother. the siblings, who share a bedroom, have a remarkable relationship that hinges upon a richly imaginative shared inner life (suggestions of confused identity most certainly intended). the story opens with a snowball fight amongst students at the lycee condorcet during which paul is pelted with a snowball which may or may not have been forged around a rock by a boy (dargelos) with whom paul is infatuated. the injury paul sustains is severe enough to warrant his withdrawing from classes to spend his days convalescing in his bed at home. the siblings' mother dies and their relationship becomes one of a sort of mutual emotional fascism that manages to suck in and destroy all those around them. one of the most interesting and unlikely things about this film was cocteau's choice of jean-pierre melville to direct. melville's only prior directorial credit was 1949's 'e silence de la mer'--another adaptation of a wildly popular source novel. though cocteau was by this time a well respected film director, he had always said that he would never be able to adapt 'les enfants terribles'. apparently he saw 'le silence de la mer' and liked what he saw well enough to ask melville to direct his own adaptation. it was even more surprising when melville accepted (though one doesn't want to take such things too far, it must be stated that melville was known to have been active in the resistance to the nazi occupation whereas cocteau was accused of collaborati

Cocteau's Masterpiece of Imagination and Longing

Cocteau's novel is gem of a book which deals with the power of make-believe to transport the characters into worlds of their own making. Specifically, Les Enfants Terribles tells the story of a brother and sister who, after the death of their mother, create a sanctuary in one enchanted room and via their active imaginations. These fantasies become the axis on which their lives revolve until it spirals out of control and ends in a climax befitting a Greek tragedy. Reading this book is like reliving a fever dream in which the reality and fantasy blur.