Free The Difficulty of Being by Jean Cocteau

they were, as far as I know, the only ones not to recognize themselves. For from their counterparts, if any exist, I shall never learn anything. This book became the breviary of mythomaniacs and of those who like to daydream.
    Thomas l’Imposteur
is a legend, but it is a book which does not give rise to legends. During the liberation it all buthad the same effect as
Les Enfants Terribles
. A number of young mythomaniacs lost their heads, disguised themselves, changed their names and took themselves for heroes. Their friends called them
Thomas l’Imposteur
and told me of their exploits, when they did not do so for themselves. But mythomaniacs who become identified with their own fable are very rare. The others do not like to be unmasked. Moreover, it is very simple. A book gives rise to legends at once or else it never will.
Thomas l’Imposteur
will never share the fate of
Les Enfants Terribles
. What would a mythomaniac make of a mythomaniac? It is like an Englishman playing the part of an Englishman.
    The death of Thomas de Fontenoy is mythological. A child plays at horses and becomes a horse. A mythomaniac reads
Les Enfants Terribles
. He plays at horses and thinks he is a horse.

ON MEASUREMENT AND MARCEL PROUST
    PERHAPS I KNOW TO WHAT EXTENT I CAN GO TOO far. Yet this is a sense of measurement. Of which I have very little. Rather I pride myself on a sense of balance, for this need be no more than the skill of a somnambulist moving along the edge of the rooftops. This leaves me if something wakes me or if, as can happen, through foolishness I wake myself. It is not this sense I am talking about. I am talking about the sense of measurement that perplexes me because it relates to methods with which this book deals, methods which I record without analysing them. I am quite at sea in the world of figures. They are a dead language to me and I do not understand them any more than I do Hebrew. I count on my fingers. If one has to work anything out on paper I am lost. All sums are beyond me. Any calculations I make are resolved as if by magic. I never set them out. I never count my lines, nor my pages, still less my words. When I write a play the act imposes its curve upon me. I have a little trouble over the descent. A click in my mind informs me that it is the end. So far I have never asked myself: ‘Is it too long? * Is it too short?’ It is what it is. I cannot judge. In practice it turns out to be as it should be.
    A film, to be used, must be at least two thousand four hundred metres long. This is not a satisfactory length. It istoo long to suit a short story. Too short to suit a novel. No matter. That is the set length. One must keep to it. While I was shooting
La Belle et la Bête
that was the management’s great anxiety. I would be too short. In vain I countered this by my own methods; the figures contradicted me and they are law. The film grew shorter. The faces grew longer. I continued to go my own way.
    A film is made up of longs and shorts. It has an internal rhythm. Figures do not know this rhythm. The counter’s figures were correct. So were mine. †
    When, on the last day, I questioned my script-girl about the balance between the script (which is one thing) and the action (which is another) she replied, in amazement, that I was right on the mark. I was entitled to two more shots held in reserve. In fact, without knowing this, I had decided the evening before on two further shots. There remained the length of the film, which I refused to extend. End to end, cut up, cut, recut, it had its two thousand four hundred metres. Not one more, not one less.
    If I recount this anecdote, in which I appear to have come off so well, it is to give an example, drawn from life, of a victory gained over arithmetic by those figures which dwell within us and work themselves out of their own accord. Poetry is only figures, algebra, geometry, workings-out and proofs. However neither figures nor proofs can be seen.
    The only proofs