COCTEAU, Jean; IRIBE, Paul (illus.).

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Vaslav Nijinsky. First edition, one of 934 regular copies on japon, of Jean Cocteau's tribute to Vaslav Nijinsky. The work arranges Cocteau's pair of Nijinsky-inspired poetic triplets into single lines to form captions for Paul Iribe's Beardsley-esque illustrations."Nijinsky fascinated Cocteau most on account of his potent mixture of animality and fragility, at once desirable and androgynous, half-angel and half-leopard. He presented for Cocteau a unique, hybrid spectacle of desire, pain and sacrifice. In [this] little-known volume... Cocteau signed a veritable love letter to Nijinsky" (Williams, p. 46). Paul Iribe (1883-1935) came to prominence when the couturier Paul Poiret used his fluid decorative line to create a modern style of fashion plate, subsequently collected in the volume Les Robes de Paul Poiret racontée par Paul Iribe. He worked in Hollywood during the 1920s and was Coco Chanel's lover from 1931 until his death.

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