SATIE BEFORE AND AFTER COCTEAU

Abstract

N EARLY everyone who knows the name of Erik Satie (18661925) thinks of him in close association with the great poet, novelist, dramatist, movie-maker, essayist, caricaturist, and academician Jean Cocteau (b. 1899). To associate the two is proper, provided we know which is which. But in fact we generally know Satie through the eloquent words of Cocteau more than through his own words or music; we are unaware of how much we owe Cocteau; perhaps we are allowing Cocteau's intervention to delay our finding the truth about Satie for ourselves. The best students of Satie know all of Cocteau's account, which will be excerpted here. They make use of it and acknowledge it. But they have failed so far to compare it with what can be known from other evidence. For students whose interest in Satie is only incidental to an interest in Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, Milhaud, Poulenc, Thomson, or Cage, the specialists offer fascinating materials and fascinating problems; they do not give a satisfactory account of Satie's true relation to these other composers. By disentangling Satie from Cocteau, we can trace some of these relations, and suggest a promising way of studying them further.