Le glorieux et le maudit. Jean Cocteau-Jean Desbordes: Deux destins par Olivier Charneux (review).

This work focuses on the intertwined lives of Jean Cocteau, a prominent French writer, and Jean Desbordes, a lesser-known literary figure and resistance hero. It explores Desbordes’s role as Cocteau’s admirer, companion, and influence, highlighting their complex relationship marked by creativity, jealousy, and struggles with addiction amid the social taboos of their time. The book also details Desbordes’s courageous leadership of the Réseau Marine F2 resistance network during World War II, his torture by the Gestapo, and his ultimate sacrifice. By revisiting Desbordes’s literary contributions and personal history, the text seeks to restore recognition to a figure overshadowed in Cocteau’s biography and French cultural memory.