Jean Cocteau remained at the forefront of art throughout his life and settled in Milly-la-Forêt in 1945. In 1959, he created a fresco for the Saint-Blaise-des-Simples chapel in this village. The garden is lush with herbs.



Painted on the walls of a very small chapel in a quiet residential area of a small town surrounded by wheat fields are a cat and herbs that reach up to the ceiling. This is where Jean Cocteau rests. His epitaph reads, “Je reste avec vous. (I am with you.)”



Though a multi-artist, he preferred to be called a poet.

When the prodigy Raymond Radiguet died young, the shock led Cocteau to addiction to opium for the next ten years. Upon hearing of the death of his friend Édith Piaf, he passed away in his sickbed four hours later.

I pondered the meaning of the words on his epitaph.



Light, like a rainbow, spills through the gaps in the trees from a small stained-glass window. Decorations resembling pressed flowers, with their colors subdued, emerge in the dim space. It is as if the herb garden, shining outside, has been sealed within a dream... The drawings of flowers, almost narcotic, are strikingly erotic. Is this a sanctuary of herbs? It feels as though seeds are about to fly away from here. Surrounded by the fragrance of medicinal plants, I contemplate such thoughts. Unconsciously, I realize I have become an inhabitant of a dream world.

Saint-Blaise-des-Simples Chapel website
http://chapelle-saint-blaise.org/index.htm

Maison Jean Cocteau website
http://www.jeancocteau.net/maison_home_fr.php