Double Split. Orpheus. Opium

This collection includes works from different years, allowing the reader to get an idea of the various facets of the talent of the great French writer. The short novel "Double Split" is a tragicomic story of a passionate young man's love for a pragmatic beauty, a mistress no longer in her first youth. One of the most French works of Cocteau, both in style and plot, constantly balancing on the thinnest line between seriousness and irony, lyricism and quite caustic humor. The essay "Opium" is a confession of a person coming out of a long drug addiction caused by the agonizing depression from the loss of a loved one. A confession that is ruthless and brutally candid. And finally, the play "Orpheus" is one of Cocteau's "main" works, a programmatic piece in which the ancient Greek myth is transformed into a timeless and eternally relevant story about the incurable inner conflict of a creative person with themselves and the world—conflict that cruelly torments both them and their loved ones, but at the same time becomes a source of inspiration for them.