Those who seek a work of criticism in these pages will be disappointed: disappointed too will be those who expect to find here the manifesto of a new School.
There are no longer any literary schools, there are only individual manifestations. Three writers in agreement on principles — this is something we shall see no more; and even should they manage to come to terms, they would not constitute a school, for the enterprise, always somewhat theatrical, would lack an audience in this age of indifference and would moreover be betrayed even by its own actors, who would all know the same role and know only that one — the role of the protagonist.
Here, then, only the author’s responsibility is engaged. His name conceals no group. His ideas on the tendencies of present-day youth, on the influences to which it is subject, on the new direction one should wish for the art of writing, and on the intimations of these novelties found in the monuments raised before us by the Masters — all these ideas, he says, true or false, are his own. Even the features, scattered here and there, which he believes common to the entire rising generation, it is he who claims them as such, and such they might well be only in his claims. Nevertheless, he is convinced of being right: but one may find good minds precisely convinced of doctrines contrary to his own — which have, no doubt, the grave fault of not being advanced with that fine scientific disinterestedness befitting, it is true, to scholars, but which is hardly the province of a Poet.
Let it be declared: that all the assertions of this book, all the principles defended therein, and all the developments of this exposition of principles have no other aim than to indicate on what logical grounds are founded the realisations that will not fail to follow closely upon this theoretical preface. It is a sort of precaution it seemed honest and prudent to take.
The true orientation of this Literature is thus established by its Fifth Part, where doctrines appear only as commentaries on a future Work. The real point of view is that of the Poet: not that of the aesthete! The theory will be worth as much as the Work.
Ch. M.