Léon Hennique Novel

I ought to have given Émile Hennequin pride of place here, had not death cut down the hopes we all invested in him. Alas, he no longer belongs to the Literature of Tomorrow—that literature where, as both critic (our sole true critic) and creator, he would undoubtedly have claimed a magnificent rank. Those who knew the man grasp the injustice of this bereavement, our sorrow, the void left behind that no one can fill; they loved him! and grasped the writer’s worth; they admired him. I had the honour to count myself his friend, and our time together has left me with undying memories of sweetness and nobility. In that capacity, let me be permitted this homage, and this overwhelming regret that he is gone—he on whom we pinned our hopes, struck down on the very threshold of his scarcely opened work, and—not without selfishness, though he would have pardoned it—that this surest of counsels, this unerring judgement has vanished too, along with the work and the friendship.¹²⁸

Nearly all our young writers moonlight as critics: Bunand, Émile Michelet¹²⁹, Téodor de Wyzewa, Georges Doncieux Geffroy, Félix Fénéon—each with an unquestionable feeling for genuine Art.

Yet whilst I’m far from denying Criticism its due respect as a form of writing, I see no reason to linger over it in a book consecrated to Art itself and to Artists, for whom the Critic serves merely as an informed witness.