Henri Peyre

Henri Maurice Peyre (21 February 1901 – 9 December 1988) was an American linguist and literary scholar of French origin.

Quotes

• There is only one type of decadence which is dangerous in art and literature, and unfortunately critics seldom scourge it as it deserves: it consists in being conventional and imitative, in tritely expressing cheap and superficial emotions.
  • Writers & Their Critics, Ithaca, New York, 1944.

• One of the most considerable achievements of Surrealism was its discovery that many writers and painters of the past had been Surrealists without knowing it.
  • As quoted in Cohn Existentialism (1948), p. 36

• The primary condition for being sincere is the same as for being humble: not to boast of it, and probably not even to be aware of it.
  • Literature and Sincerity (1963), p. 5

• Writing a novel is not very difficult: you simply write ten pages a day for a month and then you have a novel.
  • Henri Peyre, at Yale, as quoted in Graham, Garrett, The Writer's Voice: Conversations with Contemporary Writers (1973), p. 272

External links

• Henri Peyre obituary, 1988