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Critique atypique, Pierre Lièvre (1882-1939) revendiqua avec fierté, dans les années 1920, cette épithète d’ amateur, qu’à la suite de Valery Larbaud il contribua à rehausser. Ne jugeant jamais qu’en fonction de son seul plaisir, il créa sa propre forme d’écriture, qu’il baptisa du nom d’ esquisse, forme d’étude brève, par définition inachevée, centrée sur la qualité individuelle des écrivains.

The Amateur Critic. A Sketch of Pierre LièvreAn atypical critic, Pierre Lièvre (1882-1939) proudly appropriated, in the 1920s, the epithet amateur, a term to whose enhancement, as Valery Larbaud had done before him, he contributed. His method was to judge purely according to his pleasure, and he created his own writing form, to which he gave the name of sketch, a kind of brief study which was by definition unfinished and focused on a writer’s individual quality.