Antoine de saint-exupery - biography, information, personal life. Antoine de Saint-Exupery: biography, photos and interesting facts In which African country did the exupery serve
Antoine de Saint-Exupery- writer, thinker, poet, pilot.
Antoine Marie Roger de Saint-Exupery was born on June 29, 1900 in Lyon and was the third child of Count Jean de Saint-Exupery and Marie de Fonscolombe. Antoine's mother comes from an old Provencal family. An even more ancient family of Saint-Exupery - this name was borne by one of the knights of the Holy Grail. In 1904, after the death of her husband, Madame de Saint-Exupéry with five children: Marie-Madeleine is seven years old, Simone is six, Antoine is four, François is two, and Gabrielle, who is not yet a year old, first moves from Lyon to her mother in the castle of La Moll near Cogolein in the Massif More, and then to the castle of Saint-Maurice de Remance, owned by her aunt Madame de Tricot. Here little Antoine spent his childhood, an unusually happy time in his life. Little Antoine, impulsive, impulsive, passionately attached to his mother. It was from her that Tonio inherited the gift of imagination, poetic and artistic abilities, an ear for music - he played the violin well. Very early in Antoine, a taste for invention awoke. He once constructed a "bicycle" by attaching a screen made of willow rods and an old sheet to the bicycle. The attempt to take off, of course, failed, but this event already portends great adventures with airplanes.
In 1909, Antoine and his brother François entered the Jesuit College of Saint-Croix in Le Mans. College did not leave a noticeable imprint on Tonio's life. He did not even have new friends, he only communicates with his brother. Comrades quickly give Antoine the nickname "Sleepwalker" for his brooding appearance and habit of looking at the sky. However, teasing Antoine is dangerous: he becomes furious, and the offenders get what they deserve.
The archive of the college preserved Antoine's first serious work in prose - school work on a rather amusing topic: the adventures of a top hat. The theme itself was a fairy tale, and Antoine, who felt all the more free, the more fantastic the proposed plot was, wrote an elegant fairy tale. The cylinder in it told about itself: how it was made in the factory and how it traveled afterwards, having visited the honorable gentleman, the coachman, the rags-dealer and even the terrible king of Niger - Bam-Boom.
When Antoine was twelve, he had the first time to fly an airplane. So Antoine received "air baptism". The pilot who gave him a ride was called Jules Vedrine. Before the First World War, he was perhaps the most famous aviator in the world. But "air baptism" did not make a strong impression on Antoine, such as sometimes determines the future fate of a person. Tonio wrote poems about this event, and forgot it for the sake of new fun.
The First World War began. Madame de Saint-Exupery, being a certified nurse, is sent to the military hospital, and the boys are sent to the Montgre College in Villefranche-upon-Saône for full board, and then it only becomes clear how the children are not adapted to life in a closed educational institution: the boys are used to to home, servants, to contentment, and they are frightened by the modest way of life. And then their mother sends them to neutral Switzerland, to Friborg, where she arranges them in the Marist college "Villa-Saint-Jean". Here, the children feel good: there is no strict discipline, although of course there are rules and regulations, the pupils have tennis courts, a fencing hall, a swimming pool at their disposal, they can ski on snow-capped mountains ... Some students, including Antoine, have separate rooms.
The year 1917 will remain in Antoine's memory as a darkened sad event: his fifteen-year-old brother Francois dies of heart rheumatism. Antoine was stunned by his brother's death. The writer Saint-Exupery will describe his death in The Military Pilot. The death of the child will also be reflected in the Citadel.
Having received a liberal arts education at the college and a thorough training in the exact and natural sciences, Antoine travels to Paris, where he listens to a mathematics course, first at the Bossuet school, then at the Lyceum of Saint-Louis, preparing to enter the Higher Naval School.
In Paris, he lives in a familiar environment: friends from aristocratic families, social contacts, dinners, music - this is the circle of activities and impressions of the eighteen-year-old Exupery. But his main passion is writing. From the age of six, Antoine has been composing poetry and fairy tales. In Paris, he read to friends a whole drama in verse. In it, noble robbers acted, terrifying all kinds of carriers of evil.
This love for writing, brought by Antoine from childhood, now becomes a burden in his soul, unbalances. The only way to get rid of it is to write. Of course, Antoine does not think about professional writing, he realizes that it is inaccessible to him from any point of view: nothing has been experienced yet, no way has been found to apply his strength in life.
In 1919, Antoine passed exams at the Higher Naval School. Written in mathematics was recognized as the best work of the entire competition. The theme of the essay - “Tell us about the impressions of the Alsatian who returned to his native village, which became French again” - infuriates Antoine, and instead of writing pseudo-patriotic rubbish to get a good score, Saint-Exupery writes just a few lines. He gets the lowest score, but is still admitted to the oral exams, which he also fails in.
Antoine is confused, he doubts the correctness of the chosen path. Deciding to combine a love of art and a passion for technology, Antoine enters the architectural department of the Academy of Arts. And now fifteen months at the Academy of Arts in Paris. Another fifteen months in which Antoine seeks and does not find himself. During this period he reads Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Plato. He revolts against the life that he and his friends lead in Paris. So, fighting with his surroundings, but in fact fighting with himself, with his habits, with external circumstances pushing him along a smooth path, Antoine wins his first internal victory: in 1921, interrupting the delay he received when he entered higher educational institution, he drops out of studies at the Faculty of Architecture and volunteers in the 2nd Regiment of Fighter Aviation in Strasbourg. This is not to say that he is attracted to aviation. While this is a leap into the unknown.
Antoine begins to take private piloting lessons. Saint-Exupery quickly mastered aerobatics. After completing the training course for a civilian pilot, Exupery asks to be sent to Morocco, where he intends to obtain the rights of a military pilot: the civil school did not give these rights. In February 1922, Antoine received a diploma of a military pilot and the rank of corporal. And in the fall of the same year, with the rank of junior lieutenant, he was assigned to the 34th Aviation Regiment in Bourget near Paris.
During this period, Antoine experiences his first strong feeling of love. She was a girl from a wealthy aristocratic family. They are engaged. But the young man's plans were not destined to come true: during one of the training flights, the Saint-Exupery plane, barely taking off from the ground, loses speed and falls to the ground. Antoine is seriously injured. The bride's parents, having learned about this, put him before a choice: family happiness or a dangerous profession. Antoine refuses to accept the offered choice. No family, no plane. Love brought only wounds, the profession too. He refuses a military career, but also refuses the girl. And again, like a few years ago, he does not know what to do, who to be?
In March 1923 he entered the office of the Boiron tile factory in Paris, in 1924 - in the Sorer firm as a worker at the Sorer truck factory, then as a traveling salesman from the same factory in Montlucon. But there is another occupation that he does at night in his room: he writes.
In April 1926, the magazine "Le Navier d" Argens "published the first story of Saint-Exupery -" The Pilot ", or rather, it is an excerpt from a story (later lost), which Antoine himself called" The Flight of Jacques Bernice. "Why flight? the title - the moral meaning of the story: a young pilot runs from the empty and useless life of the salons to a simple and wonderful business that brings him new life, a new and strong connection with the earth.
On October 11, 1926, Anutan introduces himself to the director of the airline in Toulouse, Didier Dora. Most of all he wants to fly, but here, at the Montodran airfield, wearing a blue mechanic's blouse, Antoine works in the hangar, dismantles motors, cleans cylinders and candles, works as a lubricator. Saint-Exupery resignedly carries out his service. It was during this period that the first shoots of a real friendship with Guillaume and Mermoz, based on a community of work and complete trust, were born. A few weeks later, Dora entrusts Antoine with a mail flight to Casablanca. Antoine carries mail on the line Toulouse - Casablanca (Morocco), then Casablanca - Dakar (Senegal).
In 1927, Saint-Exupéry was appointed commander of the airfield at Cap Jubi.
At that time, the coast of Africa was unsafe due to nomadic tribes, who traded in robbery and violence. The death of pilots was not uncommon. The new head of the airfield was instructed to establish friendly relations with the nomads. In October, Saint-Exupery arrived in Cap Jubi (Western Sahara). Neglecting all caution, in spite of the surrounding hostility, he achieved coordination of actions from the rescue pilots who were obliged to rescue the crews of the aircraft that had crashed, and most importantly, he established good-neighborly relations with the nomads. And at night Saint-Exupery writes "Southern Postal".
Returning to France in March 1929, with bated breath, he takes his first book to Gaston Gallimard's publishing house. After reading the manuscript, the publishing house signs a contract with the author for seven books.
After the publication of “Southern Post Office, the young writer is very excited about the reviews, and they are very flattering. Literary connoisseurs are condescending to the weaknesses of the novel and, on the contrary, discover in it the true merits: a new circle of problems, a new, individual view of the world, a peculiar vision, their own incomparable voice. The knowledge that your merits have not gone unnoticed, that they have been appreciated, is very inspiring to the writer.
In September 1929, on the orders of Dora Saint-Exupery, goes to the disposal of the company "Aeroposta-Argentina" and sets sail for Buenos Aires. As technical director, he is responsible for flying over the vast South American continent. Saint-Ex flies himself a lot, masters new difficult routes, tests new cars. He understands very well what the pilot feels and experiences, being alone in the vast expanse of the sky and knowing that under him is the abyss of the ocean. Despite all the dangers, the pilots fearlessly fly out to combat the elements. The writer Saint-Exupery will tell about this in his next book "Night Flight". The book, which will be published in 1931, will receive the Femina Prize in France and will bring literary fame and glory to Saint-Exupéry.
But it won't be soon, and now Antoine is lonely. The desire to marry became more and more acute, more and more insistently. And not by the callousness of his heart, not by the inability to love, but by the high demands in love - both to himself and to the woman he will love - that explain his love failures. In November 1930, Benjamin Cremier, a renowned critic and a member of the editorial board of Nouvelle Revue Française, introduced him to Consuelo Sunqing, a small, graceful woman with huge expressive eyes. In the spring of 1931, upon returning to France, they get married.
The young man, who feared marriage with a woman who would create for him a bourgeois way of life and a calm, balanced life, got more than he was looking for. The eccentric, absurd, impulsive Consuelo created for Antoine the atmosphere of inner anxiety and anxiety that he needed so much to create.
In 1931, after being fired from the Lines, Saint-Exupery decided to devote himself entirely to literary work, but very soon found out for himself that "if he does not fly, then he does not write."
From February 1932, he again worked for the airline, but this time on a seaplane serving the Marseille-Algeria line as co-pilot. In May 1933, all French airlines merged into one - Air France. Dora's ill-wishers at Air France refuse to accept Saint-Exupery into the service. Dora arranges for Saint-Ex as a test pilot at the Latecoer design office. Immersed in his worries, in a depressed state, Saint-Ex embarks on this dangerous job, which requires special concentration from the pilot. One case is typical. One day Saint-Exupery had to test a new model of a three-engined aircraft. He rises into the air. During the flight, the engine went out of business, and smoke came out of it. After making a U-turn, Saint-Ex went to land. Those who watched him from the ground with horror noticed that something had separated from the plane - either part of the wing, or a sheet of skin that had torn off the fuselage. Meanwhile, the plane continued its descent quite normally. On the ground, it turned out that the detached object was the cockpit door, which Saint-Ex forgot to close during takeoff.
In November, while testing a seaplane, Saint-Exupéry almost dies in the bay of Saint-Raphael. Saint-Ex owes his salvation to a miracle. This miracle - "bathing in Saint-Raphael" - he described in "The Land of Men." The consequence of this accident was a temporary forced rest. Saint-Exupery is completing the script for the film Anne-Marie, which began in Buenos Aires, and is writing the libretto for the script for the film Igor. But Saint-Exupery's attempts to write specifically for cinema did not lead to any practical results: producers and directors deal with the writer's creation at their own discretion, tweak his works as they please, to please the tastes of the general public. Saint-Exupery does not like this, and he refuses further attempts in this area.
Saint-Exupery returns to work at the Latecoer. He has some leisure, and at this time he writes the foreword to the book by Maurice Bourdet, "The Greatness and Bondage of Aviation."
Seeking money, he tries himself in the field of journalism. In April 1935, the Paris-Soir newspaper sent him for a month as a correspondent in Moscow. In May, the giant Soviet propaganda plane Maxim Gorky crashes - Saint-Exupery responds to this tragic event with a sympathetic note in Izvestia. This is followed by a series of essays about the USSR in "Paris-Soir" - everyday sketches in soft humorous tones. But lectures and journalism do not satisfy Saint-Ex; he needs to fly.
He decides to break the record set by the French pilot André Japy, who connected Paris with Saigon in 47 hours. After two weeks of preparation, on December 29, 1935, Saint-Aix with Prevost took off from Bourget and after 4 hours and 15 minutes the plane crashed in the Libyan desert. With great difficulty, without a drop of water, they reach the caravan route, where the caravan picks them up. Antoine returns to Paris. During this period Saint-Exupery made the first notes for the Citadel.
In August 1936, the Entrancian newspaper dispatched him to Spain, where civil war was raging. Along with the leading people of his time, Saint-Ex is on the side of the Spanish republicans, defending their freedom in the fight against fascism. In Spanish correspondences and essays, there is a sincere concern for the fate of Europe, over which the dark shadow of fascism has already hung. As a result of a second visit to Spain in 1937, the essay "Madrid" appears.
In January 1938 Saint-Exupery in New York. The next day, the port crane unloaded a huge box on the pier, which contained his "Simun". On this plane, Saint-Ex wanted to try to establish a direct connection between New York and Tierra del Fuego. On February 15, escorted by Prevost Saint-Ex, it leaves New York and after a short landing in Brownsville, heads for Veracruz, and from there flies to Guatemala. But immediately after taking off from an airfield in Guatemala, the plane loses speed, collapses and crashes into the ground.
Saint-Ex is saved by a miracle: he is all wounded, the lower jaw is broken, several breaks in the skull, the left collarbone is broken. In addition, he has a concussion and is at risk of blood poisoning. He has been in a coma for several days. But a strong organism overcomes the disease. As a memory of what happened, he was left with ankylosis of the left shoulder. This made it impossible for him to jump out with a parachute if necessary. It is possible that this circumstance played an important role in his premature death.
Saint Ax is brought to New York. The Guatemalan catastrophe, which almost ended tragically, thanks to a happy ending, returned Saint-Ex's courage, faith in his star. He begins to tidy up his rough sketches, notes, articles, essays, published at different times. Jean Prevost introduces him to Curtis Hitchcock, director of the Raynal Hitchcock publishing house. An agreement is concluded between the publisher and Saint-Exupery, according to which the writer undertakes to submit a new book as soon as possible. The name of the future work has already been invented, or rather, the name under which it will appear in America: "Wind, Sand and Stars."
On May 25, 1939, the French Academy awarded Antoine de Saint-Exupéry the Great Novel Prize for his book The Land of Men, which had been published three months earlier, in February. The honorary award once again drew public attention to the writer-pilot.
The Second World War began. After numerous accidents, Saint-Exupery's health is in such a state that doctors do not allow him to join the military aviation as a pilot. He again has to show extraordinary perseverance in order to defend his right to fly, his right to fight the Nazis, the enemies of France and all mankind. As part of the 2/33 air group, he conducts reconnaissance and aerial photography of the enemy's position. However, due to the infamous truce concluded in November 1940, the demobilization of French troops is carried out, and Saint-Exupéry emigrates from France.
Now, for Saint-Exupery, only the word is the weapon. In 1942, The Military Pilot was published. It is curious that this book was immediately banned by both the Nazis and de Gaulle's supporters. Moreover, the first - for the propaganda of disobedience and resistance, and the second - for allegedly "defeatist sentiments."
In February 1943, "Letter to the Hostage" was published, written in the form of a monologue, an appeal to the writer’s friend, the communist Leon Werth, where the writer seeks to express his attitude to the war, to fascism. Saint-Exupery also dedicates his poetic fairy tale "The Little Prince" to Leon Werth.
In the spring of 1943, the pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry with an American military transport convoy sailed to North Africa, to Algeria. He is 42, his health is undermined, but he cannot stand aside when others are at war. Here he is again among his fellow squadron 2/33. He flies again, but after an accident he is fired. But Saint-Ex can not stay idle: if the pilot of Saint-Exupery cannot fly, the writer Saint-Exupery takes the pen and continues to work on his last book "Citadel", which remained unfinished. This is a book of meditations, reflections, a book-parable. However, in the spring of 1944, the pilot Saint-Exupery, thanks to his friends, again received permission for combat reconnaissance missions.
On July 31, 1944, at 0830 hours, the plane takes off from the airfield in Corsica. Heading for Southern France. In fuel tanks for 6 hours. His return was expected until 14:30, but after 15:00 it was clear that Saint-Exupery could not return.
In September 1998, in the Mediterranean Sea, near about. Riou in the waters of Marseille, on the deck of the "Horizon", owned by J.-C. Bianco, a chain bracelet with a metal plate was raised. After cleaning, the words “Antoine de Saint-Exupery (Consuelo) - c / o Reynal and Hitchcock Inc. - 386 4th Ave N.Y. City - USA ".
In October 2003, a team of researchers was able to lift the discovered parts of the aircraft to the surface. The details bore the serial number - 2734. Checking the number against the factory technical documentation confirmed the version that it was a Saint-Exupery plane. The body was never found.
The beautiful legend about the writer-pilot who disappeared in the sky of France, the man whom the Arabs called the Captain of the Birds, continues to live: he disappeared, dissolved in the Mediterranean blue, went to meet the stars - just like his Little Prince ...
In the last period of his life, Saint-Exupery in his work broke away from the harsh reality of life and turned to the language of allegories. This is how the symbolic fairy tale-parable "The Little Prince" appeared. The "prototype" of this tale can be considered a folkloric fairy tale with a wandering storyline: a handsome prince, because of unhappy love, leaves his father's house and wanders along endless roads. The little prince, an alien from the asteroid “planet of childhood”, in search of friends, in the hope of finding true love and knowing the world, sets off on his journey to alien worlds-planets.
Visiting six planets in succession, the Little Prince on each of them encounters human vices in their naked, reduced to the absurd, grotesque form: power, vanity, drunkenness, pseudo-scholarship ... to the planet Earth.
The first creature encountered here is a mythological snake. The snake has a special role in the fairy tale: it symbolizes the miraculous power and the woeful knowledge of human destiny. The snake shows the prince the way to people, and at the end of the story, she, giving her poison, helps him to return to his home planet. But if the snake here is some kind of metaphysical element, then the character of the Fox has nothing to do with ancient mythology. He is a figure from folk tales, the personification of life's wisdom. He introduces the Little Prince to the human heart, to what it is guided by, teaches him the rituals of love and friendship, which people have forgotten about, and therefore lost friends and lost the ability to love.
The third, along with the snake and the Fox, is a symbolic figure - a rose, which the Little Prince grows on his planet and which gives him so much care and concern. A beautiful and capricious rose symbolizes, of course, a woman. Many critics believe that the rose is not so much an abstract personification of femininity as a very specific person, the wife of the writer, Consuelo de Saint-Exupery. And, perhaps, this is not at odds with the truth. The troubles of the Little Prince with a rose to a certain extent reflect the difficulties that the writer himself had to experience in this regard. Only a deeper understanding of the psychology of love, to which the Little Prince comes with the help of the wise Fox, makes it possible to resolve the existing conflict and awakens in him the desire to return to the abandoned planet.
The Little Prince is a typical fairy tale with morality, or rather, with many moral teachings, told in simple language. It was written not so much for children as for adults who have not yet completely lost their childish impressionability, a childishly open view of the world and the ability to fantasize.
Another work that is often compared to The Little Prince, The Citadel is a philosophical utopia about a wise ruler who “protects” his people from the hectic and restless world of freedom and leads them to God. The central place in the narrative is the belief in a better future. But this utopia is based not on external regulation, but on internal - a change in human consciousness, recognizing the need for a wise king and spiritual mentor. The Utopia of Saint-Exupery is a belief in a human creator and servant of the Supreme.
Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger de Saint-Exupéry. Born June 29, 1900 in Lyon, France - died July 31, 1944. French writer, poet and professional pilot.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery was born in the French city of Lyon, descended from an old family of Perigord nobles, and was the third of five children of the Viscount Jean de Saint-Exupery and his wife Marie de Foncolombe. At the age of four, he lost his father. Little Antoine was raised by his mother.
In 1912, Saint-Exupery first took to the air in an airplane at the Amberier airfield. The car was driven by the famous pilot Gabriel Wroblewski.
Exupery entered the School of Christian Brothers of St. Bartholomew in Lyon (1908), then with his brother François studied at the Jesuit College of Saint-Croix in Mans - until 1914, after which they continued their studies in Friborg (Switzerland) at the Marist College, preparing for admission to the Ecole Naval (took a preparatory course at the Naval Lyceum Saint-Louis in Paris), but did not pass the competition. In 1919 he enrolled as a volunteer at the Academy of Fine Arts in the department of architecture.
The turning point in his life was 1921 - then he was drafted into the army in France. Interrupting the grace period he received upon admission to a higher educational institution, Antoine enrolled in the 2nd Fighter Regiment in Strasbourg. First, he is assigned to the work team at the repair shops, but soon he manages to pass the exam for a civilian pilot. He was transferred to Morocco, where he received the rights of a military pilot, and then sent to Istria for improvement. In 1922, Antoine completed courses for reserve officers in Avora and became a junior lieutenant. In October, he is assigned to the 34th Aviation Regiment at Bourget near Paris. In January 1923, the first plane crash happened to him, he received a head injury. In March he is commissioned. Exupery moved to Paris, where he devoted himself to writing. However, at first he was not successful in this field and was forced to take on any job: he sold cars, was a salesman in a bookstore.
Only in 1926 did Exupery find his calling - he became a pilot of the Aeropostal company, which delivered mail to the northern coast of Africa. In the spring, he begins to work on the transport of mail on the Toulouse - Casablanca line, then Casablanca - Dakar. On October 19, 1926, he was appointed head of the Cap Jubi intermediate station (Villa Bens), on the very edge of the Sahara.
Here he writes his first work - "Southern Postal".
In March 1929 Saint-Exupery returned to France, where he entered the higher aviation courses of the navy in Brest. Soon, Gallimard's publishing house published the novel Southern Postal, and Exupery left for South America as the technical director of Aeropost-Argentina, a subsidiary of Aeropostal. In 1930, Saint-Exupery was promoted to the Knight of the Legion of Honor for his contribution to the development of civil aviation. In June, he personally participated in the search for his friend, the pilot Guillaume, who had an accident while flying over the Andes. In the same year, Saint-Exupery wrote "Night Flight" and met his future wife Consuelo from El Salvador.
In 1930 Saint-Exupery returned to France and received three months' leave. In April, he married Consuelo Sunxin (April 16, 1901 - May 28, 1979), but the spouses generally lived separately. On March 13, 1931, Aeropostal was declared bankrupt. Saint-Exupéry returned to work as a pilot on the France-South America mail line, serving the Casablanca-Port-Etienne-Dakar section. In October 1931, Night Flight was published, and the writer was awarded the Femina literary prize. He again takes a vacation and moves to Paris.
In February 1932, Exupery rejoins the Latecoer airline and flies as a co-pilot on a seaplane serving the Marseille-Algeria line. Didier Dora, a former Aeropostal pilot, soon hired him as a test pilot, and Saint-Exupéry nearly died while testing a new seaplane in Saint-Raphael Bay. The seaplane capsized, and he barely managed to get out of the cockpit of the sinking car.
In 1934, Exupery joined Air France (formerly Aeropostal) as a company representative on trips to Africa, Indochina and other countries.
In April 1935, as a correspondent for the Paris-Soir newspaper, Saint-Exupery visited the USSR and described this visit in five essays. The essay "Crime and Punishment in the Face of Soviet Justice" became one of the first works of Western writers in which an attempt was made to comprehend Stalinism. On May 3, 1935, he met with, which was recorded in E. S. Bulgakova's diary.
Soon Saint-Exupery became the owner of his own aircraft C.630 "Simun" and on December 29, 1935, he attempted to set a record for the Paris - Saigon flight, but suffered an accident in the Libyan desert, again narrowly avoiding death. On the first of January, he and the mechanic Prevost, dying of thirst, were rescued by the Bedouins.
In August 1936, in accordance with an agreement with the newspaper Entrancian, he travels to Spain, where there is a civil war, and publishes a number of reports in the newspaper.
In January 1938, Exupery leaves for New York aboard the Ile de France. Here he turns to work on the book "The Planet of People". On February 15, he begins the flight New York - Tierra del Fuego, but suffers a serious accident in Guatemala, after which he restores health for a long time, first in New York, and then in France.
On September 4, 1939, the day after France declared war on Germany, Saint-Exupéry is at the place of mobilization at the Toulouse-Montodran military airfield and on November 3 he is transferred to the 2/33 long-range reconnaissance air unit, which is based in Orconte (Champagne province). This was his response to the persuasion of friends to abandon the risky career of a military pilot. Many have tried to convince Saint-Exupery that he will bring much more benefit to the country as a writer and journalist, that pilots can be trained in thousands and he should not risk his life. But Saint-Exupery achieved an appointment to the combat unit. In one of his letters in November 1939, he writes: “I am obliged to participate in this war. Everything I love is at stake. In Provence, when the forest is on fire, everyone who cares grabs buckets and shovels. I want to fight, I am forced to do this by love and my inner religion. I cannot stand aside and calmly look at it ".
Saint-Exupéry made several sorties on the Block-174 aircraft, performing aerial photo reconnaissance missions, and was nominated for the Croix de Guerre award. In June 1941, after the defeat of France, he moved to his sister in an unoccupied part of the country, and later left for the United States. He lived in New York, where, among other things, he wrote his most famous book, The Little Prince (1942, publ. 1943). In 1943 he joined the Fighting France Air Force and with great difficulty achieved his enlistment in the combat unit. He had to master piloting the new high-speed Lightning P-38 aircraft.
“I have a funny craft for my age. The next person behind me is six years younger than me. But, of course, my current life - breakfast at six in the morning, a dining room, a tent or a room whitewashed with lime, flights at an altitude of ten thousand meters in a world forbidden for a person - I prefer the unbearable Algerian idleness ... ... I chose work for maximum wear and, as needed always squeeze myself to the end, I will no longer back down. I only wish that this heinous war would end before I melt like a candle in a stream of oxygen. I have something to do after it. "(from a letter to Jean Pelissier, July 9-10, 1944).
On July 31, 1944, Saint-Exupery departed from Borgo airfield on the island of Corsica on a reconnaissance flight and did not return.
For a long time nothing was known about his death. And only in 1998, in the sea near Marseille, a fisherman discovered the bracelet.
It bore several inscriptions: “Antoine”, “Consuelo” (that was the name of the pilot’s wife) and “c / o Reynal & Hitchcock, 386, 4th Ave. NYC USA ". This was the address of the publisher that published Saint-Exupery's books. In May 2000, diver Luc Vanrell announced that he had discovered the wreckage of an aircraft, possibly belonging to Saint-Exupery, at a depth of 70 meters. The remains of the aircraft were scattered over a strip a kilometer long and 400 meters wide. Almost immediately, the French government banned all searches in the area. The permit was obtained only in the fall of 2003. The specialists raised the fragments of the plane. One of them turned out to be part of the cockpit, the serial number of the aircraft was preserved: 2734-L. According to the American military archives, scientists have compared all the numbers of the aircraft that disappeared during this period. So, it turned out that the side serial number 2734-L corresponds to the aircraft, which was listed in the US Air Force under the number 42-68223, that is, the Lockheed P-38 Lightning aircraft, modification of the F-5B-1-LO (long-range photo reconnaissance aircraft), ruled by Exupery.
Luftwaffe journals do not contain records of aircraft shot down in this area on July 31, 1944, and the wreckage itself has no obvious traces of shelling. This gave rise to many versions of the crash, including versions of a technical malfunction and a pilot's suicide.
According to press releases in March 2008, German Luftwaffe veteran Horst Rippert, 86, pilot of Jagdgroup 200 Squadron, claimed that he was the one who shot down Antoine de Saint-Exupery's plane on his Messerschmitt Me-109 fighter. According to his statements, he did not know who was at the helm of the enemy plane: "I did not see the pilot, only later I learned that it was Saint-Exupery."
That Saint-Exupéry was the pilot of the downed plane, the Germans learned in those days from the radio interception of the negotiations of the French airfields, which were carried out by German troops. The absence of relevant entries in the Luftwaffe journals is due to the fact that, besides Horst Rippert, there were no other witnesses of the air battle, and this plane was not officially credited to him as downed.
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Biography
Childhood, adolescence, youth
Antoine de Saint-Exupery was born in the French city of Lyon, descended from an old provincial noble family, and was the third of five children of the Viscount Jean de Saint-Exupery and his wife Marie de Foncolombe. At the age of four, he lost his father. Little Antoine was raised by his mother.
In 1912, Saint-Exupery first took to the air in an airplane at the Amberier airfield. The car was driven by the famous pilot Gabriel Wroblewski.
Exupery entered the School of Brothers - Christians of Saint Bartholomew in Lyon (1908), then with his brother Francois studied at the Jesuit College Saint-Croix in Mans - until 1914, after which they continued their studies in Friborg (Switzerland) at the Marist College, preparing for admission to the Ecole Naval (took a preparatory course at the Naval Lyceum of Saint-Louis in Paris), but did not pass the competition. In 1919 he enrolled as a volunteer at the Academy of Fine Arts in the department of architecture.
Pilot and writer
The turning point in his life was 1921 - then he was drafted into the army of France. Interrupting the grace period he received upon admission to a higher educational institution, Antoine enrolled in the 2nd Fighter Regiment in Strasbourg. First, he is assigned to the work team at the repair shops, but soon he manages to pass the exam for a civilian pilot. He was transferred to Morocco, where he received the rights of a military pilot, and then sent to Istria for improvement. In 1922, Antoine completed courses for reserve officers in Avora and became a junior lieutenant. In October, he is assigned to the 34th Aviation Regiment at Bourget near Paris. In January 1923, the first plane crash happened to him, he received a head injury. In March he is commissioned. Exupery moved to Paris, where he devoted himself to writing. However, at first he was not successful in this field and was forced to take on any job: he sold cars, was a salesman in a bookstore.
Only in 1926 did Exupery find his calling - he became a pilot of the Aeropostal company, which delivered mail to the northern coast of Africa. In the spring, he begins to work on the transport of mail on the Toulouse - Casablanca line, then Casablanca - Dakar. On October 19, 1926, he was appointed head of the Cap Jubi intermediate station (Villa Bens), on the very edge of the Sahara.
Here he writes his first work - "Southern Postal".
In March 1929 Saint-Exupery returned to France, where he entered the higher aviation courses of the navy in Brest. Soon, Gallimard's publishing house published the novel Southern Postal, and Exupery left for South America as the technical director of Aeropost - Argentina, a subsidiary of Aeropostal. In 1930, Saint-Exupéry was awarded the Legion of Honor Order of the Legion of Honor for his contribution to the development of civil aviation. In June, he personally participated in the search for his friend, the pilot Guillaume, who had an accident while flying over the Andes. In the same year, Saint-Exupery wrote "Night Flight" and met his future wife Consuelo.
Pilot and Correspondent
In 1931 Saint-Exupery returned to France and received three months' leave. In April, he married Consuelo Sunxin, but the couple usually lived separately. On March 13, 1931, Aeropostal was declared bankrupt. Saint-Exupéry returned to work as a pilot on the France-South America mail line, serving the Casablanca-Port-Etienne-Dakar section. In October 1931, Night Flight was published, and the writer was awarded the Femina literary prize. He again takes a vacation and moves to Paris.
In February 1932, Exupery rejoins the Latecoer airline and flies as a co-pilot on a seaplane serving the Marseille-Algeria line. Didier Dora, a former Aeropostal pilot, soon hired him as a test pilot, and Saint-Exupéry nearly died while testing a new seaplane in Saint-Raphael Bay. The seaplane capsized, and he barely managed to get out of the cockpit of the sinking car.
In 1934, Exupery joined Air France (formerly Aeropostal) as a company representative on trips to Africa, Indochina and other countries.
In April 1935, as a correspondent for the Paris-Soir newspaper, Saint-Exupery visited the USSR and described this visit in five essays. The essay "Crime and Punishment in the Face of Soviet Justice" became one of the first works of Western writers in which an attempt was made to comprehend the essence of Stalinism.
Soon Saint-Exupery became the owner of his own aircraft C.630 "Simun" and on December 29, 1935, he attempted to set a record for the Paris - Saigon flight, but suffered an accident in the Libyan desert, again narrowly avoiding death. On the first of January, he and the mechanic Prevost, dying of thirst, were rescued by the Bedouins.
In August 1936, in accordance with an agreement with the newspaper Entrancian, he travels to Spain, where there is a civil war, and publishes a number of reports in the newspaper.
In January 1938, Exupery leaves for New York aboard the Ile de France. Here he turns to work on the book "The Planet of People". On February 15, he begins the flight New York - Tierra del Fuego, but suffers a serious accident in Guatemala, after which he restores health for a long time, first in New York, and then in France.
War
On September 4, 1939, the day after France declared war on Germany, Saint-Exupéry is at the place of mobilization at the Toulouse-Montodran military airfield and on November 3 he is transferred to the 2/33 long-range reconnaissance air unit, which is based in Orconte (Champagne province). This was his response to the persuasion of friends to abandon the risky career of a military pilot. Many tried to convince Exupery that he would bring much more benefit to the country as a writer and journalist, that pilots can be trained in thousands and he should not risk his life. But Saint-Exupery achieved an appointment to the combat unit. In one of his letters in November 1939, he writes: “I am obliged to participate in this war. Everything I love is at stake. In Provence, when the forest is on fire, everyone who is not a bastard grabs buckets and shovels. I want to fight, I am forced to do this by love and my inner religion. I cannot stand aside. "
Saint-Exupery made several sorties on the Block-174 aircraft, performing aerial reconnaissance missions, and was nominated for the Croix de Guerre award. In June 1941, after the defeat of France, he moved to his sister in an unoccupied part of the country, and later left for the United States. He lived in New York, where, among other things, he wrote his most famous book, The Little Prince (1942, publ. 1943). In 1943, he returned to the French Air Force and, with great difficulty, secured his enlistment in the combat unit. He had to master piloting the new high-speed Lightning P-38 aircraft.
“I have a funny craft for my age. The next person behind me is six years younger than me. But, of course, my current life - breakfast at six in the morning, a dining room, a tent or a room whitewashed with lime, flights at an altitude of ten thousand meters in a world forbidden for a person - I prefer the unbearable Algerian idleness ... ... I chose work for maximum wear and, as needed always squeeze myself to the end, I will no longer back down. I only wish that this heinous war would end before I melt like a candle in a stream of oxygen. I have something to do after it ”(from a letter to Jean Pelissier, July 9-10, 1944).
On July 31, 1944, Saint-Exupery departed from Borgo airfield on the island of Corsica on a reconnaissance flight and did not return.
Circumstances of death
For a long time nothing was known about his death. And only in 1998, in the sea near Marseille, a fisherman discovered the bracelet.
It bore several inscriptions: “Antoine”, “Consuelo” (that was the name of the pilot’s wife) and “c / o Reynal & Hitchcock, 386, 4th Ave. NYC USA ". This was the address of the publisher that published Saint-Exupery's books. In May 2000, diver Luc Vanrell announced that he had discovered the wreckage of an aircraft, possibly belonging to Saint-Exupery, at a depth of 70 meters. The remains of the aircraft were scattered over a strip a kilometer long and 400 meters wide. Almost immediately, the French government banned all searches in the area. The permit was obtained only in the fall of 2003. The specialists raised the fragments of the plane. One of them turned out to be part of the cockpit, the serial number of the aircraft was preserved: 2734-L. According to the American military archives, scientists have compared all the numbers of the aircraft that disappeared during this period. So, it turned out that the side serial number 2734-L corresponds to the aircraft, which was listed in the US Air Force under the number 42-68223, that is, the Lockheed P-38 Lightning aircraft, modification of the F-4 (long-range photo reconnaissance aircraft), which was flown by Exupery.
Luftwaffe journals do not contain records of aircraft shot down in this area on July 31, 1944, and the wreckage itself has no obvious traces of shelling. This gave rise to many versions of the crash, including versions of technical malfunction and pilot suicide.
According to press releases in March 2008, German Luftwaffe veteran Horst Rippert, 88, claimed to be the one who shot down Antoine Saint-Exupery's plane. According to his statements, he did not know who was at the helm of the enemy plane:
I did not see the pilot, only later I learned that it was Saint-Exupery
These data were obtained on the same days from the radio interception of the negotiations of the French airfields, which were carried out by the German troops.
Bibliography
Major works
* Courrier Sud. Editions Gallimard, 1929. English: Southern Mail. Southern post office. (Option: "Mail - to the South"). Novel. Translations into Russian: Baranovich M. (1960), Isaeva T. (1963), Kuzmin D. (2000)
* Vol de nuit. Roman. Gallimard, 1931. Preface d'Andre Gide. English: Night Flight. Night flight. Novel. Awards: December 1931, Femina Prize. Translations into Russian: Waxmacher M. (1962)
* Terre des hommes. Roman. Editions Gallimard, Paris, 1938. English: Wind, Sand, and Stars. The planet of people. (Option: The Land of People.) Novel. Awards: 1939 Grand Prize of the French Academy (05/25/1939). 1940 Nation Book award USA. Translations into Russian: Welle G. "The Land of People" (1957), Nora Gal "The Planet of People" (1963)
* Pilote de guerre. Recit. Editions Gallimard, 1942. English: Flight to Arras. Reynal & Hitchcock, New York, 1942. Military pilot. The story. Translations into Russian: A. Teterevnikova (1963)
* Lettre a un otage. Essai. Editions Gallimard, 1943. English: Letter to a Hostage. A letter to the hostage. Essay. Translations into Russian: Baranovich M. (1960), Grachev R. (1963), Nora Gal (1972)
* The little prince (fr. Le petit prince, eng. The little prince) (1943). Translated by Nora Gal (1958)
* Citadelle. Editions Gallimard, 1948. English: The Wisdom of the Sands. Citadel. Translations into Russian: Kozhevnikova M. (1996)
Post-war publications
* Lettres de jeunesse. Editions Gallimard, 1953. Preface de Renee de Saussine. Letters of youth.
* Carnets. Editions Gallimard, 1953. Notebooks.
* Lettres a sa mere. Editions Gallimard, 1954. Prologue de Madame de Saint-Exupery. Letters to the mother.
* Un sens a la vie. Editions 1956. Textes inedits recueillis et presentes par Claude Reynal. Give meaning to life. Unpublished Texts Collected by Claude Raynal.
* Ecrits de guerre. Preface de Raymond Aron. Editions Gallimard, 1982. War Notes. 1939-1944
* Memories of some books. Essay. Translations into Russian: E.V. Baevskaya
Small works
* Who are you, soldier? Translations into Russian: Ginzburg Yu.A.
* Pilot (first story, published on April 1, 1926 in the magazine "Silver Ship").
* Morality of necessity. Translations into Russian: Tsyvyan L.M.
* It is necessary to give meaning to human life. Translations into Russian: Ginzburg Yu.A.
* Appeal to the Americans. Translations into Russian: Tsyvyan L.M.
* Pan-Germanism and its propaganda. Translations into Russian: Tsyvyan L.M.
* Pilot and elements. Translations into Russian: Grachev R.
* Message to the American. Translations into Russian: Tsyvyan L.M.
* A message to young Americans. Translations into Russian: E.V. Baevskaya
* Preface to Anne Morrow-Lindbergh's The Wind Rises. Translations into Russian: Ginzburg Yu.A.
* Preface to the issue of the "Document" magazine dedicated to test pilots. Translations into Russian: Ginzburg Yu.A.
* Crime and Punishment. Article. Translations into Russian: Kuzmin D.
* In the middle of the night, the voices of enemies echo from the trenches. Translations into Russian: Ginzburg Yu.A.
* Citadel themes. Translations into Russian: E.V. Baevskaya
* France first of all. Translations into Russian: E.V. Baevskaya
Letters
* Letters to Rene de Saussin (1923-1930)
* Mother's letters:
* Letters to his wife, Consuelo:
* Letters from H. (Mrs. N): [text]
* Letters to Leon Werth
* Letters to Lewis Galantier
* Letters by J. Pelissier.
* Letters to General Shamb
* Letters to Yvonne de Letrange
* Letters to Mrs. François de Rose Translations into Russian: Tsyvyan L.M.
* Letters to Pierre Dallos
miscellanea
* Entry in the Book of Honor of the squadron 1940
* Entry in the Book of Honor of the air group 2/33 1942
* Letter to one of the opponents 1942
* Letter to an unknown correspondent 1944, June 6
* Telegram to Curtis Hitchcock 1944, 15 July
* A bet between Saint-Ax and his friend Colonel Max Jelly.
Literary awards
* 1930 - Femina Prize - for the novel "Night Flight";
* 1939 - Grand Prix du Roman of the French Academy - "Wind, sand and stars";
* 1939 - US National Book Award - Wind, Sand and Stars.
Military awards
* In 1939 he was awarded the Military Cross of the French Republic.
Names after
* Lyon Saint-Exupery Airport;
* Asteroid 2578 Saint-Exupery, discovered by astronomer Tatyana Smirnova (discovered on November 2, 1975 under the number "B612");
* Mountain peak in Patagonia Aguja Saint Exupery
* In 2003, the moon of the asteroid "45 Eugenia" was named after the Little Prince.
Interesting Facts
* Saint-Exupéry suffered 15 accidents throughout his pilot's career.
* During a business trip to the USSR, he flew on board the ANT-20 "Maxim Gorky".
* Saint-Exupery was fluent in the art of card trick.
* Became the author of several inventions in the field of aviation, for which he received patents.
* Sergei Lukyanenko's "Sky Seekers" dilogy features the character Antoine Lyonsky, who combines the profession of a pilot with literary experiences.
* Codron C.630 Simon (registration number 7042, onboard - F-ANRY) had an accident on the flight Paris - Saigon. This episode became one of the storylines of the book "Planet of People".
Literature
* Grigoriev V.P. Antoine Saint-Exupery: Biography of the writer. - L .: Education, 1973.
* Nora Gal. Under the star of Saint Ax.
* Grachev R. Antoine de Saint-Exupery. - In the book: Writers of France. Ed. E.G. Etkinda. - M., Education, 1964 .-- p. 661-667.
* Grachev R. About the first book of the writer-pilot. - "Neva", 1963, No. 9.
* Gubman B. Little Prince over the citadel of the spirit. - In the book: Saint-Exupery A. de. Works: In 2 volumes - Per. with fr. - M .: "Consent", 1994. - T.2, p. 542.
* Consuelo de Saint-Exupery. Memories of a Rose. - M .: "CoLibri"
* Marcel Mizho. Saint-Exupery (translated from French). Series "ZhZL". - M .: "Young Guard", 1965.
* Stacy Schiff. Saint-Exupery: A Biography. Pimlico, 1994.
* Stacy Schiff. Saint-Exupery. Biography (translated from English) - M .: "Eksmo", 2003.
* Yatsenko N.I.My Saint-Exupery: Notes of a bibliophile. - Ulyanovsk: Simb. book., 1995. - 184 p .: ill.
* Bell M. Gabrielle Roy and Antoine de Saint-Exupery: Terre Des Hommes - Self and Non-Self.
* Capestany E.J. The Dialectic of the Little Prince.
* Higgins J.E. The Little Prince: A Reverie of Substance.
* Les critiques de notre temps et Saint-Exupery. Paris, 1971.
* Nguyen-Van-Huy P. Le Compagnon du Petit Prince: Cahier d'Exercices sur le Texte de Saint-Exupery.
* Nguyen-Van-Huy P. Le Devenir et la Conscience Cosmique chez Saint-Exupery.
* Van Den Berghe C.L. La Pensee de Saint-Exupery.
Notes (edit)
1. Antoine de Saint-Exupery, collected works in 3 volumes. Publishing house "Polaris", 1997. Volume 3, p. 95
2. Antoine de Saint-Exupery
3. Antoine de Saint-Exupery, collected works in 3 volumes. Publishing house "Polaris", 1997 Volume 3, p. 249
4. 1 2 The Saint-Exupery plane was shot down by a German pilot, news on vesti.ru. March 15, 2008
5. A simple solution to a long-standing mystery.
Biography
His service as a pilot of a reconnaissance plane was a constant challenge to common sense: Saint-Exupéry hardly squeezed his heavy body, broken in numerous disasters into the cramped cabin, on the ground he suffered from the 40-degree Algerian heat, in the sky, at an altitude of ten thousand meters, - from pain in poorly fused bones. He was too old for military aviation, attention and reaction let him down - Saint-Exupery crippled expensive planes, miraculously remained alive, but with manic stubbornness he again rose into the sky. It ended as it should have ended: in the French aviation units, an order for the feat and rewarding of Major de Saint-Exupery, who disappeared without a trace, will be read out.
The world has lost an amazingly bright person. Long-range reconnaissance pilots recalled that in the spring and summer of 1944 Saint-Exupery seemed "lost on this planet" - he still knew how to make others happy, but he himself was deeply unhappy. And friends said that in 1944 he needed danger, "like a pain reliever pill"; Saint-Exupery had never feared death before, but now he was looking for it.
The little prince fled from Earth to his planet: a single rose seemed to him dearer than all the riches of the Earth. Saint-Exupery also had such a planet: he constantly recalled his childhood - a lost paradise, where there was no return. The major kept asking to be given the Annessy area for patrolling and, shrouded in clouds from the explosions of anti-aircraft shells, glided over his native Lyon, over the castle of St. Maurice de Reman, which once belonged to his mother. Since then, more than one - several lives have passed, but only here he was truly happy.
Gray walls entwined with ivy, a high stone tower - in the early Middle Ages it was built from large round boulders, and rebuilt in the 18th century. Once upon a time, gentlemen de Saint-Exupery sat out here the raids of English archers, knights-robbers and their own peasants, and at the beginning of the 20th century, the fairly dilapidated castle sheltered the widowed Countess Marie de Saint-Exupery and her five children. Mother and daughters occupied the first floor, the boys settled on the third. A huge entrance hall and a mirrored living room, portraits of ancestors, knightly armor, precious tapestries, damask furniture with half-worn gilding - the old house was full of treasures, but this was not what attracted little Antoine (everyone in the family called him Tonio). Behind the house was the hayloft, beyond the hayloft a huge park, beyond the park stretched fields that still belonged to his family. A black cat gave birth in the hayloft, swallows lived in the park, rabbits tumbled in the field and tiny mice swooped about, for which he built houses from chips - animals occupied him more than anything else. He tried to tame the grasshoppers (Tonio put them in cardboard boxes, and they died), fed the swallow chicks with bread dipped in wine and sobbed over the empty mouse house - freedom turned out to be more expensive than a daily portion of crumbs. Tonio teased his brother, did not listen to the governess and yelled at the whole house when his mother spanked him with a morocco shoe. The little count loved everything that surrounded him, and everyone loved him. He disappeared in the field, went on long hikes with the forester and thought that this would go on forever.
The children were taken care of by the governess, at home parties they danced, dressed in camisoles of the 18th century; they were brought up in closed colleges - Antoine completed his education in Switzerland ...
But Madame de Saint-Exupéry knew the value of this grace: the situation of the family was desperate. Comte Jean de Saint-Exupery died when Tonio was not even four years old, he did not leave a fortune, and the estate brought less and less income. The children had to take care of their future themselves - the adult world, waiting for the ruined aristocrats outside the castle gates, was cold, indifferent and vulgar.
Until the age of 16, the young count lived completely carefree - Tonio brought animals home, fiddled with models of motors, teased his brother and harassed the sisters' teacher. The mice were running away all the time - and he brought a white rat to the castle; the animal turned out to be surprisingly affectionate, but one nasty day, a gardener who could not tolerate rodents dealt with it. Then Edison woke up in him, and he began to collect mechanisms. The telephone from cans and cans worked perfectly, and the steam engine exploded right in his hands - he lost consciousness from horror and pain. Then Tonio became addicted to hypnosis and terrorized the sweet-loving Bonnu - stumbling upon the commanding gaze of a terrible child, the unhappy old maid froze over a box of chocolate-covered cherries, like a rabbit in front of a boa constrictor. Antoine was mischievous and charming - okay, strong, with a light blond curly head and a cute upturned nose ...
Childhood ended when his beloved brother François died of a fever. He bequeathed a bicycle and a gun to Antoine, received communion and departed into another world - Saint-Exupery will forever remember his calm and stern face. Tonio is already seventeen - he has military service ahead, and then he has to think about a career. Childhood ended - and with it the old golden-haired Tonio disappeared. Antoine stretched out and looked ugly: his hair straightened, his eyes widened, his eyebrows blackened - now he looked like an owlet. An awkward, shy, beggar, not adapted to an independent life, full of love and faith, entered the big world - and the world immediately filled him with bumps.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery was drafted into the army. He chose aviation and went to serve in Strasbourg. His mother gave him money for an apartment: one hundred and twenty francs a month (for Madame de Saint-Exupery it was a very large sum!), And the son had a place to live. Antoine took a bath, drank coffee, and called home on his own phone. Now he had time for leisure, and he could not help but fall in love.
Madame de Vilmorin was a real socialite - a young widow with connections, fortune and great ambitions. Her daughter Louise was famous for her intelligence, education and gentle beauty. True, she was not in good health and spent about a year in bed, but this only added to her charm. Louise, drowning in pillows, received guests in the thinnest peignoir - and the two-meter big Saint-Exupery completely lost his head. He wrote to his mother that he had met the girl of his dreams, and soon made an offer.
Such a party would have been ideal for an impoverished aristocrat, but Madame de Vilmorin did not like the future son-in-law. The young man has neither a fortune nor a profession, but there are more than enough oddities - and her daughter is seriously going to do this stupidity! Madame Vilmorin did not know her child well: Louise, of course, liked the role of the count's bride, but she was in no hurry to get married. It all ended when Saint-Exupery, who had undertaken to test the new plane without the knowledge of his superiors, crashed to the ground a few minutes after takeoff. He was in the hospital for several months, and during this time Louise got tired of waiting, she had new fans; the girl thought and decided that her mother was probably right.
Saint-Exupery will remember her all her life. Years passed, but he kept writing to Louise that he still remembered her, that he still needed her ... Louise had already lived in Las Vegas: her husband, who was engaged in trade, took her there. For months he disappeared about his business, dust storms raged in the town every now and then, and when Louise left the house, the cowboys dismounted and whistled after. Her life was not a success, and Antoine, by this time already a well-known writer, was tormented by requests for autographs ... It seemed to Louise a strange misunderstanding: her ex-fiancé seemed to her the biggest loser of all whom she knew.
The army service came to an end, and Saint-Exupery went to Paris. The years that followed have become a continuous chain of failures, disappointments and humiliations. He miserably failed the exam at the Maritime Academy and, according to the rules established in France, lost the right to higher education. Pointless and fruitless pursuits of architecture, living at the expense of his mother (this time she rented him a very bad apartment - the family's money was running out), dinners with friends, breakfasts in cheap cafes and dinners at social events, depressingly monotonous Colettes and Paulettes - soon Antoine got tired and from them, and from myself. He lived like a bird of heaven: settling with high society acquaintances, the count could fall asleep in the bathtub, flood the lower floor and, waking up from the fierce cry of the hostess, ask her with a touching reproach: "Why are you treating me so awful?" Antoine joined the office of the tile factory and, falling asleep in the middle of the working day, frightened his colleagues with a shout: "Mom!" Finally, the director's cup of patience ran out, and the descendant of the Knight of the Holy Grail, whose family included the governor of the royal court, archbishops and generals, became a traveling salesman. Both past and present work inspired him with deep disgust; money still came from home, and he spent it on private lessons, which he took from the professors of the Sorbonne.
And then his mother wrote to Antoine that she would have to sell the castle ... And the dear Parisian fool, who considered himself a complete failure, set out on the path that led him to fame.
Didier Dora, director of Lacoeter, recalled how "a tall fellow with a pleasant voice and focused gaze" entered his office, "an insulted and disappointed dreamer" who decided to become a pilot. Dora sent the Comte de Saint-Exupery to the mechanics, where he began to tinker with the motors with pleasure, getting his hands dirty with grease: for the first time since the castle of Saint-Maurice de Reman, he felt truly happy.
A prayer bench, covered with shabby red velvet, a jug of hot water, a soft bed, his favorite green chair, which he dragged with him everywhere, looking for his mother around the castle, an old park - all this he dreamed in Paris, and at the Cap Jubi airport, squeezed the sands of the Arabian Desert, somehow forgotten. He slept on a door laid on two empty boxes, wrote and ate on an inverted barrel, read by the light of a kerosene lamp and lived in harmony with himself - for his inner balance he needed a feeling of constant danger and the opportunity to accomplish a feat. Didier Dora was a wise man: he knew that he had better pilots than Exupery, but none of them could lead other people. With Antoine, all kinds of people felt at ease and free: he was interested in everything, and for each he found his own key. Dora made him the governor of the airport in Cap Jubi, and a submission to the Legion of Honor, written a few years later, said about Saint-Exupery: He repeatedly flew over the most dangerous areas, looking for pilots Rene and Serra taken prisoner by hostile tribes. Rescued the wounded crew of a Spanish plane, which almost fell into the hands of the Moors.
When Saint-Exupery left for Africa, he had a single published story under his belt. In the desert, he began to write: his first novel, Southern Postal, brought him fame. He returned to France as a famous writer - an agreement was signed with him for seven books at once, he had money. He left aviation after his friend and boss Didier Dora lost his job. By this time, Antoine de Saint-Exupery was a married man ...
They met in Buenos Aires, where Saint-Exupéry was promoted to the technical director of Aeroposta Argentina. Consuelo Gomez Carrilo was tiny, frantic, impetuous and fickle - she managed to be married twice (her second husband committed suicide), loved to lie and adored France. At the end of her life, she herself got confused in the versions of her own biography: there are four versions describing their first kiss.
From the Buenos Aires airfield, a plane takes off and makes a circle over the city: Saint-Exupery comes off the wheel, leans over to Consuelo and asks him to kiss. In response, the passenger says that: a) she is a widow, b) in her country they kiss only those they love, c) some flowers, if you approach them too abruptly, immediately close, d) she never kissed anyone against her will ... Saint-Exupery threatened to dive into the river, and she kissed him on the cheek - a few months later Consuelo received an eight-page letter, ending with the words: "With your permission, your spouse."
Then she flew to him in Paris. They got married, and soon Antoine was transferred to Casablanca - now he was truly happy. Consuelo was a complete mythomaniac and lied as naturally as she breathed, but she could see a boa constrictor in her hat swallowing an elephant ... She was charmingly restless and, according to Saint-Exupery's friends, “in conversation she jumped from topic to topic, like a goat ". The essence of this nimble, slightly insane girl was frivolity and inconstancy, but she had to be patronized and protected. Saint-Exupery felt in his element: in the castle of Saint-Maurice de Rement he tamed rabbits, in the desert - foxes, gazelles and cougars, now he had to test his gift on this half-wild, unfaithful, adorable creature.
He was sure that he would succeed: Saint-Exupery tamed everyone who surrounded him. He was adored by children - he made funny paper helicopters for them and soap bubbles with glycerin bouncing off the ground. He was loved by adults, he was famous as a talented hypnotist and virtuoso card magician; they said that he owed the latter his unusually dexterous hands, but the answer lay elsewhere. Antoine instantly understood who was in front of him: a curmudgeon, a prude or a careless good man - and immediately felt which card he would guess. He was never wrong, his judgments about people were absolutely correct - from Saint-Exupery's side he seemed a real magician.
He was unusually kind: when he had money, he lent right and left, when they ran out - he lived at the expense of friends. Saint-Exupery could easily visit friends at half past three in the morning, call family people at five in the morning and start reading the chapter he had just written. Everyone forgave him, because he himself would have given his friend the last shirt. Having matured, he became unusually attractive: wonderful eyes, a figure that seemed to have descended from ancient Egyptian frescoes: broad shoulders and narrow hips formed an almost perfect triangle ... A man like him could make any woman happy - except Consuela Gomez Carrilo.
The poor thing could not be happy at all: she constantly craved new adventures and slowly went crazy. This even more tied Saint-Exupery to her: behind the outbursts of unreasonable anger, he saw hidden tenderness, behind betrayal - weakness, behind insanity - a vulnerable soul. The rose from "The Little Prince" was copied from Consuelo - the portrait turned out to be accurate, albeit highly idealized.
At first, the sight of this couple delighted the soul: when Monsieur and Madame de Saint-Exupery left Casablanca, the local society seemed to be orphaned. And Consuelo came home more and more later: she made her own friends, and she became a regular at nightclubs and art cafes. She became more and more strange: the Countess de Saint-Exupéry could come to the reception in a ski suit and mountain boots. At one of the cocktails, she ducked under the table and spent the whole evening there - from time to time only her hand with an empty glass was shown into the light of day.
All Paris was gossiping about the scandals that were playing out in the house of Saint-Exupery: Antoine did not tell anyone about his personal problems, but Consuelo reported them to everyone he met. The famous plane crash of 1935, when Saint-Exupery crashed into the sand of the Libyan desert during a flight from Paris to Saigon at a speed of 270 kilometers, was also the result of domestic squabbles: instead of getting enough sleep before taking off, he searched the bars for Consuelo midnight. Saint-Exupery lost his route, fell two hundred kilometers from Cairo, met the New Year among the hot sands, striding forward - under the scorching sun, without water or food. He was saved by a random Arab caravan. In Paris, enthusiastic newspapermen and an eternally disgruntled wife were waiting for the conqueror of the desert.
By the beginning of World War II, Antoine was already a broken man: he was exhausted by his personal life. He sought solace from other women. But he could not leave Consuelo - he loved her, and love is always akin to madness. He could only go to war: in 1940 Saint-Exupery piloted a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft "Bloch" and again enjoys the speed, freedom and clouds of explosions of anti-aircraft shells around his plane.
The front is broken, German tanks are rushing to Paris, the roads are clogged with crowds of distraught refugees. Saint-Exupery drives the old "Farman" to Algeria, in which, by some miracle, all the pilots of his squadron fit. From Africa, he returns to Paris, and then emigrates: Antoine cannot live in an occupied country. But even in New York, he has no peace - he writes very similar to the "last sorry" "Little Prince", does not learn English and yearns for Consuelo. The wife arrives - and hell returns: friends tell how at one of the parties she threw plates at his head for a full hour. Saint-Exupery caught the dishes with a polite smile, never stopping to speak - he was an excellent storyteller.
Consuelo complained to everyone and everyone about his impotence: why should she pay for her husband's constant accidents and his passion for heights ?! But other women were not embarrassed by this: Saint-Exupery began an affair with a young actress Natalie Pali, artist Hedda Sterni, who fled to America from Romania; young Sylvia Reinhardt was ready to devote her life to him. And although he did not know a word of English, and Sylvia did not speak French, they still felt good together: she gave him warmth and peace, he read his manuscripts to her, and what she accused Consuelo's husband of, the girl did not care at all ... Saint-Exupery spent all the evenings with Sylvia, and at night he returned home and was worried when he did not find Consuelo there - he could not live with her, but he was not able to do without her either.
He went to war in the same way as the Little Prince on a trip to other planets, clearly aware that there was no turning back. The military authorities, who did everything to prevent Saint-Exupery from sitting at the helm of the reconnaissance aircraft, also understood this - in aviation, his legendary absent-mindedness became the talk of the town. Even in his youth, he flew not by calculation, but by instinct, he forgot to slam the door, remove the landing gear, plug in an empty gas tank and sit on the wrong tracks. But then he was rescued by an exceptional inner instinct, which helped to save himself even in the most hopeless situations, and now he was not young, unhappy and very unwell - every trifle turned into torment for him.
The squadron pilots loved Saint-Exupery as much as anyone who came across him. They shook over him like a nanny over a child, an alarmed escort constantly accompanied him to the plane. They put on a jumpsuit, but he does not tear himself away from the detective, they say something to him, and he, still without letting go of the book, climbs into the plane, slams the cockpit door ... And the pilots pray that he put it down even in the air.
Overweight, groaning in a dream, with crookedly hanging the Order of the Legion of Honor and the Military Cross, in a shapeless cap - everyone who was around wanted to save him, but Saint-Exupery was torn too much into the air.
He demanded that all flights to the Annessy area, where he spent his childhood, remain with him. But none of them went well, and Major de Saint-Exupéry's last flight ended there. The first time, he barely escaped the fighters, the second - he handed over the oxygen device and he had to descend to a height dangerous for an unarmed reconnaissance officer, the third - one of the motors failed. Before the fourth flight, the fortuneteller predicted that he would die in sea water, and Saint-Exupery, laughingly telling his friends about this, remarked that she most likely took him for a sailor.
The pilot of the Messerschmitt patrolling the area reported that he had shot an unarmed Lightning P-38 (exactly the same one at Saint-Exupery) - the knocked-out plane turned away, smoked and crashed into the sea. The Luftwaffe did not count his victory: there were no witnesses to the battle, and the wreckage of the downed plane was not found. And the beautiful legend about the writer-pilot who disappeared in the sky of France, the man whom the Arabs called the Captain of the Birds, continued to live: he disappeared, dissolved in the Mediterranean blue, went to meet the stars - just like his Little Prince ...
Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Prayer.
Lord, I am asking not for miracles and not for mirages, but for the power of every day. Teach me the art of small steps.
Make me observant and resourceful so that, in the diversity of everyday life, in time to dwell on discoveries and experiences that excited me.
Teach me how to properly manage the time of my life. Give me a subtle flair to distinguish the primary from the secondary.
I ask for the power of abstinence and measure, so that I do not flutter and slip through life, but reasonably plan the course of the day, I could see the peaks and the distance, and at least sometimes I would find time to enjoy art.
Help me understand that dreams cannot be help. No dreams of the past, no dreams of the future. Help me to be here and now and take this moment as the most important.
Save me from the naive belief that everything in life should be smooth. Give me a clear awareness that difficulties, failures, falls and failures are only a natural part of life, thanks to which we grow and mature.
Remind me that the heart often argues with the reason.
Send me at the right moment someone who has the courage to tell me the truth, but to tell me in love!
I know that many problems can be solved if nothing is done, so teach me patience.
You know how much we need friendship. Let me be worthy of this most beautiful and tender Gift of Destiny.
Give me a rich imagination, so that at the right moment, at the right time, in the right place, silently or speaking, to give someone the necessary warmth.
Make me a man who knows how to reach out to those who are completely "below".
Save me from the fear of missing out on something in my life.
Give me not what I wish for myself, but what I really need.
Teach me the art of small steps.
Biography
André Maurois
Introduction
Aviator, civilian and military pilot, essayist and poet, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, following Vigny, Stendhal, Vovenargue, together with Malraux, Jules Roy, as well as several soldiers and sailors, is one of the few novelists and philosophers of action that our country has spawned ... Unlike Kipling, he did not just admire people of action: he, like Konrad, himself participated in the actions that he described. For ten years, he flew over the Rio de Oro, over the Andean Cordilleras; he was lost in the desert and was saved by the lords of the sands; once he fell into the Mediterranean Sea, and another time - on the mountain ranges of Guatemala; he fought in the air in 1940 and fought again in 1944. The conquerors of the South Atlantic - Mermoz and Guillaume - were his friends. Hence the certainty that sounds in each of his words, from here comes the life stoicism, for the deed reveals the best qualities of a person.
However, Luc Estan, who wrote the excellent book Saint-Exupery about himself, is right in saying that the act was never an end in itself for Saint-Exupery. “The plane is not a goal, only a means. You're not risking your life for the plane. It is not for the sake of the plow that the peasant plows. " And Luc Estan adds: “He plows not just to make furrows, but to sow them. Action is to an airplane what plowing is to a plow. What crops does it promise and what kind of crop can be harvested? " I believe that the answer to this question can be as follows: the rules of life are what you sow, and the harvest is people. Why? Yes, because a person is able to comprehend only that in which he himself was directly involved. This is where the anxiety that plagued Saint-Exupery in Algeria in 1943, when he was not allowed to fly, came from. He lost contact with the ground because he was denied the sky.
Part I. Intermediate stages
Many contemporaries talked about this short but eventful life. In the beginning there was Antoine de Saint-Exupery, a "strong, cheerful, open-minded" little boy who, at the age of twelve, had already invented the airplane-bicycle and declared that he would take off into the sky amid the enthusiastic cries of the crowd "Long live Antoine de Saint-Exupery!" He studied unevenly, glimpses of genius appeared in him, but it was noticeable that this student was not created for schoolwork. In the family he is called the Sun King because of the blond hair that crowns his head; comrades nicknamed Antoine the Astrologer, because his nose is upturned to the sky. In fact, even then he was the Little Prince, haughty and absent-minded, "always joyful and fearless." All his life he kept in touch with his childhood, he always remained enthusiastic, inquisitive and successfully played the role of a magician, as if in anticipation of enthusiastic exclamations: "Long live Antoine de Saint-Exupery!" And these exclamations were heard. But only more often they said: "Saint-Ex, Antoine or Tonio", because he invariably became a part of the inner life of all those who knew him or read his books.
Never before, perhaps, has the vocation of an aviator manifested itself more clearly in a person, and never before, perhaps, has it been so difficult for a person to fulfill his vocation. The military aviation agreed to enroll him only in the reserve. Only when Saint-Exupery was twenty-seven years old, civil aviation allowed him to become a pilot and then the head of an airfield in Morocco - at a time when the country was torn apart by controversy: "The little prince is becoming an important boss." He publishes the book "Southern Postal" and introduces the sky to literature, which does not prevent him from remaining a bold and energetic pilot, and then the technical director of the Aeropostal branch in Buenos Aires - here he works side by side with Mermoz and Guillaume. He gets into numerous and serious accidents. And only by a miracle remains alive. In 1931, he marries the widow of the Spanish writer Gomez Carrillo - Consuelo, a native of South America: this woman's fantasy enthralls the Little Prince. The accidents continue; then Saint-Ex almost crashes during a monstrous fall, then after a forced landing he finds himself lost in the sands. And, tormented by an exhausting thirst in the very heart of the desert, he feels an urgent need to find the "Planet of People" again!
The year is 1939. War breaks out. And although doctors stubbornly admit that Saint-Exupéry is completely unfit to fly (a consequence of numerous fractures and concussions), he eventually achieves enrollment in the reconnaissance air group 2/33. On the days of an enemy invasion, after several battles, this group is sent to Algeria and its personnel are demobilized. At the end of the year, Saint-Ex arrives in New York, where we met. There he wrote the book "Military Pilot", which won a huge success in the United States, as well as in France, then occupied by the enemy. I am attached to him with all my heart and would gladly repeat after Leon-Paul Farg: "I loved him very much and will always mourn." How could you not love him? He possessed both strength and tenderness, intelligence and intuition. He was addicted to ritual ceremonies, he loved to surround himself with an atmosphere of mystery. Undeniable mathematical talent was combined in him with a childish craving for the game. He either took possession of the conversation, or was silent, as if mentally carried away to some other planet. I visited him on Long Island in the big house they rented from Consuelo, where he wrote The Little Prince. Saint-Exupery worked at night. After dinner, he talked, talked, showed card tricks, then, closer to midnight, when the others went to bed, he sat down at his desk. I fell asleep. At about two in the morning I was awakened by shouts on the stairs: “Consuelo! Consuelo! .. I'm hungry ... Prepare me scrambled eggs. " Consuelo descended from her room. When I finally woke up, I joined them, and Saint-Exupery spoke again, and he spoke very well. When he was full, he sat down to work again. We tried to sleep again. But the dream was short-lived, for two hours later the whole house was filled with loud shouts: “Consuelo! I'm bored. Let's play chess. " Then he read to us the pages he had just written, and Consuelo, the poet herself, would suggest cleverly invented episodes.
When General Betoire arrived in the United States for armaments, both Saint-Ex and I asked again to enlist in the French army in Africa. He left New York a few days before me, and when I got off the plane in Algeria, he was already meeting me at the airport. He looked unhappy. After all, Antoine so strongly felt the bonds that unite people, he always felt himself to some extent responsible for the fate of France, and now he found that the French are divided. The two general staffs confronted each other. He was enrolled in the command reserve and did not know if he would be allowed to fly. He was already forty-four years old, and he stubbornly and persistently sought to be allowed to fly the P-38, a fast machine designed for younger hearts. In the end, thanks to the intervention of one of Roosevelt's sons, Saint-Exupery got his consent. While waiting, he worked on a new book (or poem), which was later called "The Citadel."
Promoted to the rank of major, he managed to join his dear reconnaissance group 2/33, the "Military Pilot" group, but the chiefs, worried about his life, were reluctant to let him fly. He was promised five such flights, he snatched consent for three more. From the eighth flight over the then occupied France, he did not return. He took off at 8:30 in the morning, and by 13:30 he was still not there. Comrades in the squadron, gathered in the officers' mess, looked at their watches every minute. He now had only one hour of fuel left. At 14:30 there was no more hope. All were silent for a long time. Then the squadron commander said to one of the pilots:
"You will complete the mission assigned to Major de Saint-Exupéry."
It all ended as in Saint-Ex's novel, and one could easily imagine that when he had no more fuel and, perhaps, hope, he, like one of his heroes, rushed the plane up - to the heavenly field, thickly covered with stars.
Part II. Laws of action
The laws of the heroic world are constant, and we have the right to expect that we will find them in the works of Saint-Exupery almost the same as we knew them in the stories and stories of Kipling.
The first law of action is discipline. Discipline requires the subordinate to respect his superior; it also requires that the boss be worthy of that respect and that he, for his part, respect the laws. It's not easy, it's not easy at all to be a boss! "Oh my God, I lived mighty, lonely!" - exclaims Moses at Alfred de Vigny. Riviere, under whose command the pilots are in the "Night Flight", voluntarily withdrawn into solitude. He loves his subordinates, has a kind of gloomy tenderness for them. But how can he openly be their friend if he is obliged to be stern, demanding, ruthless? It is difficult for him to punish, moreover, he knows perfectly well that punishment is sometimes unfair, that a person could not have acted otherwise. However, only the strictest discipline protects the lives of other pilots and ensures regular service. "Rules," writes Saint-Exupery, "are like religious practices: they seem ridiculous, but they shape people." Sometimes it is necessary for one person to sacrifice himself for the salvation of many others. The boss has a terrible responsibility on his shoulders - to choose a victim, and if you have to sacrifice a friend, he does not even have the right to show his anxiety: "Love your subordinates, but do not tell them about it."
What does the boss give his people in exchange for their obedience? He gives them "directives"; to them it is like a beacon in the night of action, showing the pilot the way. Life is a storm; life is a jungle; if a person does not fight the waves, if he does not fight the dense interweaving of vines, he is lost. Constantly spurred on by the strong will of the boss, man conquers the jungle. The one who obeys, considers the severity of the one who commands him to be legitimate, if this severity plays the role of permanent and reliable armor, serves to protect his life. “These people ... love what they do, and they love it because I'm strict,” says Riviere.
What else does the boss give to the people he commands? He gives them victory, greatness, long memory in the hearts of his contemporaries. Contemplating the Inca temple erected on the mountain, which alone survived from a lost civilization, Riviere asks himself: “In the name of what harsh necessity - or strange love - the leader of the ancient peoples forced the crowds of his subjects to erect this temple on the top and thereby forced them to erect an eternal monument to ourselves? " ... To this some benevolent person, no doubt, would answer: "Wouldn't it be better not to build this temple, but on the other hand, not to make anyone suffer by building it?" However, man is a noble being, and he loves greatness more comfort, more happiness.
But now the order has been given, people begin to act, and then, according to the laws of the heroic world, friendship between comrades enters into business. The bonds of common danger, common dedication, common technical means first give birth to this friendship, and then support it. “These are the lessons that Mermoz and our other comrades have taught us. The greatness of any craft, perhaps, primarily lies in the fact that it unites people: for there is nothing in the world more precious than the bonds that unite man with man. " To work for material benefits? What self-deception! In this way, a person acquires only dust and ashes. And it cannot bring him something worth living for. “I sort through my most indelible memories, summarize the most important of my experiences - yes, of course, the most significant, the most significant were those hours that would not have brought me all the gold in the world”. The rich man has companions and hangers-on, a powerful man has courtiers, a man of action has comrades, and they are his friends.
“We were a little excited, like we were at a feast. And yet we had nothing. Only wind, sand and stars. Severe Trappist poverty. But at this dimly lit table, a handful of people, who in the whole world had nothing left but memories, were sharing invisible treasures.
Finally we met. It happens that you wander side by side with people for a long time, shutting yourself up in silence or exchanging insignificant words. But now the hour of danger has come. And then we support each other. Then it turns out that we are all members of the same brotherhood. You join the thoughts of your comrades and you become richer. We smile at each other. Thus, the prisoner released into the wild is happy with the vastness of the sea. "
Part III. Creation
Can his books be called novels? Hardly. From work to work, the element of fiction in them all diminishes. Rather, it is an essay about action, about people, about the Earth, about life. The set almost always depicts an airfield. And the point is not in the writer's desire to be known as a specialist, but in his craving for sincerity. After all, this is how the author lives and thinks. Why shouldn't he describe the world through the prism of his profession, since it is in this way that he, like any pilot, comes into contact with the world around him.
Southern Postal is Saint-Exupery's most romantic book. The pilot Jacques Bernice, the pilot of the Aeropostal company, returns to Paris and meets his childhood friend Genevieve Erlene there. Her husband is a mediocre man; her child is dying; she loves Bernice and agrees to leave with him. But almost immediately, Jacques realizes that they are not made for each other. What is he looking for in life? He is looking for a "treasure" that contains the truth, the "clue" of life. At first he hoped to find it in a woman. Failure. Later, like Claudel, he hoped to find him at Notre Dame Cathedral, where Bernice had gone because he felt too unhappy; but even this hope deceived him. Perhaps the clue lies in the craft? And Bernice stubbornly, courageously carries the mail to Dakar, flying over the Rio de Oro. Once the author finds the body of Jacques Bernice - the pilot was killed by the bullets of the Arabs. But the mail was saved. She will be delivered to Dakar on time.
"Night Flight" refers to the South American period of Saint-Exupery's life. In order for the mail received from Patagonia, from Chile, from Paraguay to arrive in Buenos Aires on time, Aeropostal pilots have to fly over endless mountain ranges at night. If a storm overtakes them there, if they go astray, they are doomed. But their boss, Riviere, knows that such a risk must be taken. Together with the Riviera, together with one of the inspectors, Robineau, together with the pilot's wife Fabienne, we monitor the progress of three planes during a thunderstorm. One of them, Fabien's plane, goes off course. The chains of the Cordilleras seem to be closing in front of him. The pilot has only half an hour of fuel left, he understands that there is no more hope. And then he ascends to the stars, where there is not a single living being except himself. Fabien, the conqueror of legendary treasures, will die. The young woman, the lamp she lit, and the dinner so lovingly prepared, will wait in vain for it. Nevertheless, Riviere, who also loved Fabien in his own way, is desperately engaged in sending mail to Europe. Rivière listens to the transatlantic plane “arise, prophesy, and melt” like the menacing tread of an army moving among the stars. Standing in front of the window, Riviere thinks:
“Victory ... defeat ... these lofty words are devoid of any meaning ... Victory weakens the people; defeat awakens new forces in him ... Only one thing should be taken into account: the movement of events.
In five minutes the radio operators will raise the airfields to their feet. All fifteen thousand kilometers will feel the beat of life; this is the solution to all problems.
The organ melody is already flying up to the sky: the plane.
Walking slowly past the secretaries who bend under his stern gaze, Riviere returns to his work. Rivier the Great, Rivier the Winner carrying the burden of his difficult victory. "
Human Planet is an excellent collection of essays, some of them in the form of a novel. A story about the first flight over the Pyrenees, about how old, experienced pilots introduce newcomers to the craft, about how during the flight there is a struggle with "the three primordial deities - the mountains, the sea and the storm." Portraits of the author's comrades: Mermoz, who disappeared into the ocean, Guillaume, who escaped in the Andes thanks to his courage and perseverance ... Essays on "The Airplane and the Planet", heavenly landscapes, oases, landing in the desert, in the very camp of the Moors, and a story about that day, when, lost in the Libyan sands, as if in a thick tar, the author himself almost died of thirst. But plots alone mean little; more important is that a person who observes the planet of people from such a height knows: "Only the Spirit, touching the clay, creates a Man out of it." Over the past twenty years, too many writers have buzzed our ears with talk of human weakness. Finally, there is a writer who tells us about his greatness. "By God, I did this," exclaims Guillaume, "that no cattle can do it!" ...
Finally, the "Military Pilot". This book was written by Saint-Exupery after a short campaign - and defeat - in 1940 ... During the German offensive in France, Captain de Saint-Exupery and the aircraft crew are ordered by their superior, Major Alias, to conduct a reconnaissance flight over Arras. It is quite possible that during this flight they will be met with death, death is useless, since they are entrusted with collecting information that they will no longer be able to convey to anyone - the roads will be hopelessly clogged, telephone communications will be interrupted, the general headquarters will move to another place. Giving the order, Major Alias himself knows that this order is meaningless. But what can we say here? It never occurs to anyone to complain. The subordinate replies: "Yes, Mr. Major ... That's right, Mr. Major ..." - and the crew is sent to carry out the task that has become useless.
The book consists of the thoughts of the pilot during the flight to Arras, and then during his return among the enemy shells rushing around and enemy fighters hanging above him. These reflections are sublime. "Yes, sir, Major ..." Why does Major Alias send his subordinates, who are at the same time his friends, to a senseless death? Why do thousands of young people agree to die in a battle that, apparently, has already been lost? Because they understand that by participating in this hopeless battle, they maintain discipline in the army and strengthen the unity of France. They know well that they will not succeed in a few minutes, having committed several heroic deeds and sacrificing several lives, to turn the defeated into winners. But they also know that defeat can be turned into a starting point on the road to rebuilding a nation. Why are they fighting? What drives them? Despair? Not at all.
“There is a truth higher than all the arguments of reason. Something penetrates us and controls us, to which I obey, but which I have not yet been able to realize. The tree has no tongue. We are the branches of a tree. There are obvious truths, although they cannot be expressed in words. I am not dying in order to delay an invasion, because there is no such fortress, hiding in which I could resist together with those whom I love. I am not dying to save honor, because I don’t think anyone’s honor has been hurt — I reject the judges. And I'm not dying of despair. And yet I know: Dutertre, who is now looking at the map, will calculate that Arras is somewhere there, at a course angle of one hundred and seventy-five degrees, and after half a minute he will tell me:
Course one hundred seventy-five, mister captain ...
And I will take this course. "
This is how the French pilot thought while awaiting death over Arras, engulfed in flames; and as long as such people have such thoughts and as long as they express them in such a sublime language, French civilization will not perish. “Yes, Monsieur Major ...” Saint-Ex and his comrades will not say anything else. “We won't say anything tomorrow either. Tomorrow, for the witnesses, we will be defeated. And the vanquished should be silent. Like grains. "
You are extremely amazed that there were critics who considered this beautiful book "defeatist." But I do not know of another book that would instill great confidence in the future of France.
“Defeat ... Victory ... (the author repeats after the Riviera). I am not good at these formulas. There are victories that fill with enthusiasm, there are others that belittle. Some defeats are fatal, others awaken to life. Life manifests itself not in states, but in actions. The only victory that I have no doubts about is the victory inherent in the power of the seed. The grain thrown into the black soil has already won the victory. But time must pass before the hour of his triumph in the ripened wheat has come. "
The French seeds will sprout. They have already sprouted since the time when "The Military Pilot" was written, and a new harvest is approaching. And France, which suffered for a long time, patiently awaiting a new spring, retains Saint-Exupery's gratitude for the fact that he never renounced her.
“Since I am inseparable from mine, I will never deny them, no matter what they do. I will never blame them in front of strangers. If I can protect them, I will protect them. If they cover me with shame, I will hold this shame in my heart and say nothing. Whatever I thought about them then, I will never testify for the prosecution ...
That is why I do not absolve myself of responsibility for defeat, which will make me feel humiliated more than once. I am inseparable from France. France brought up Renoir, Pascal, Pasteur, Guillaume, Hoschede. She also brought up dumb people, politicians and crooks. But it seems to me too convenient to proclaim my solidarity with some and deny any kinship with others.
Defeat splits. Defeat destroys the built unity. It threatens us with death; I will not contribute to such a split by dumping the responsibility for the defeat on those of my compatriots who think differently than I do. Arguments like these lead nowhere without judges. We were all defeated ... "
To admit one's own, and not just someone else's, responsibility for defeat is not defeatism; this is justice. Calling the French for a unity that will make future greatness possible is not defeatism; it is patriotism. "The Military Pilot", no doubt, will remain in the history of French literature a book as significant as "Slavery and the Greatness of the Soldier."
Of course, I will not even try to "explain" the "Little Prince". This "children's" book for adults is replete with symbols, and the symbols are beautiful because they seem both transparent and hazy at the same time. The main merit of a work of art is that it expresses on its own, regardless of abstract concepts. The cathedral does not need comments, just as the starry firmament does not need annotations. I admit that "The Little Prince" is a kind of incarnation of Tonio the child. But just as "Alice in Wonderland" was both a fairy tale for girls and a satire on Victorian society, so the poetic melancholy of "The Little Prince" contains a whole philosophy. “The king is listened to here only in those cases when he orders to do something that would have been accomplished without it; the lamplighter is respected here because he is busy with business, and not himself; the business man is ridiculed here because he believes that it is possible to "own" the stars and colors; The fox here allows himself to be tamed in order to distinguish the steps of the owner among thousands of others. “You can only learn the things that you can tame,” says Fox. - People buy things ready-made in stores. But there are no shops where they sell with friends, and therefore people no longer have friends. "
The Little Prince is the creation of a wise and gentle hero who had many friends.
Now we should talk about Citadel, the posthumously published book of Saint-Exupery: he left many sketches and notes for it, but he did not have enough time to polish this work and work on its composition. This is why it is so difficult to judge this book. The author himself undoubtedly attached great importance to the Citadel. It was, as it were, a result, an appeal, a testament. Georges Pelissier, who was a close friend of Saint-Ex's in Algeria, argues that in this work one should see the quintessence of the writer's thoughts; he informs us that the first draft was titled "The Lord of the Berbers" and at one time Saint-Exupéry wanted to call this poem in prose "Caid", but then returned to the original version of the title "Citadel". Another of the writer's friends, Leon Werth, writes: “The text of the Citadel is just a shell. And the most external one. This is a collection of notes recorded with a voice recorder, oral notes, notes of runaways ... "Citadel" is an improvisation. "
Others were more restrained. Luc Estan, who so much admires Saint-Exupery, the author of "Night Flight" and "Planet of Men", admits that he does not accept "this monotonous recitative of the Eastern ruler-patriarch." But this "monotonous recitative" takes hundreds of pages. It seems that the sand is flowing inexorably: “You pick up a handful of sand: beautiful sparkles sparkle, but they immediately disappear in a monotonous flow, in which the reader gets bogged down too. Attention scatters: admiration gives way to boredom. " It's true. The very nature of the work is fraught with danger. There is something artificial about the modern Western European adopting the tone of the Book of Job. The Gospel parables are sublime, but they are laconic and full of mystery, while the Citadel is stretched out and didactic. In this book, of course, there is something of "Zarathustra" and "Speeches of the Believer" by Lamennais, of course, her philosophy remains the philosophy of the "Military Pilot", but there is no vital core in it.
Still, the sparkles remaining in the crucible after reading this book are pure gold. Its theme is eminently characteristic of Saint-Exupery. The old lord of the desert, who shares his wisdom and experience with us, was a nomad in the past. Then he realized that man can find peace only if he builds up his citadel. A person feels the need for his own shelter, in his field, in a country that he can love. A pile of bricks and stones is still nothing, it lacks the soul of an architect. The citadel arises primarily in the human heart. It is woven from memories and rituals. And the most important thing is to remain faithful to this citadel, "for I will never decorate the temple if I begin to rebuild it every moment." If a person tears down walls, wishing to find freedom by this, he himself becomes like a "dilapidated fortress." And then anxiety seizes him, because he ceases to feel his real existence. "My possessions are not herds, not fields, not houses and not mountains, it is something completely different, it is something that dominates them and binds them together."
Both the citadel and the dwelling are held together by bonds of certain relationships. "And rituals occupy the same place in time as a dwelling occupies in space." It is good when time is also a kind of structure and a person gradually moves from holiday to holiday, from anniversary to anniversary, from one harvest of grapes to another. Already Auguste Comte, and after him Alain, proved the importance of ceremonies and solemn rites, for without this, they believed, human society could not exist. “I am re-establishing the hierarchy,” says the lord of the desert. - I will transform today's injustice into tomorrow's justice. And in this way I ennoble my kingdom. " Saint-Exupery, like Valerie, praises convention. For if you destroy conventions and forget about them, a person becomes a savage again. The "obnoxious chatterbox" reproaches the cedar for not being a palm tree, he would like to destroy everything around him and strives for chaos. "However, life resists disorder and elemental inclinations."
The same strictness is also in matters of love. "I close a woman in marriage and command the stoning of an unfaithful spouse caught in adultery." Of course, he understands that a woman is a tremulous being, she is all in the power of an agonizing desire to be gentle and therefore cries out for love in the darkness of the night. But it will be in vain for her to move from tent to tent, for no man can satisfy her desires completely. And if so, why allow her to change her spouse? “I save only that woman who does not violate the prohibition and gives vent to her feelings only in dreams. I save the one who loves not love in general, but only the man whose appearance embodied love for her. " A woman must also build a citadel in her heart.
Who commands this? The lord of the desert. And who commands the lord of the desert? Who dictates to him this respect for conventions and strong bonds? “I stubbornly went up to God to ask him about the meaning of things. But at the top of the mountain, I found only a heavy block of black granite, she was a god. " And he prays to God to reason with him. However, the granite block remains impenetrable. And must remain like this forever. The God who allows himself to be pityed is no longer God. “He is no longer God even when he listens to prayer. For the first time in my life, I realized that the greatness of prayer lies primarily in the fact that it does not find a response, in the fact that this communication between the believer and God is not overshadowed by an unsightly deal. And a lesson in prayer is a lesson in silence. And love arises only when the gift is no longer expected. Love is primarily an exercise in prayer, and prayer is an exercise in silence. "
This is, perhaps, the last word of mystical heroism.
Part IV. Philosophy
There were people who would like Saint-Exupéry to be content with the fact that he is a writer, a heavenly traveler, and they said: "Why is he constantly trying to philosophize when he is by no means a philosopher." But I just like that Saint-Exupery is philosophizing.
“You have to think with your hands,” Denis de Rougemont once wrote. The pilot thinks with his whole body and with his aircraft. The most beautiful image created by Saint-Exupery, even more beautiful than the image of Riviera, is the image of a man whose courage is filled with such simplicity that it would be ridiculous to talk about his courageous deeds.
“Oshede is a former sergeant, recently promoted to second lieutenant. Of course, he lacks education. He himself could not explain himself in any way. But he is harmonious, he is whole. When it comes to Oshede, the word “duty” loses all pomp. Everyone would like to do their duty as Oshede does. Thinking about Oshede, I reproach myself for my negligence, laziness, negligence and, above all, for the minutes of disbelief. And it's not about my virtue: I just envy Oshede in a good way. I would like to exist as much as Oshede exists. A beautiful tree rooted deep in the soil. Oshede's stamina is excellent. One cannot be deceived in Oshede. "
Courage cannot arise from cleverly composed speech, it is born from a kind of inspiration that becomes action. Courage is a fact. The tree is a real fact. The landscape is a real fact. We could mentally disassemble these concepts into their constituent parts, resorting to analysis, but this would be an empty exercise and would only harm them ... For Oshede, being a volunteer is completely natural.
Saint-Exupery is dismissive of abstract thinking. He has little faith in various ideological structures. He would gladly repeat after Alain: "For me, any proof is vicious in advance." How can abstract concepts contain the truth about a person?
“The truth does not lie on the surface. If on this soil, and not on some other orange trees, they take strong roots and bear generous fruits, then for orange trees this soil is the truth. If it is this religion, this culture, this measure of things, this form of activity, and not any other that gives a person a feeling of spiritual completeness, a power that he did not suspect in himself, then it is precisely this measure of things, this culture, this form activity is the truth of man. What about common sense? His job is to explain life, let him get it out as he pleases ... "
What is truth? Truth is neither doctrine nor dogma. You cannot comprehend it by joining some sect, school or party. "The truth of a man is what makes him a man."
“To understand a person, his needs and aspirations, to comprehend his very essence, it is not necessary to oppose your obvious truths to each other. Yes you are right. You are all right. Anything can be logically proven. Even the one who thinks to blame the humpbacks for all the misfortunes of mankind is right. It is enough to declare war on the humpbacked - and we will immediately inflame with hatred for them. We will begin to brutally take revenge on the hunchbacks for all their crimes. And among the hunchbacks, of course, there are also criminals ...
Why argue about ideologies? Any of them can be supported by evidence, and they all contradict each other, and from these disputes you only lose all hope of saving people. But people around us, everywhere and everywhere, strive for the same thing.
We want freedom. The one who works with a pickaxe wants to have meaning in every blow of the pickaxe. When a convict works with a pickaxe, her every blow only humiliates the convict, but if the pickaxe is in the hands of the prospector, her every blow elevates the prospector. Hard labor is not where you work with a pickaxe. It’s not terrible because it’s hard work. Hard labor is where the blows of the pick are meaningless, where labor does not connect a person with people. "
One who has created such a relative concept of truth cannot reproach other people for the fact that their beliefs are different from his own. If truth for everyone is what magnifies him, then you and I, although we worship different gods, can feel closeness to each other through a shared passion for greatness, through our shared love for the very feeling of love. Intelligence is only worth something when it serves love.
“We have been deceived for too long about the role of intelligence. We neglected the essence of man. We believed that the cunning machinations of base souls can help triumph a noble cause, that clever selfishness can inspire self-sacrifice, that callousness of heart and empty chatter can establish brotherhood and love. We have neglected the essence. A grain of a cedar will somehow turn into a cedar. A seed of thorns will turn into thorns. From now on, I refuse to judge people on the grounds that justify their decisions ... "
One should not ask about a person, “What doctrine does he hold? What etiquette does he follow? Which party does he belong to? " The main thing: "What kind of person is he?", And not what kind of individual he is. For the account is a person belonging to a particular social group, country, civilization. The French inscribed on the gables of their public buildings: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." They were right: this is a beautiful motto. But on that condition, adds Saint-Exupery, if they realize that people can be free, equal and can feel like brothers only if someone or something unites them.
“What does it mean to release? If in the desert I liberate a person who does not strive for anywhere, what will his freedom be worth? Freedom exists only for someone who strives somewhere. To free a man in the wilderness is to arouse his thirst and show him the way to the well. Only then will his actions become meaningful. It makes no sense to free a stone if gravity does not exist. Because the freed stone will not budge. "
In the same sense, one can say: "The soldier and his commander are equal in the nation." Believers were equal in God.
“Expressing God, they were equal in their rights. In serving God, they were equal in their duties.
I understand why equality in God did not entail any contradictions or disturbances. Demagoguery arises when, in the absence of a common faith, the principle of equality degenerates into the principle of identity. Then the soldier refuses to salute the commander, because the honor given to the commander would mean honoring the individual, not the Nation. "
Finally, brotherhood.
“I understand the origin of brotherhood between people. People were brothers in God. You can only be brothers in something. If there is no knot that connects people together, they will be placed next to each other, and not tied together. You can't just be brothers. My mates and I are brothers in the 2/33 group. The French are brothers in France. "
To summarize: the life of a man of action is full of danger; death lies in wait for him all the time; there is no absolute truth; however, sacrifice shapes people who become masters of the world, for they are masters of themselves. This is the harsh philosophy of the pilot. Surprisingly, he draws some form of optimism out of her. Writers who spend their lives at the desk, in which the heat of the soul slowly cools, become pessimists because they are isolated from other people. The man of action is ignorant of selfishness, because he recognizes himself as part of a group of comrades. The fighter neglects the pettiness of people, for he sees an important goal in front of him. Those who work together, those who share a common responsibility with others, rise above enmity.
The lesson of Saint-Exupery is still a living lesson. “It will seem to you that I am dying, but this is not true,” says the little prince; he also says: “And when you are comforted (in the end you are always comforted), you will be glad that you once knew me. You will always be my friend. "
We are glad that we knew him at one time; and we will always be his friends.
Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger de Saint-Exupery- a famous French writer, poet and professional pilot.
Childhood, adolescence, youth:
Antoine de Saint-Exupery was born in the French city of Lyon, descended from an old family of Perigord nobles, and was the third of five children of the Viscount Jean de Saint-Exupery and his wife Marie de Foncolombe. At the age of four, he lost his father. Little Antoine was raised by his mother.
In 1912, Saint-Exupery first took to the air in an airplane at the Amberier airfield. The car was driven by the famous pilot Gabriel Wroblewski.
Exupery entered the School of Christian Brothers of St. Bartholomew in Lyon (1908), then with his brother Francois studied at the Jesuit College of Saint-Croix in Mans - until 1914, after which they continued their studies in Friborg (Switzerland) at the Marist College, preparing for admission to the Ecole Naval (took a preparatory course at the Naval Lyceum Saint-Louis in Paris), but did not pass the competition. In 1919 he enrolled as a volunteer at the Academy of Fine Arts in the department of architecture.
The turning point in his life was 1921 - then he was drafted into the army in France. Interrupting the grace period he received upon admission to a higher educational institution, Antoine enrolled in the 2nd Fighter Regiment in Strasbourg. First, he is assigned to the work team at the repair shops, but soon he manages to pass the exam for a civilian pilot. He was transferred to Morocco, where he received the rights of a military pilot, and then sent to Istria for improvement. In 1922, Antoine completed courses for reserve officers in Avora and became a junior lieutenant. In October, he is assigned to the 34th Aviation Regiment at Bourget near Paris. In January 1923, the first plane crash happened to him, he received a head injury. In March he is commissioned. Exupery moved to Paris, where he devoted himself to writing. However, at first he was not successful in this field and was forced to take on any job: he sold cars, was a salesman in a bookstore.
Only in 1926 did Exupery find his calling - he became a pilot of the Aeropostal company, which delivered mail to the northern coast of Africa. In the spring, he begins to work on the transport of mail on the Toulouse - Casablanca line, then Casablanca - Dakar. On October 19, 1926, he was appointed head of the Cap Jubi intermediate station (Villa Bens), on the very edge of the Sahara.
Monument to Antoine de Saint-Exupery in Tarfay
In March 1929 Saint-Exupery returned to France, where he entered the higher aviation courses of the navy in Brest. Soon, Gallimard's publishing house published the novel Southern Postal, and Exupery left for South America as the technical director of Aeropost-Argentina, a subsidiary of Aeropostal. In 1930, Saint-Exupery was promoted to the Knight of the Legion of Honor for his contribution to the development of civil aviation. In June, he personally participated in the search for his friend, the pilot Guillaume, who had an accident while flying over the Andes. In the same year, Saint-Exupery wrote "Night Flight" and met his future wife Consuelo from El Salvador.
Pilot and Correspondent:
In 1930 Saint-Exupery returned to France and received three months' leave. In April, he married Consuelo Sunxin (April 16, 1901 - May 28, 1979), but the spouses generally lived separately. On March 13, 1931, Aeropostal was declared bankrupt. Saint-Exupéry returned to work as a pilot on the France-South America mail line, serving the Casablanca-Port-Etienne-Dakar section. In October 1931, Night Flight was published, and the writer was awarded the Femina literary prize. He again takes a vacation and moves to Paris.
In February 1932, Exupery rejoins the Latecoer airline and flies as a co-pilot on a seaplane serving the Marseille-Algeria line. Didier Dora, a former Aeropostal pilot, soon hired him as a test pilot, and Saint-Exupéry nearly died while testing a new seaplane in Saint-Raphael Bay. The seaplane capsized, and he barely managed to get out of the cockpit of the sinking car.
In 1934, Exupery joined Air France (formerly Aeropostal) as a company representative on trips to Africa, Indochina and other countries.
In April 1935, as a correspondent for the Paris-Soir newspaper, Saint-Exupery visited the USSR and described this visit in five essays. The essay "Crime and Punishment in the Face of Soviet Justice" became one of the first works of Western writers in which an attempt was made to comprehend Stalinism. On May 3, 1935, he met with M. A. Bulgakov, which was recorded in E. S. Bulgakov's diary.
Soon Saint-Exupery became the owner of his own aircraft C.630 "Simun" and on December 29, 1935, he attempted to set a record for the Paris - Saigon flight, but suffered an accident in the Libyan desert, again narrowly avoiding death. On the first of January, he and the mechanic Prevost, dying of thirst, were rescued by the Bedouins.
In August 1936, in accordance with an agreement with the newspaper Entrancian, he travels to Spain, where there is a civil war, and publishes a number of reports in the newspaper.
In January 1938, Exupery leaves for New York aboard the Ile de France. Here he turns to work on the book "The Planet of People". On February 15, he begins the flight New York - Tierra del Fuego, but suffers a serious accident in Guatemala, after which he restores health for a long time, first in New York, and then in France.
War:
On September 4, 1939, the day after France declared war on Germany, Saint-Exupéry is at the place of mobilization at the Toulouse-Montodran military airfield and on November 3 he is transferred to the 2/33 long-range reconnaissance air unit, which is based in Orconte (Champagne province). This was his response to the persuasion of friends to abandon the risky career of a military pilot. Many have tried to convince Saint-Exupery that he will bring much more benefit to the country as a writer and journalist, that pilots can be trained in thousands and he should not risk his life. But Saint-Exupery achieved an appointment to the combat unit. In one of his letters in November 1939, he writes: “I am obliged to participate in this war. Everything I love is at stake. In Provence, when the forest is on fire, everyone who cares grabs buckets and shovels. I want to fight, I am forced to do this by love and my inner religion. I cannot stand aside and calmly look at it. "
Saint-Exupéry made several sorties on the Block-174 aircraft, performing aerial photo reconnaissance missions, and was nominated for the Croix de Guerre award. In June 1941, after the defeat of France, he moved to his sister in an unoccupied part of the country, and later left for the United States. He lived in New York, where, among other things, he wrote his most famous book, The Little Prince (1942, publ. 1943). In 1943 he joined the Fighting France Air Force and with great difficulty achieved his enlistment in the combat unit. He had to master piloting the new high-speed Lightning P-38 aircraft.
Saint-Exupery in the Lightning's cockpit
“I have a funny craft for my age. The next person behind me is six years younger than me. But, of course, my current life - breakfast at six in the morning, a dining room, a tent or a room whitewashed with lime, flights at an altitude of ten thousand meters in a world forbidden for a person - I prefer the unbearable Algerian idleness ... ... I chose work for maximum wear and, as needed always squeeze myself to the end, I will no longer back down. I only wish that this heinous war would end before I melt like a candle in a stream of oxygen. I have something to do after it ”(from a letter to Jean Pelissier, July 9-10, 1944).
On July 31, 1944, Saint-Exupery departed from Borgo airfield on the island of Corsica on a reconnaissance flight and did not return.
"Too early death is tantamount to robbery: to fulfill your vocation in life, you have to live a long time" - wrote (1900 - 1944) in one of his later articles. The author of "The Little Prince" and "The Citadel" seemed to have a presentiment of his imminent death.
On July 31, 1944, he went on another combat mission and never returned. For a long time, Exupery was listed as missing. Only half a century after his disappearance were the fragments of his plane and personal belongings found. How much more could he give to humanity if he had not died on that ill-fated July day ...
We've handpicked 20 great quotes from his books:
Working only for the sake of material wealth, we build our own prison. And we lock ourselves in loneliness, and all our riches are dust and ashes, they are powerless to provide us with something worth living for. "Planet of people" |
There are too many people in the world who have not been helped by anyone to awaken. "Planet of people" |
I recognize friendship by the absence of disappointments, true love by the impossibility of being offended. "Citadel" |
Words only interfere with understanding each other. "Little Prince" |
In man, I love light. The thickness of the candle doesn't bother me. The flame will tell me if the candle is good. "Citadel" |
Freedom exists only for someone who strives somewhere. "Military pilot" |
Demagoguery arises when, in the absence of a common measure, the principle of equality degenerates into the principle of identity. "Military pilot" |
Order for the sake of order is the disfigurement of life. "Citadel" |
Vain people are deaf to everything but praise. "Little Prince" |
It is much more difficult to judge oneself than others. "Little Prince" |
Truth is not something that can be proven; this is what makes the world easier. "Meaning of life" |
Free the person, and he will want to create. "Citadel" |
The salvation is to take the first step. "Planet of people" |
It is impossible to love a woman herself, you can love through her, love with her help. To love thanks to the verses, but not the verses themselves. Love thanks to the landscape from the top of the mountain. "Citadel" |
You are forever responsible for everyone you tamed. "Little Prince" |
You can't make old friends overnight. There is no treasure more precious than so many shared memories, so many difficult hours experienced together, so many quarrels, reconciliations, emotional impulses. Such friendship is the fruit of many years. When planting an oak tree, it is ridiculous to dream that you will soon find shelter in its shadow. This is how life works. "Planet of people" |
You live in your actions, not in your body. You are your actions, and there is no other you. "Little Prince" |
The Earth itself knows what grain it needs ... "The Planet of People" |
What is the use of political doctrines that promise the flourishing of a person, if we do not know in advance what kind of person they will raise? Whom will their triumph give birth to? We are not cattle to be fattened, and when one poor Pascal appears, it is incomparably more important than the birth of a dozen prosperous nonentities. "Planet of people" |
Trying to find yourself, you are doomed to find emptiness. "Citadel" |