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Re
: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
« Répondre #2 le: Décembre 10, 2007,
12:57:13 »
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Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was born in
Lyons into an old family of provincial nobility; one of his ancestors had
fought with the Americans at Yorktown. His father was an insurance
company executive, who died of a stroke in 1904. His artistic talented
widow, Marie de (Fonscolombe) Exupéry (1875-1972), moved with her
children to Le Mans in 1909. At the castle of Saint-Maurice-de-Rémens,
Saint-Exupéry spent his childhood years surrounded by sisters, aunts,
cousins, nurses, and fräuleins. He was educated at Jesuit schools in
Montgré and Le Mans, and in Switzerland at a Catholic boarding school
(1915-1917), run by the Marianist Fathers in Fribourg. After failing his
final examination at a university preparatory school, he entered the
École des Beaux-Arts to study architecture.
The turning point in Saint-Exupéry's life came in 1921 when he started
his military service in the 2ND Regiment of Chasseurs, and was sent to
Strasbourg for training as a pilot. He had flown, with a pilot, for the
first time in 1912. On July 9, 1921, he made his first flight alone in a
Sopwith F-CTEE. Next year Saint-Exupéry obtained his pilot's licence, and
was offered a transfer to the air force. However, when his fiancée's
family objected, he settled in Paris where he took an office job and
started to write. The following years were unlucky. His engagement with
Louise de Vilmorin broke off, and he had no success in his work and
business - he had several jobs, including that of bookkeeper and
automobile salesman. Saint-Exupéry's first tale, 'L'Aviateur' was
published in 1926 in the literary magazine Le Navire d'argent. His true
calling Saint-Exupéry then found in flying the mail for the commercial
airline company Aéropostale. He flew the mail over North Africa for three
years, escaping death several times. In 1928 he became the director of
the remote Cap Juby airfield in Rio de Oro, Sahara. His house was a
wooden shack and he slep on a thin straw mattress. "I have never
loved my house more than when I lived in the desert," he recalled.
In this isolation Saint-Exupéry learned to love the desert, and used its
harsh beauty as the background for The Little Prince and The Wisdom of
the Sands (1948). During these years Saint-Exupéry wrote his first novel,
Southern Mail (1929), which celebrated the courage of the early pilots,
flying at the limits of safety, to speed on the mail and win a commercial
advantage over rail and steamship rivals. Another story line in the work
depicted the author's failed love affair with the novelist Louise de
Vilmorin.
"Over and done with. Thirty thousand letters come
safely through. The airline company kept drilling it into you: the
precious mail, more precious than life itself. Enough to keep thirty
thousand lovers going... Lovers, be patient! In the sinking fire of
sunset here we come. Behind Bernis the clouds are thick, churned by the
whirlwind in its mountain bowl. Before him lies a land decked out in
sunlight, the tender muslin of the meadows, the rich tweed of the woods,
the ruffled veil of the sea." (from Night Flight)
In 1929 Saint-Exupéry moved to South America, where he was appointed
director of the Aeroposta Argentina Company.
Saint-Exupéry flew post through the Andes. This experience gave the basis
for his second novel, Night Flight, which became an international
bestseller, won the Prix Femina, and was adapted for screen in 1933,
starring Clark Gable and Lionel Barrymore. In the story Rivière, the
hard-bitten airport chief, has left behind all thoughts of retirement and
sees the work of flying the mail as his fate. "We don't ask to be
eternal', he thought. 'What we ask is not to see acts and objects
abruptly lose their meaning. The void surrounding us then suddenly yawns
on every side." (from Night Flight)
Saint-Exupéry married in 1931 Consuelo Gómez Carillo, a widow, whose
other literary friends included Maurice Maeterlinck and Gabriele
D'Annunzio. "He wasn't like other people," she wrote later in
Mémoires de la rose, "but like a child or an angel who has fallen
down from the sky." The marriage was stormy. Consuelo was jealous
for good reasons and felt neglected, when her husband did not spend much
time at home. He also had affairs with other women.
After the air mail business in Argentina was closed down, Saint-Exupéry
started to fly post between Casablanca and Port-Étienne and then he served
as a test pilot for Air France and other airline companies. He wrote for
Paris-Soir and covered the May Day events in Moscow in 1936, and wrote a
series of articles on the Spanish Civil War. Saint-Exupéry lived a
traveling, adventurous life: he persuaded Air-France to let him fly a
Caudron Simoun (F-ANRY), and had an aviation accident in 1935 in North
Africa. He walked in the desert for days before being saved by a caravan.
In 1937, he bought another Caudron Simoun, and was severely injured in
Guatemala in a plane crash.
Encouraged by his friend André Gide, Saint-Exupéry wrote during his
convalescence a book about the pilot's profession. Wind, Sand and Stars,
which appeared in 1939, won the French Academy's 1939 Grand Prix du Roman
and the National Book Award in the United States. The director Jean
Renoir (1894-1979) wanted to shoot the film and had conversations with
the author, mostly about literary subjects which he recorded. At that
time Renoir worked in Hollywood where everyone shot on sets. Renoir's
idea was to make the film at the locations described in the text. The
book had been successful in the U.S. but nobody wanted to produce its
film version.
After the fall of France in World War II Saint-Exupéry joined the army,
and made several daring flights, although he was considered unable to fly
military planes because of his several injures. However, he was awarded
the Croix de Guerre. In June he went to live with his sister in the
Unoccupied Zone of France, and then he escaped to the United States. When
the Vichy régime appointed him to its National Council, he protested at
this "untimely appointment." Saint-Exupéry was criticized by
his countrymen for not supporting de Gaulle's Free France forces in
London. Flight to Arras (1942), published in New York, depicts his
hopeless flight over the enemy lines, when France was already beaten. The
book was banned in France by the German authorities. In 1943 he rejoined
the French air force in North Africa. Also in Algiers he continued his
lifelong habit of writing in the air. After a bad landing his commanding
officer decided that he was too old to go on flying, but after a pause he
was allowed to rejoin his unit. In 1943 Saint-Exupéry published his
best-known work, The Little Prince (1943), a children's fable for adults,
which has been translated into over 150 languages. It has been claimend
that The Little Prince is the best-selling book after the Bible and Karl
Marx's Das Kapital. Saint-Exupéry devoted to book to his friend Léon
Werth. Its narrator is a pilot who has crash-landed in a desert. He meets
a boy, who turns out to be a prince from another planet. The prince tells
about his adventures on Earth and about his precious rose from his
planet. He is disappointed when he discovers that roses are common on Earth.
A desert fox convinces him that the prince should love his own rare rose
and finding thus meaning to his life, the prince returns back home. The
rare rose is usually interpreted as Consuelo.
On July 31, 1944 Saint-Exupéry took off from an airstrip in Sardinia on a
flight over southern France. His plane disappeared - he was shot down
over the Mediterranean, or perhaps there was an accident, or it was
suicide. Saint-Exupéry had felt isolated and alone his squadron, and was
pessimistic about the future. On one mission he had trouble with his
oxygen mask and nearly passed out. Saint-Exupéry left behind the
unfinished manuscript of La Citadelle (Wisdom of the Sands) and some
notebooks, which were published posthumously. "Freedom and
constraint are two aspects of the same necessity, which is to be what one
is and no other." (from La Citadelle, 1948) The book reflects
Saint-Exupéry's increasing interest in politics, and his later ideals.
The author's last flight inspired Hugo Pratt's comics Saint-Exupéry (1996).
In 1998, a fisherman found Saint-Exupéry's bracelet from the sea, 150
kilometers west from Marseilles. His and Conzuela Gomez Castillo's name
were recognized from it. However, later news revealed, that the bracelet
was probably a forgery. Eventually Saint-Exupéry plane, Lockheed
Lightning P-38, was found in May 2000.
For further reading: Saint-Exupéry by M. Migeo (1932);
Saint-Exupéry by P. Chevrier (1950); Saint-Exupéry par lui-même by L.
Estang (1956); L'Esthétique de Saint-Exupéry by C.François (1957);
Antoine, mon frère by Simone de Sait-Exupéry (1963); Antoine De
Saint-Exupery by Joy Marie Robinson (1984); Antoine De Saint-Exupery: His
Life and Times by Curtis Cate (1990); Saint-Exupéry by Stacy Schiff
(1994); Poet and Pilot Antoine De Saint-Exupery by John Phillips and
Charles-Henri Favrod (1994); Mémoires de la rose by Consuelo de
Saint-Exupéry (2000) - See also: Visions of a Little Prince (A
documentary film will be shot in original locations were Saint Exupery
found the inspirations for his popular book) - Other pilots who became
writers: Joseph Heller, James Dickey.
Selected works:
* L'AVIATEUR, 1926
* COURRIER-SUD, 1929 - Southern Mail - filmed by Pierre
Billon in 1936
* VOLE DE NUIT, 1931 - Night Flight - Yölento - film 1933, dir.
by Clarence Brown, starring John Barrymore, Clark Gable, Helen Hayes,
Myrna Loy, Lionel Barrymore
* TERRE DES HOMMES, 1939 - Wind, Sand, and Stars - Siipien
sankarit
* PILOTE DE GUERRE, 1942 - Flight to Arras
* LETTRE Á UN OTAGE, 1943 - Letter to a Hostage
* LE PETIT PRINCE, 1943 (illust. by Saint-Exupéry) - The
Little Prince - Pikku prinssi
* LA CITADELLE, 1948 - The Wisdom of the Sands
* ŒUVRES COMPLÈTES, 1950 (7 vols.)
*
ŒUVRES, 1953
* LETTRES DE JEUNESSE, 1923-31, 1953
* CARNETS, 1953
* LETTRES À SA MÈRE, 1955
* UN SENS À LA VIE, 1956 - A Sense of Life
* LETTERS DE SAINT EXUPÉRY, 1960
* LETTRES AUX AMÉRICAINS, 1960
* ECRITS DE GUERRE, 1939-1944, 1982 - Wartime Writings
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