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If There Were a European Counterpart to Charles Lindbergh, It Would Be Antoine De Saint-Exupéry

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If There Were a European Counterpart to Charles Lindbergh, It Would Be Antoine De Saint-Exupéry CHAPTER 12 CULTIVATING THE GARDEN: ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY AND THE NOBLE STRUGGLE If there were a European counterpart to Charles Lindbergh, it would be Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. While Saint-Exupéry’s ability to poeticize flight preceded (and arguably exceeded) Lindbergh’s, both men personified transcendence in ways that were to be unequaled by any other pilot. Contemporaries and acquaintances, the men earned their pilot licenses within a year of each other,1 received military flight instruction, and made a living delivering mail at a time when doing so was largely considered to be “the next thing to suicide”.2 Both men flew in far-flung locations, volunteered their flying services in World War II, expressed faith in the transformative ability of flight, and both came to personify national and cultural ideals. Even though the men began their flying careers in relative anonymity – Lindbergh obscured by the figure of Richard Byrd and Saint-Exupéry by the popularity of French aerial sensation, Jean Mermoz – their approaches to flight and writing differed sharply. Before turning to life narrative, Saint-Exupéry was already well known for his fiction, which was loosely based on his experiences flying for Aéropostale.3 His autobiographical work, Terre des Hommes, published in English as Wind, Sand and Stars (1939), was less a methodical attempt at self-representation than it was an effort to appease French publishers to whom Saint-Exupéry was in debt. Finding himself in financial trouble and suffering from serious injuries incurred from a failed takeoff in Guatemala during a “goodwill 1 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in 1921 and Lindbergh in 1922. 2 Dean Smith’s observation as an American airmail pilot in 1919 (By the Seat of My Pants, 104). 3 Courrier Sud (translated in English as Southern Mail, 1929), and Vol de Nuit (Night Flight, 1931). 170 Writing the Heavenly Frontier mission”,4 Saint-Exupéry met with editor Hervé Mille, who instructed the pilot to collect all of his writings and selectively compile them. With Mille’s help, Saint-Exupéry chose three articles, added six more on his desert adventures (most of which were reworked versions of essays he had published separately in 1932) and added – for his American audience – a chapter about his encounter with a Patagonian cyclone.5 The result was, as biographer Stacy Schiff points out, “not a book written over the course of eight years, but a book into which eight years of writing were hurriedly stitched”.6 The result, however, was not a passing success, but a literary achievement that established Saint-Exupéry as the unequaled voice of poet-pilot. It is probably not an exaggeration to say that Terre des Hommes has been the most beloved and enduring flight narrative of all time. Upon its publication, the book enjoyed enormous success, earning the French Academy’s distinguished award for fiction – the Grand Prix du Roman de l’Académie Française – even though the book was not a novel. Meanwhile, the English version was voted by the American Booksellers Association to be the year’s best work of nonfiction. In the United States, Wind, Sand and Stars remained on best-seller lists for nine months and sold more than 150,000 copies in less than six months.7 Glowing reviews granted Saint-Exupéry a reputation as a “humanist”, a poet, and “champion of the nobility of mankind”.8 Decades later, the book continues to enjoy a broad readership and enthusiastic praise. Topping the list of Outside magazine’s “25 Essential Books for the Well-Read Explorer” in 2003, Wind, Sand and Stars was declared to be “so humane, so poetic, you underline 4 The 1937 flight was intended to span 9,000 miles, running the length of North and South America. Saint-Exupéry and his navigator, Prévot, were 3,500 miles into the journey when their overloaded aircraft crashed into a gravel pit at the end of the runway nearly killing both of the men. 5 Stacy Schiff, Saint-Exupéry: A Biography (New York: Knopf, 1993), 301-302. 6 Ibid., 305. 7 Ibid., 310-12. 8 Curtis Cate synthesizes more favorable reviews of Terre des Hommes in his biography Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: His Life and Times (New York: Paragon, 1990) 372-73. Other reviews include Eliot G. Fay’s “The Philosophy of Saint-Exupéry”, Modern Language Journal, XXXI/2 (1947), 90-97, and Richard Rumbold and Lady Margaret Stewart’s The Winged Life: A Portrait of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Poet and Airman. The reference quoted is from Philip A. Wadsworth’s “Saint-Exupéry, Artist and Humanist”, Modern Language Quarterly, XII/1 (1951), 96-107. .
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