People best know French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry for his fairy tale The Little Prince (1943).
He flew for the first time at the age of 12 years in 1912 at the Ambérieu airfield and then determined to a pilot. Even after moving to a school in Switzerland and spending summer vacations at the château of the family at Saint-Maurice-de-Rémens in east, he kept that ambition. He repeatedly uses the house at Saint-Maurice.
Later, in Paris, he failed the entrance exams for the naval academy and instead enrolled at the prestigious l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In 1921, Saint-Exupéry, stationed in Strasbourg, began serving in the military. He learned and forever settled his career path as a pilot. After leaving the service in 1923, Saint-Exupéry worked in several professions but in 1926 went back and signed as a pilot for Aéropostale, a private airline that from Toulouse flew mail to Dakar, Senegal. In 1927, Saint-Exupéry accepted the position of airfield chief for Cape Juby in southern Morocco and began his first book, a memoir, called Southern Mail and published in 1929.
He then moved briefly to Buenos Aires to oversee the establishment of an Argentinean mail service, returned to Paris in 1931, and then published Night Flight, which won instant success and the prestigious Prix Femina. Always daring Saint-Exupéry tried from Paris in 1935 to break the speed record for flying to Saigon. Unfortunately, his plane crashed in the Libyan Desert, and he and his copilot trudged through the sand for three days to find help. In 1938, a second plane crash at that time, as he tried to fly between city of New York and Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, seriously injured him. The crash resulted in a long convalescence in New York.
He published Wind, Sand and Stars, next novel, in 1939. This great success won the grand prize for novel of the academy and the national book award in the United States. Saint-Exupéry flew reconnaissance missions at the beginning of the Second World War but went to New York to ask the United States for help when the Germans occupied his country. He drew on his wartime experiences to publish Flight to Arras and Letter to a Hostage in 1942.
Later in 1943, Saint-Exupéry rejoined his air squadron in northern Africa. From earlier plane crashes, Saint-Exupéry still suffered physically, and people forbade him to fly, but he insisted on a mission. From Borgo, Corsica, on 31 July 1944, he set to overfly occupied region. He never returned.
Bien aimé ça se lit vite J'ai bcp aimé le format épistolaire on voit bien le caractère de l'écrivain sa façon de se sentir et de vivre En plus j'ai trouvé ça plutôt bien écrit donc super
très émouvant de voir l'évolution de St Exupery, de ces 11 ans jusqu'à la fin, en cette fameuse année 1944... les lettres sont parfois accompagnées de petits dessins, c'est vraiment trop mignon 🌸
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry'nin en sevdiğim eserlerinden birisi oldu bu. Gerçi bu bir roman, öykü vs değil, Exupéry'nin on yaşından öldüğü yıl 1944'e kadar olan mektuplarının bir derlemesi. Ancak içeriğinde bir roman, öykü anlatımından farksız anlatımlar var. Çok özel duygular, hisler var. Yazdığı romanlardan, o romanlara konu olan ortamlarda hissettiği duygular mevcut. Bu da mektupları çok özel kılıyor. Tabii annesine yazdığı için hayatının çok özel, çok müstesna kısımlarını içermiyor ama bir anneye anlatılabilecek hemen her şey mevcut. Fazlasıyla hatta.
It is hard to imagine, in our time where modern telecommunications become commonplace, the dire aches which come when we are worlds apart from our beloved ones. How to bare such yoke, I fail to fathom. Perhaps, though, people back then were simply used to it. For me, a child of this era, I could never.
The book compiled a plethora of his letters from childhood to adolescence, but significantly lacked his later ones, especially those composed during war time. My guess is not many remained; that, or he did not write to his mother as much, for he must be occupied by his duty. Or perhaps it was just because it was, well, war. One letter mentioned that some letters to his mother got destroyed. That might be the case.
Je me suis éloigné, je suis revenu, j'ai regardé les hommes autour du veau d'or, non intéressés mais stupides, et les enfants qui naissent aujourd'hui me sont plus étrangers que de jeunes barbares. Je suis lourd de trésors inutiles comme d'une musique qui jamais plus ne sera comprise. J'ai commencé mon œuvre avec la hache du bûcheron dans la forêt, et j'étais ivre du cantique des arbres, mais maintenant que de trop près j'ai vu les hommes, je suis las.
J’ai découvert cette collection épistolaire bien après avoir lu l’œuvre intégral d’Antoine de Saint-Exupery, et j’en suis bien heureux, car elle m’a donné un tout autre éclairage sur la personnalité de l’auteur du Petit Prince.
“Saint-Ex” avait une relation spéciale avec sa mère, qu’il aimait comme personne d’autre au monde. Il lui a écrit régulièrement jusqu’à sa mort en 1944.
Reading his letters was delightful, it has nothing special but I see the beautiful love between Antoin and his mother. In one of his letters Antoin wrote that he is keeping a fox, maybe he was the real petit prince!
از متن كتاب: من در روياى كسانى هستم كه به چيزى مى انديشند، شادى دارند، رنج مى برند و ميان آنها دوستى وجود دارد.
(read in Spanish version) Very short and few letters. It does give a little bit of insight to the author's feelings but doesn't really get into it. It should be rather an appendix to a full biography...
Very interesting, I advised to read the chronology at the end to better follow Antoine life. Nothing captivating but a few very interesting passage are very nice and interesting to understand the character.
Cuesta calificar un libro que no ha sido escrito para mí, probablemente Saint-Exupéry no quería que nadie aparte de su madre leyese estas cartas. Sin embargo, creo que los editores de esta colección pudieron hacerle más justicia a su correspondencia.
"No se alcanza a imaginar la carga que llevo encima y lo inútil que siento mi juventud. [...] ¿No cree, mamá, que tengo una melancolía que no se deja vencer? Siempre es igual cuando abro la puerta, tiro mi sombrero y siento el peso de un día terminado que se me ha escapado entre los dedos."
En realidad, es una selección de cartas que Antoine de Saint-Exupéry escribió a su madre. Son preciosas, se reconoce al autor de "El Principito", uno de mis libros favoritos de todos los tiempos, así que ha sido un deleite poder leerlo. Creo que él es uno de esos autores de los que podría leer hasta su listado de compras. Es cortito, pero me ha gustado la edición también.
"Usted no alcanza a imaginar esta inmensa gratitud que le profeso, ni qué casa de recuerdos me ha regalado. Pareciera que yo no sintiera nada, pero creo que simplemente me defiendo por temor."
El libro más lindo que he leído que demuestra el amor de un hijo por su madre, aprendí mucho sobre el autor gracias a él, simplemente hermoso, es una joya.