Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de

Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de(Antoine-Marie-Roger de Saint-Exupéry) (äNtwän`-märē`-rôzhā` də săNtĕgzüpārē`), 1900–1944, French aviator and writer. He became a commercial pilot and published his first story in 1926. Mainly involved in the nascent air-mail industry, he flew in Europe, Africa, and South America. During World War II he was a military pilot and was lost in action. His writings reflect his feeling for the open skies and desert and embody his love of freedom of action. Courrier Sud (1929, tr. Southern Mail, 1933), Vol de nuit (1931, tr. Night Flight, 1932), and Terre des hommes (1939, tr. Wind, Sand, and Stars, 1939) are impressionistic, poetic narratives expressing a highly personal philosophy that stresses individual responsibility and the life of the mind. Pilote de guerre (1942, tr. Flight to Arras, 1942) tells of a hopeless French reconnaissance flight in 1940. His last book, the fable Le Petit Prince (1943, tr. The Little Prince, 1943), has become a classic, read by adults and children.

Bibliography

See biographies by C. Cate (1970), J. M. Robinson (1984), and S. Schiff (1995).

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Saint-Exupéry, Antoine (-Marie-Roger) de

(born June 29, 1900, Lyon, France—died July 31, 1944, in flight over the Mediterranean) French aviator and writer. He flew as a commercial, test, and military reconnaissance pilot and was a publicity attaché for Air France and a reporter. He died when he was shot down on a wartime Air Force mission over the Mediterranean. His writings exalt perilous adventure and aviation, as in the novels Southern Mail (1929) and Night Flight (1931). Wind, Sand, and Stars (1939) is a lyrical memoir with philosophical musings and meditations. The Little Prince (1943) is a child's fable for adults.

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Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de 

Born June 29, 1900, in Lyon; died July 31, 1944. French writer.

Saint-Exupéry was born into an aristocratic family. From 1919 to 1921 he studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and from 1921 to 1923 he served in the army. He then worked in a factory. In 1926 he became a commercial pilot and published his first story, “Pilot.” From 1927 to 1929, Saint-Exupéry was manager of an airport in North Africa. His novel Southern Mail (1929) depicted pilots as men of action and contrasted them to philistines. From 1929 to 1931, Saint-Exupéry was a pilot in South America and Africa, and in 1933 and 1934 he was a test pilot. In 1931 he published the novel Night Flight. In 1939 his Wind, Sand and Stars (Russian translation, Earth of Men) was awarded a prize by the Académie Française.

Saint-Exupéry’s works combine reportage with poetic and philosophic interpretations of his own experiences. His humanism, despite its abstractness, is democratic and antireactionary. In 1935, after a visit to the USSR, Saint-Exupéry wrote a number of essays sympathetic to socialism. In 1937 he denounced fascism in news reports from republican Spain.

During World War II (1939–45), Saint-Exupéry fought at the front as a military pilot. After the fascist German occupation of France (1940), he emigrated to the USA, where he wrote the novellas Flight to Arras (1942) and Letter to a Hostage (1943), which occupy an important place in the literature of the Resistance movement. In 1943, Saint-Exupéry became a military pilot in North Africa; on July 31, 1944, he failed to return from a reconnaissance flight.

Saint-Exupéry’s fable The Little Prince (1943) gained world renown. It combined satire on acquisitiveness with affirmation of the beauty of human relations. The unfinished The Wisdom of the Sands (published 1948) was a series of didactic parables.

WORKS

Oeuvres complètes. Paris, 1950.
In Russian translation:
Sochineniia. [Foreword by M. Vaksmakher.] Moscow, 1964.

REFERENCES

Migeo, M. Sent-Ekziuperi. Moscow, 1963.
Zonina, L. “Zametki o Sent-Ekziuperi.” Novyi mir, 1965, no. 6.
Antuan deSent-Ekziuperi: Bibliograficheskiiukazatel’. Moscow, 1966.
Albérès, R. M. Saint-Exupéry. Paris, 1961.
Chévrier, P. Sl.-Exupéry, 8th ed. Paris, 1958.
Bukowska, A. Saint-Exupéry czyli Paradoksy humanizmu. [Warsaw, 1968.]
Les Critiques de notre temps et Saint-Exupéry. Paris [1971].

M. N. VAKSMAKHER