On this day, Antoine, Jean-Baptiste, Marie-Roger comes into the world as an aristocrat descendent of Jean, Viscount of Saint-Exupéry and of Marie of Fonscolombe. But despite this inherited nobility, the adult Saint-Exupéry will much prefer to be a humanist. In his eyes, “everyone, although they use contradictory words, has the same passions. We distinguish ourselves by ways which are the product of our reasoning, not by our aims: they are the same.” Based on this observation, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry aims throughout his life to realise his role and responsibility within the human community. He abandons this aim in so far as becoming both a pilot and a writer, always between heroism and obligation, choosing instead to value himself in terms of his existence, by worldwide acknowledgement as a literary master.

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When Antoine is four years old his father violently dies of a stroke. Deprived of a father figure, the Saint-Exupéry family lives a travelling life using as a temporary rest stop their Aunt Gabrielle’s property in Lyon. Antoine will always have the memory of his courageous and resolutely optimistic mother.

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Saint-Exupéry is brought up with a mixture of bohemian, unconformist ideas including respect for men. His mother being a diligent educator sees the opportunity to teach in everything. A true teacher, she makes him aware of nature, so much so that he crowns himself “protector of caterpillars” and “dove tamer”, in the same way no doubt as the ‘Petit Prince’ tames the duck. Grateful his whole life, 18 years later Antoine dedicates these lines to his mother: “you are the best thing in my life. This evening I was as homesick as a kid! […]It’s true that you are my only comfort when I am sad.”

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From this year on, Antoine spends his holidays at his aunt’s house. This will be where he forms his taste for adventure. “It was somewhere, a park full of fir trees and lime trees, and an old house that I loved. …It was enough that it existed to fill my night with its presence” he wrote. Later, during his expeditions for the long haul flights, in the same way, a simple abode on the edge of the Andes reinstalls his faith in humanity.

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In 1909, Antoine just finishes a preparatory course at ‘les frères des Ecoles Chrétiennes’ at Lyon when his paternal grand father decides to send him, with his youngest brother François, to the Jesuit boarding school ‘Sainte Croix du Mans’. The fact of being wrenched from the family cocoon turns him into a taciturn and dreamy schoolboy, until the famous day in 1912 when, braving his mother’s authority he takes his maiden flight. The experience will have a lasting effect on him.

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Antoine wins a composition prize for his first literary essay called ‘L’Odyssée d’un chapeau haut de forme’. And with his schooling at the brothers Maristes at the Villa Saint-Jean at Fribourg, in Switzerland, he continues his initiation into literature. As he explained, writing resides in him in a fundamental way: “I have written since I was six”, he stated, “It isn’t aeroplanes that introduced me to books. I think that if I had been a miner, I would have tried to draw an education from under the ground.”

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Just as Antoine finishes his baccalaureate, François dies from complications due to rheumatic fever. This is a terrible period for Antoine, who, in losing his brother, sees it too as losing his inseparable childhood friend. Shutting himself away, he enrols without great motivation for the preparatory course of the Navy school of the Lycée Saint Louis at Paris where he will fail the entry exam two years later. At the same time he meets Louise, his first love. However, his future still seems uncertain. Already being both a man of action and of mind, he alternates between doing little jobs and his enrolment in the ‘Beaux Arts’ as an external listener.

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Having vainly aspired to Navy College, the call to service in April 1921 foreshadows a radical change among the units. Second class of the ‘guards’ of the second aviation regiment at Strasbourg, Saint-Exupéry actually learns how to fly. It’s the birth of a lifelong passion for flying. On the 23rd December, he is transferred to Casablanca with the 37th aviation regiment, where he gains his civil pilot’s license and is accepted to do an entrance exam for reserve officer pilots. This ambition makes him declare: “If you only knew the irresistible desire I have to become a pilot.” In February 1922, Saint Exupéry takes military pilot training at Istres and gains his military pilot’s license. On 10th October, he is finally appointed reserve second lieutenant of the 34th aviation regiment of Bourget.

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In January 1923, his first plane accident at Bourget means a return to civilian life. Having completed his military service, he finds a job with the lorry company Saurer. He gets engaged to Louise de Vilmorin. He lives a normal life, but it is about to be compromised. After a month of hesitation, Louise breaks their engagement in September. Extremely emotionally affected and from now on without any attachments, Antoine tires much more easily of the monotone work and hands in his notice at the start of 1924.

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As he returns to a life more like his early childhood, he meets the editor Gasto Gallimard and also André Gide at his cousin Yvonne de Lestrange’s house. His talent is even noticed at this point by the writer Jean Prévost who edits his first work ‘L’Aviateur’ in April 1926. This done, he celebrates the joining of his two passions and at the same time the linking of two big fields of expression throughout his whole life. Nothing left but to become a pilot-writer. Therefore he takes a job as a mechanic then as a test pilot at the Toulouse-Montaudran airport. And as if to encourage him in this, fate places in his path two close friends, the pilots Mermoz and Guillaumet.

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At the end of the summer of 1930, the writer Benjamin Crémieux introduces Saint-Exupéry to a young Salvadorian girl Consuelo Suncin. On one occasion during an aeroplane flight, he apparently seduces her by saying “Kiss me or I’ll make the plane dive” and asks her to marry him before landing. Being a romantic, he writes her a forty-page love letter. Infatuated, Saint-Exupéry marries Consuelo on 11th April 1931. She is a cultured, artistic woman who feeds off famous friendships with André Breton, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso and even Salvador Dali. Both of them being independent, their relationship is often confrontational but it never endangers their real love. He declares in his last days of life: “Consuelo, I need your arts like I need bread. You are my sweet duty and I would like to shelter you. I would just like to say that I love you. It is as certain as the day.”

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From 1932, constant money worries force Saint-Exupéry to write prefaces, screenplays and newspaper articles. At the same time Aéropostale assigns him to take letters all the way to Dakar. In the autumn, ‘Vol de nuit’ comes out. The success earns him the Femina Prize. The following year, he interrupts his seaplane test pilot career after nearly drowning in the bay at Saint-Raphael.

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During 1934, Air France assigns him to Saigon where he experiences new technical difficulties, which he recounts in various different newspapers. At the end of April 1935, Saint-Exupéry leaves to report in Moscow for the newspaper Paris Soir. There he writes a series of six articles, which are a roaring success with the public.

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At the same time, he helps with the filming of ‘Courrier Sud’ in Morocco during a few weeks. Being a multi-talented man, from the autumn of 1935, Saint-Exupéry even spends some time on the other side of the camera to adapt one of his screenplays- the birth of a cinematic career which would serve him later on when he makes documentaries and also feature films for Air France. Being a daring man, he also takes part in a quick fire raid of 11000km in the Mediterranean with his mechanic Prévot at record speed between Paris and Saigon. On the 30th December 1935, the two accomplices crash in the Libyan dessert and roam for three days. Saint-Exupéry takes inspiration from this for his future novel ‘Terre des Hommes’.

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During August 1936, Saint-Exupéry is sent to the Barcelona front. He comes up with the headline in the newspaper L’Intransigeant “Blood-drenched Spain”. He comes away repulsed by the war scenes where in his words they “shoot as if deforesting”. The year comes to an end on another dramatic note when on the 7th December Mermoz disappears in the sea alongside the Croix du Sud. Shattered by the event, during the year 1937, Saint-Exupéry rejoins Hemingway, Dos Passos, Hneri Jeanson and Joseph Kessel on the Spanish front. In addition, in August, he travels to Germany and deplores the rising Nazism.

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In 1938, saint-Exupéry takes part in another raid but an accident during take-off confines him to a hospital bed for a month and severely injures Prévot. In the spring, in New York, he starts writing ‘Terre des Hommes’. In 1939, Saint-Exupéry acquires military and literary honours and in January he is promoted Officer of the Legion of Honour, with Guillaumet as a sponsor. In February, ‘Terre des Hommes’ receives the Grand Prix du Roman de l’Académie Française and under the title ‘Wind, Sand and Stars’ it wins the National Book Awards in America. Being a humanist, he also enrols in the big reconnaissance squad 2/33 in readiness for the Second World War.

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He appears on the scene as a war pilot in February 1942. Although the Vichy government boycotts the work, the Americans are bowled over by the writer’s tale translated into English under the title of ‘Flight to Arras’. Being more than ever committed, at the end of November, in a letter entitled ‘An open letter to Frenchmen everywhere’, Saint-Exupéry urges the French to regain their freedom. Then, Curtice Hitchcock, his American editor, suggests he should write a children’s fairytale. As a strong contrast to the cruelty of the War, Saint-Exupéry accepts his proposition and illustrates his new novel himself. ‘Le Petit Prince’ comes out finally in New York in April 1943. However on the 20th April, Saint-Exupéry leaves America to rejoin the 2/33 squad in Morocco. But in August 1943, following an aeroplane accident, he is considered too old to fly. Constrained to the ground, during the winter he continues to write ‘Citadelle’.

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During this year, Saint-Exupéry publishes ‘Lettre à un otage’ in the review ‘L’Arche’ of Jean Amrouche. Thanks to the support of Colonel Chassin, he retakes to the service with the 2/33 squad. On the 31 July, he takes part in an ultimate mission leaving from Borgo to the continent. The pilot would never come back. The newspaper of his squadron announces “the commander Saint-Exupéry has not returned from his tenth war mission”. Lost somewhere in the Mediterranean, the pilot’s plane would be the burial place of a man entered in the great men of the Panthéon and whose life consisted of creating lines, both in the sky and in books. An adventurer of words and humans, he will profoundly mark the 20th century with a timeless quest which questions each one of us about our role among the human race.

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