DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - Antoine de Saint-Exupery: Wind, Sand and Stars

**GogaMegaPis** · 01-09-2009, 12:00 AM

Wind, Sand and Stars is the memoir of Saint-Exupery's years as a night mail air courier in Northern Africa. Saint-Exupery is most famous for his children's work The Little Prince, but the bulk of his output took the form of literature.

Wind, Sand and Stars on its surface is a memoir of the dangers of flight in the 1920s, with open cockpits, unreliable instrumentation and often very real danger of death. In reality though, it is a poetic meditation on the nature of humanity, on our obligations to each other and on the miracle that is human consciousness. For Saint-Exupery, a secular miracle, this is a work of humanist thought and an argument that humanity matters and is of value.

The work explores heroic figures that Saint-Exupery flew with, including the famous aviator Henri Guillaumet who crashed in the Andes and walked through horrific conditions to an extraordinary survival. It spends much time on Saint-Exupery's own crash in the Sahara desert, on thirst, hallucinations and the onset of the final symptoms of death through dehydration which he experienced while there (his rescue coming very much at the last minute).

But above all this, it speaks of how each of us is a world intact in itself and unknowable to others. How our sense of self, the beauty of our humanity can be traduced through poverty, grinding work or simple mundanity and of how much is lost in the death of even a single human being unless that person's life can be placed within a wider connection of humanity.

This is a deeply romantic work. It does not attempt reportage, it does not seek to realistically recapture the experience of flight in this period. Rather, it seeks to capture what for Saint-Exupery was the magic of flight, what he loved about the desert. It is a love letter of sorts, to North Africa, to the air and to life itself. It is also in the main extremely well written with an excellent translation by William Rees.

As ever, I have written a fuller description of the work at my blog, http://pechorinsjournal.wordpress.com, but for now I leave you with one small quote which I particularly liked:

"I have had a great love for the Sahara. I have spent nights in rebel territory, and have woken in that vast golden expanse shaped by the wind like the swell of the sea. "

Having read this, I understand that love, and rather envy it.

01-09-2009, 12:00 AM	#1
GogaMegaPis Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 462 Senior Member	Antoine de Saint-Exupery: Wind, Sand and Stars Wind, Sand and Stars is the memoir of Saint-Exupery's years as a night mail air courier in Northern Africa. Saint-Exupery is most famous for his children's work The Little Prince, but the bulk of his output took the form of literature. Wind, Sand and Stars on its surface is a memoir of the dangers of flight in the 1920s, with open cockpits, unreliable instrumentation and often very real danger of death. In reality though, it is a poetic meditation on the nature of humanity, on our obligations to each other and on the miracle that is human consciousness. For Saint-Exupery, a secular miracle, this is a work of humanist thought and an argument that humanity matters and is of value. The work explores heroic figures that Saint-Exupery flew with, including the famous aviator Henri Guillaumet who crashed in the Andes and walked through horrific conditions to an extraordinary survival. It spends much time on Saint-Exupery's own crash in the Sahara desert, on thirst, hallucinations and the onset of the final symptoms of death through dehydration which he experienced while there (his rescue coming very much at the last minute). But above all this, it speaks of how each of us is a world intact in itself and unknowable to others. How our sense of self, the beauty of our humanity can be traduced through poverty, grinding work or simple mundanity and of how much is lost in the death of even a single human being unless that person's life can be placed within a wider connection of humanity. This is a deeply romantic work. It does not attempt reportage, it does not seek to realistically recapture the experience of flight in this period. Rather, it seeks to capture what for Saint-Exupery was the magic of flight, what he loved about the desert. It is a love letter of sorts, to North Africa, to the air and to life itself. It is also in the main extremely well written with an excellent translation by William Rees. As ever, I have written a fuller description of the work at my blog, http://pechorinsjournal.wordpress.com, but for now I leave you with one small quote which I particularly liked: "I have had a great love for the Sahara. I have spent nights in rebel territory, and have woken in that vast golden expanse shaped by the wind like the swell of the sea. " Having read this, I understand that love, and rather envy it.
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