Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, vicomte de Saint-Exupéry (29 June 1900 – 31 July 1944), known simply as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (, ; ), was a French writer, poet, journalist and aviator.

Born in Lyon to an aristocratic family, Saint-Exupéry trained as a commercial pilot in the early 1920s, working airmail routes across Europe, Africa, and South America. Between 1926 and 1939, four of his literary works were published: the short story The Aviator, novels Southern Mail and Night Flight, and the memoir Wind, Sand and Stars. Saint-Exupéry joined the French Air Force for World War II and flew reconnaissance missions until France's armistice with Germany in 1940. After being demobilised by the Air Force, Saint-Exupéry lived in exile in the United States between 1941 and 1943 and helped persuade it to enter the war. During this time, his works Flight to Arras and The Little Prince were published.

Saint-Exupéry returned to combat by joining the Free French Air Force in 1943, despite being past the maximum age for a war pilot and in declining health. On 31 July 1944, during a reconnaissance mission over Corsica, Saint-Exupéry's plane disappeared: it is presumed to have crashed. Debris from the wreckage was discovered near Marseille in 2000, but the cause of the crash remains unknown.

Youth and aviation

thumb|200px|Coat of arms of the de Saint-Exupéry family since the 18th century thumb|right|267px|Birthplace of Saint-Exupéry in the [[Presqu'île section of Lyon, on the street now named after him, in blue at lower left]]

Saint-Exupéry was born in Lyon, into the French aristocratic Catholic family that traced its lineage back several centuries. Their surname references the 5th-century bishop Saint Exuperius. He was the third child of Viscount Jean de Saint-Exupéry (1863–1904) and his wife, Marie Boyer de Fonscolombe (1875–1972).

By 1926, Saint-Exupéry was flying again. He became one of the pioneers of international postal flight, in the days when aircraft had few instruments. Later, he complained that those who flew the more advanced aircraft had become more like accountants than pilots. He worked for Aéropostale between Toulouse and Dakar, and then also became the airline stopover manager for the Cape Juby airfield in the Spanish zone of South Morocco, in the Sahara. His duties included negotiating the safe release of downed fliers taken hostage by Saharan tribes, a perilous task that earned him his first Légion d'honneur from the French Government in 1930.

In 1929, Saint-Exupéry was transferred to Argentina, where he was appointed director of the Aeroposta Argentina airline. He lived in Buenos Aires, in the Galería Güemes building. He surveyed new air routes across South America, negotiated agreements, and occasionally flew the airmail as well as search missions looking for downed fliers. This period of his life is briefly explored in Wings of Courage, an IMAX film by French director Jean-Jacques Annaud.

The 1931 publication of Night Flight established Saint-Exupéry as a rising star in the literary world. It was the first of his major works to gain widespread acclaim, and it won the prix Femina. The novel mirrored his experiences as a mail pilot and director of the Aeroposta Argentina.

That same year, at Grasse, Saint-Exupéry married Consuelo Suncin (née Suncín Sandoval), a once-divorced, once-widowed Salvadoran writer and artist, who Saint-Exupéry described as having possessed a bohemian spirit and a "viper's tongue".

Saint-Exupéry left and returned to his wife many times—he saw her as both his muse, but, over the long term, the source of much of his angst.

Canadian and American sojourn and The Little Prince

thumb|The vain and petulant Rose in [[The Little Prince was likely inspired by Saint-Exupéry's Salvadoran wife, Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry.]]

Following the German invasion of France in 1940, Saint-Exupéry flew a Bloch MB.174 with the Groupe de reconnaissance II/33 reconnaissance squadron of the Armée de l'Air.

After France's armistice with Germany, Saint-Exupéry went into exile in North America, escaping through Portugal. He stayed in Estoril, at the Hotel Palácio, between 28 November and 20 December 1940. He described his impressions of his stay in . On the same day that he checked out, he boarded the S.S. Siboney and arrived in New York City on the last day of 1940, with the intention of convincing the US to enter the conflict against Nazi Germany quickly. On 14 January 1941, at a Hotel Astor author luncheon attended by approximately 1,500, he belatedly received his National Book Award for Wind, Sand and Stars, won a year earlier while he was occupied witnessing the destruction of the French Army. Rippert was the older brother of the famous bass singer Ivan Rebroff, who was born in Berlin as Hans-Rolf Rippert. In his memoirs, Horst Rippert, an admirer of Saint-Exupéry's books, expressed both fears and doubts that he was responsible, but in 2003 he stated that he became certain that he was responsible when he learned the location of Saint-Exupéry's wreckage. Saint-Exupéry wrote in Wind, Sand and Stars that the Bedouin saved their lives and gave them "charity and magnanimity [by] bearing the gift of water." The Little Prince is a philosophical story, including societal criticism, remarking on the strangeness of the adult world. One biographer wrote of his most famous work: "Rarely have an author and a character been so intimately bound together as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and his Little Prince," and remarking of their dual fates, "...the two remain tangled together, twin innocents who fell from the sky."

<small>Published posthumously</small>

  • Citadelle (1948) (titled in English: as The Wisdom of the Sands) – winner of the Prix des Ambassadeurs
  • Lettres à une jeune fille (1950)
  • Lettres de jeunesse, 1923–1931 (1953)
  • Lettres à l'amie inventée (1953)
  • Carnets (1953)
  • Lettres à sa mère (1955)
  • Un sens à la vie (1956), (A Sense of Life)

In support of their German occupiers and masters, Vichy authorities attacked the author as a defender of Jews (in racist terms) leading to the praised book being banned in France,

  • From 1993 until the introduction of the euro, Saint-Exupéry's portrait and several of his drawings from The Little Prince appeared on France's 50-franc banknote.
  • In 2000, on the centenary of his birth, in the city where he was born, he was memorialised when the Lyon Satolas Airport was renamed the Lyon-Saint Exupéry Airport. Lyon's TGV bullet train station was also renamed Gare de Lyon Saint-Exupéry. The author is additionally commemorated by a statue in Lyon, depicting a seated Saint-Exupéry with the little prince standing behind him.
  • A street in Montesson, a suburb of Paris, is named after him as Rue Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Museums and exhibits

thumb|A portion of the Saint-Exupéry exhibit, in the [[Musée de l'Air|French Air & Space Museum, Le Bourget, Paris.]]

thumb|right|The facade of the [[Antoine de Saint-Exupery Museum in Tarfaya, Morocco.]]

thumb|Lamplighter Square at The Museum of The Little Prince, Hakone, Japan

Museum exhibits, exhibitions and theme villages dedicated to both him and his diminutive Little Prince have been created in Le Bourget, Paris and other locations in France, as well as in the Republic of South Korea, Japan, Morocco, Brazil, the United States and Canada:

  • The Air and Space Museum at Paris's Le Bourget Airport, in cooperation with The Estate of Saint-Exupéry-d'Agay, has created a permanent exhibit of 300 m<sup>2</sup> dedicated to the author, pilot, person and humanist. The Espace Saint-Exupéry exhibit, officially inaugurated in 2006 on the anniversary of the aviator's birthday,
  • In Tarfaya, Morocco, next to the Cape Juby airfield where Saint-Exupéry was based as an Aéropostale airmail pilot/station manager, Antoine de Saint-Exupery Museum was created honouring both him and the company. A small monument at the airfield is also dedicated to them.
  • In Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, and Hakone, Japan, theme village museums have been created honouring Saint-Exupéry's Little Prince.
  • In January 1995, the Alberta Aviation Museum of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, in conjunction with the cultural organization Alliance française, presented a showing of Saint-Exupéry letters, watercolours, sketches and photographs. Another asteroid was named as 46610 Bésixdouze (translated to and from both hexadecimal and French as 'B612'). Additionally the terrestrial-asteroid protection organization B612 Foundation was named in tribute to the author's Little Prince, who fell to Earth from Asteroid B-612.
  • Philatelic tributes have been printed in at least 25 other countries .

Other

Numerous other tributes have been awarded to honour Saint-Exupéry and his most famous literary creation, his Little Prince:

  • The GR I/33 (later renamed as the 1/33 Belfort Squadron), one of the French Air Force squadrons Saint-Exupéry flew with, adopted the image of the Little Prince as part of the squadron and tail insignia on its Dassault Mirage fighter jets.
  • Google celebrated Saint-Exupéry's 110th birthday with a special logotype depicting the little prince being hoisted through the heavens by a flock of birds.
  • The French 50-franc banknote depicted Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and had several features that allude to his works.
  • The new flagship of CMA CGM Group for celebrating her 40th anniversary, takes the name of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry to commemorate his achievement.

Film

  • Wings of Courage is a 1995 docudrama by French director Jean-Jacques Annaud. The movie was the world's first dramatic picture shot in the IMAX format and is an account of the true story of early airmail pilots Henri Guillaumet (played by Craig Sheffer), Saint-Exupéry played by Tom Hulce, and several others.
  • Saint-Exupéry and his wife Consuelo were portrayed by Bruno Ganz and Miranda Richardson in the 1996 biopic Saint-Ex, a British film biography of the French author-pilot. It also featured Eleanor Bron and was filmed and distributed in the United Kingdom, with scripting by Frank Cottrell Boyce. The film combines elements of biography, documentary, and dramatic licence.
  • The 2024 French film Saint-Exupéry (originally titled Saint-Ex) written and directed by Pablo Agüero depicts Saint-Exupéry's (Louis Garrel) airmail career in the Andes, revolving around his efforts to save his friend, Henri Guillaumet (Vincent Cassel).

TV Series

  • In the 2009 Japanese dorama Karei naru Spy (華麗なるスパイ), produced by Nippon Television, a spy named "Antoine de Saint-Exumopéry" (アントワーヌ ド・サン・テグモペリ ) is played by actor MOUNIR. (Episode 2). The spy works for the evil Mr.Takumi (ミスター匠), leader of an international terrorist organization.

Literature

  • After his disappearance, Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry wrote The Tale of the Rose, which was published in 2000 and subsequently translated into 16 languages.
  • Saint-Exupéry is mentioned in Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff: "A saint in short, true to his name, flying up here at the right hand of God. The good Saint-Ex! And he was not the only one. He was merely the one who put it into words most beautifully and anointed himself before the altar of the right stuff."
  • Comic-book author Hugo Pratt imagined the fantastic story of Saint-Exupéry's last flight in Saint-Exupéry: le dernier vol (1994).
  • Saint-Exupéry is the subject of the 2013 historical novel Studio Saint-Ex (Knopf, New York / Penguin, Canada) by Ania Szado. In the novel Saint-Exupéry awaits the Americans' entry into World War II, while writing The Little Prince in New York.
  • Wind, Sand and Stars is an important book to narrator Theo Decker, who re-reads it often, in The Goldfinch (2013) by Donna Tartt.
  • Saint-Exupéry was the principal character in Antonio Iturbe's 2017 Spanish-language novel A cielo abierto which was translated into English and published in 2021 with the title The Prince of the Skies.

Music

  • Saint-Exupéry's death and speculation that Horst Rippert shot him down are the subject of "Saint Ex", a song on Widespread Panic's eleventh studio album, Dirty Side Down.
  • "P 38", a 1983 song by the Swedish pop band Webstrarna took inspiration from Saint-Ex's disappearance in July 1944.
  • The Norwegian progressive rock band Gazpacho's concept album Tick Tock is based on Saint-Exupéry's desert crash.
  • "On the Planet of the Living", a song sung by Eduard Khil, was dedicated to Saint-Exupéry.
  • "St. Exupéry Blues" – a song by Russian folk-rock band Melnitsa from their album "Alchemy"
  • In "Far Side of the World", a song by American singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett, he mentions both Saint-Exupery and "Wind, Sand and Stars".

Theatre

  • In August 2011, Saint-Ex, a theatrical production of Saint-Exupéry's life, premiered in Weston, Vermont.

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Sources

  • Berton, Pierre. 1967: The Last Good Year. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1997. .
  • La Gazette des Français du Paraguay Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Vol de nuit 1931, Vaincre l'impossible – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Vuelo nocturno 1931, Superar lo desconocido bilingue, numéro 14 année II, Assomption, Paraguay.

Further reading

Selected biographies

  • Chevrier, Pierre (pseudonym of Hélène (Nelly) de Vogüé). Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Montreal, Quebec, Canada: La librairie Gallimard de Montréal, 1950.
  • Migeo, Marcel. Saint-Exupéry. New York: McGraw-Hill, (trans. 1961), 1960.
  • Peyre, Henri. French Novelists of Today. New York: Oxford UP, 1967.
  • Robinson, Joy D. Marie. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Twayne's World Authors series: French literature). Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1984, pp.&nbsp;120–142.
  • Rumbold, Richard and Lady Margaret Stewart. The Winged Life: A Portrait of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Poet and Airman. New York: D. McKay, 1955.
  • Smith, Maxwell A. Knight of the Air: The Life and Works of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. New York: Pageant Press, 1956.
  • Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (society) (official website)
  • Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Youth Foundation (F-ASEJ) (official website)
  • 2011 Année Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Toulouse celebration of Saint-Exupéry in 2011
  • Major bibliography of French and English biographical works on Saint-Exupéry
  • A website dedicated to the Centennial Anniversary of Antoine and Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry
  • The Luftwaffe and Saint-Exupéry: the evidence (in the website "Ghost Bombers")
  • Jean de Saint-Exupéry (in French)