Grove Koger

As I expand and update my book When the Going Was Good, I’m posting revised entries from the first edition. Today’s deals with a memoir by French pilot and writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who was born in Lyon, France, in 1900.

Wind, Sand and Stars (Terre des hommes. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939)

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Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was in a unique position to write about the early days of aviation. In 1926, as a student pilot for Latécoère, the first commercial French line, he carried the mail from France to Morocco and Senegal. Subsequently he worked as postal manager in Villa Bens (today Tarfaya) in what was then the southern zone of Spanish Morocco, and directed the line’s Argentine branch, pioneering a route between Buenos Aires and Tierra del Fuego. Later still, Saint-Exupery piloted hydroplanes between Algiers and Marseilles and flew reconnaissance missions in aid of the Allied war effort during World War II.

Unlike most pilots, however, Saint-Exupéry was able to translate the very essence of his vocation into literature, publishing his first story in 1926.

Fellow writer André Gide had suggested that Saint-Exupéry put together a “sheaf” of writings about flying, and Saint-Exupéry obliged. He included reminiscences of his early days in flying school, the story of a fellow pilot whose unbreakable yet selfless willpower helped him survive a crash in the Andes, an account of his own near-fatal crash in the Egyptian desert, and some pages of reportage from the Spanish Civil War.    

Despite its seemingly varied content, Wind, Sand and Stars is a coherent work rather than a miscellany. The work’s opening chapters—especially “The Craft” and “The Men”—establish a philosophical tone that Saint-Exupéry maintains throughout. And although other sections turn to specific events, they are stripped of mundane details. Because Saint-Exupéry was reluctant to finalize his text, the English-language edition differs from the French, whose title, Terre des hommes, can be translated as “The Planet Where Men Live.” The English title emphasizes the work’s adventurous spirit, while the French suggests its almost mystical character. In either version the work is intimate yet epic, the record of an individual’s effort to establish his oneness with humankind and the universe. Saint-Exupéry took the final step in that effort in 1944, embarking upon a reconnaissance flight over German-occupied France from which he never returned.        

If you’re searching for a good edition of Wind, Sand and Stars, the original English translation was made by Lewis Galantière. The Time edition (New York, 1965) contains a preface from the Time Reading Program’s editors and an introduction by Pierre Clostermann. The Penguin edition (London, 2000) is a new translation by William Rees based directly on the French text, and includes an introduction by Rees and a note on the differences among the various versions.

Saint-Exupéry’s other books include Southern Mail (1929), Night Flight (1931), Flight to Arras (1942), and the children’s classic The Little Prince (published posthumously in 1943).

For further information on Saint-Exupéry, I suggest: Curtis Cate, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: His Life and Times (New York: Putnam, 1970); Joy D. Marie Robinson, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Boston: Twayne, 1984); Stacy Schiff, Saint-Exupéry: A Biography (New York: Knopf, 1994); and Paul Webster, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: The Life and Death of the Little Prince  (London: Macmillan, 1993).

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