One hundred and sixteen years after the birth of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, a very contradictory personality appears before us on the pages. On the one hand, his works are snapped up for beautiful quotes. Antoine de Saint-Exupery was certainly the master of the word. On the other hand, the Russian mentality, brought up on the ethical standards of our great writers of the 19th century, largely does not want to accept the behavior of this person.
Childhood
The family of the future writer and aviator was generous, large and poor. Earl the father worked as a salesman to support a family with five children. He died when little Antoine was not even five years old.
It was difficult for his mother, with whom Antoine maintained the most tender relations until his death, to give children a good education. Tonio, as his name was diminutive, manifested various interests and talents early: he draws, plays the violin, writes poetry, and invents something all the time. He is simply attracted by the technique. While already in college, he reads Latin in the evenings in order to understand how the Roman war machines of the time of Julius Caesar acted.
Youth Throwing
“I come from childhood” - the pilot will write later. And this statement will be very popular, as well as many other quotes. Antoine de Saint-Exupery, becoming a young man, will not immediately find his way. First, he fails in exams at the Maritime School, then enters the Academy in Paris - he must become an architect, but he is bored. At 21, he enlisted in a fighter aviation regiment. At first, only aircraft repair is trusted, then piloting classes begin, and in the end he becomes a military pilot. At 22, he receives the rank of second lieutenant. His regiment is stationed near Paris. And a year later, he crashes. His injuries are incompatible with work in the sky - a fracture of the skull. Saint-Ex (his friends called him) will be demobilized. The family by this time was completely impoverished. A young man sells books and cars, works at a tile factory. He does what he gets. It is then that he begins to write, while simultaneously trying to return to duty.
Aviation and literature
It took a lot of perseverance to get him a pilot in a postal company.
Antoine is 26 years old. He prints the first story "The Pilot." First, he carries mail, and then becomes the head of the airfield in Africa. Designs swarm in my head. The novel "Southern Postal" was written. The main character, Jacques Bernis, works as a pilot in the same desert as St. Ex. He recalls his childhood, trying to captivate his beloved named Genevieve in the world of dangers and worries. “The imagination is being played out in separation,” commented the author. It is beautifully said, as, however, are the other quotes. Antoine de Saint-Exupery - a complete romantic. But the girl will remain deaf to the calls of the lover and will not want to part with bourgeois life. A year later, in 1930, the next manuscript, “Night Flight,” will be ready and out of print.
Buenos Aires and Marriage
There, in 1930, a thirty-year-old aviator was appointed. He now runs the Argentine branch of the postal company. There he is introduced to the beautiful Consuelo Carrillo.
They say that it was mutual love at first sight. But what a strange continuation she had. When the time came to conclude a marriage, the courageous Tonio rescued at the city hall, burst into tears and put him off until returning to France. But Consuelo went there alone. Tonio, realizing that he could not without Consuelo, hurried after her. “The eyes are blind. You need to search with your heart ”- he will write later. And again, beautiful exupery quotes about love will be picked up by the whole world. He cried again and was forgiven. The Exupery family coldly accepted the newly made countess. Young lived strange. Husband on one floor, wife on another. A longtime friend of the St. Exx family did not dare to congratulate him on his marriage, but only on the release of a new novel. And rightly so, that he did not dare. Exupery in his apartment was visited by women. They lay with him in bed and drank champagne. He remembered some names, some completely did not remember. And what was left for his wife to do? Be jealous and go crazy. But he wrote: "To love is to look in one direction." Beautiful words again, and we grab onto beautiful quotes. Antoine de Saint-Exupery did not follow them. Perhaps they were not just words for him, but by no means a promise for action and maintaining a happy family life, which, in fact, he did not have. There was a bohemian existence that brought grief to his wife, who ended up in a psychiatric clinic for treatment. As a result, having decided to leave, Consuelo left for her homeland. And at this time in 1938, an aviator makes a flight from New York to Tierra del Fuego and gets into a very serious accident. Just think about it - thirty-two fractures, the possibility of amputation. The wife, who returned immediately as soon as she found out about the misfortune that befell her husband, is dying and spending the night near his bed. And went out. But their life has not changed. The frivolous spouse is still surrounded by beautiful ladies, and he has no time for his wife.
"Night flight"
This thing made the author famous. Antoine de Saint-Exupery wrote books between flights. The hero of the story Fabien will die, because nature is extremely insidious. There are rocks and unreliable gaps in the clouds that turn out to be a trap. When the crew dies, the director of the airline will not be able to rest. He will be tormented by anxiety about those who remain in the sky. But both he and the crews are happy with the ability to act, overcoming obstacles. Their actions, the meaning and essence of which are relentless movement through defeat to victories. It is in this sequence that Antoine de Saint-Exupery, whose books will be popular, offers to consider life. Actually, he himself had everything exactly like that. In this he did not lie.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince
In the year 39, when his "Planet of people" was released, a terrible war would begin. Saint-Ex is called, but not by the pilot, but by the instructor. He fights for the right to fly and emerges victorious. Captain Exupery conducts reconnaissance, aerial photography. However, in 1940, from Portugal, he sailed to emigrate to the United States. And the wife at this time is at home and does not even know where her husband is. She is sure that he is at the front. Saint-Ex summons his wife to him, so he holds her like a dog on a leash: he will let him go, or he will pull him to himself, commanding "nearby." And here is a wife in New York. And life goes the same way as in Paris. Exupery has violent novels that succeed one another, and his wife has dreary loneliness. But when the writer began a new work, he needed the care of his wife.
Now, having calmed down for a short while, Antoine de Saint-Exupery works tirelessly. "The Little Prince" is a fairy tale parable, which he dedicated to a childhood friend, who is in a concentration camp. A military pilot, when meeting with the Little Prince, is experiencing his childhood. And the Little Prince himself cares how to love his rose on his tiny asteroid.
Having quarreled with her, in the vast world he did not find a friend except for the Lanternman, faithful to his duty, but remembered the rose: "it is very sad when people forget their friends." He met a vain man and realized that "vain people are deaf to everything but praise." The little prince is dead. He did this consciously, only regretted his defenseless and proud rose, which has only four thorns. She has nothing more to defend herself from the terrible world.
And Saint Exupery himself died in a battle over the Mediterranean Sea in 1944. All that Exupery wrote, his works, is a song of the bonds of the fraternity, strong and fragile at the same time. This is their search, so as not to fade a person’s smile.