Antoine de Saint Exupéry

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was a French aristocrat, writer, poet, and pioneering aviator. He became a laureate of several of France's highest literary awards and also won the U.S. National Book Award. He is best remembered for his novella The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) and for his lyrical aviation writings, including Wind, Sand and Stars and Night Flight.

Saint-Exupéry was a successful commercial pilot before World War II, working airmail routes in Europe, Africa and South America. At the outbreak of war, he joined the French Air Force (Armée de l'Air), flying reconnaissance missions until France's armistice with Germany in 1940.

After being demobilised from the French Air Force, he travelled to the United States to persuade its government to enter the war against Nazi Germany. Following a 27-month hiatus in North America, during which he wrote three of his most important works, he joined the Free French Air Force in North Africa, although he was far past the maximum age for such pilots and in declining health. He disappeared over the Mediterranean on his last assigned reconnaissance mission in July 1944, and is believed to have died at that time.

Prior to the war, Saint-Exupéry had achieved fame in France as an aviator. His literary works, among them The Little Prince, translated into over 250 languages and dialects, propelled his stature posthumously allowing him to achieve national hero status in France. He earned further widespread recognition with international translations of his other works. His 1939 philosophical memoir Terre des hommes became the name of a major international humanitarian group, and was also used to create the central theme (Terre des hommes–Man and His World) of the most successful world's fair of the 20th century, Expo 67 in Montreal, Canada.

Saint-Exupéry was born in Lyon to an aristocratic family that could trace its lineage back several centuries. He was the third of five children of the Countess Marie de Fonscolombe and Count Jean de Saint-Exupéry (1863-1904).His father, an executive of the Le Soleil (The Sun) insurance brokerage, died of a stroke in Lyon's La Foux train station before his son's fourth birthday. His father's death would greatly affect the entire family, transforming their status to that of 'impoverished aristocrats'.

Saint-Exupéry was the third of five children, with three sisters and a younger blond-haired brother, François, who at age 15 would tragically die of rheumatic fever contracted while both were attending a Marianist school in Fribourg, Switzerland, during World War I. Saint-Exupéry attended to his brother, his closest confidant, beside François' death bed, and later wrote that François "...remained motionless for an instant. He did not cry out. He fell as gently as a [young] tree falls", an imagery which would much later be recrafted in the climactic ending of The Little Prince. At age 17, and now the only "man" in the family following the death of his brother, the young author was left as distraught as his mother and sisters, but he soon assumed the mantle of a protector and took to consoling them.

After twice failing his final exams at a preparatory Naval Academy (intentionally, some believe), Saint-Exupéry entered the École des Beaux-Arts as an auditor to study architecture for 15 months, again without graduating, and then fell into the habit of accepting odd jobs. In 1921, Saint-Exupéry began his military service with the 2e Régiment de chasseurs à cheval (2nd Regiment of Light Cavalry) and was sent to Neuhof, near Strasbourg. While there he took private flying lessons and the following year was offered a transfer from the French Army to the French Air Force. He received his pilot's wings after being posted to the 37th Fighter Regiment in Casablanca, Morocco. Later, being reposted to the 34th Aviation Regiment at Le Bourget on the outskirts of Paris and then experiencing the first of his many aircraft crashes, Saint-Exupéry bowed to the objections of the family of his fiancée, future novelist Louise Lévêque de Vilmorin, and left the air force to take an office job. The couple ultimately broke off their engagement and he worked at several more odd jobs without success over the next few years.

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 desert. His duties included negotiating the safe release of downed fliers taken hostage by hostile Moors, a perilous task which earned him his first Légion d'honneur from the French Government.

In 1929, Saint-Exupéry was transferred to Argentina, where he was appointed director of the Aeroposta Argentina airline. He surveyed new air routes across South America, negotiated agreements and even 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.

Saint-Exupéry's first novella, L'Aviateur (The Aviator), was published in a short-lived literary magazine le Navire d'argent (The Silver Ship).

In 1929, his first book, Courrier Sud (Southern Mail) was published; his career as an aviator and journalist was about to burgeon. That same year, Saint-Exupéry flew the Casablanca–Dakar route.

The 1931 publication of Vol de nuit (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 became the winner of the prix Femina. The novel mirrored his experiences as a mail pilot and director of the Aeroposta Argentina airline, based in Argentina.

That same year, at Grasse, Saint-Exupéry married Consuelo Suncin (née Suncín Sandoval), a twice-widowed Salvadoran writer and artist, who possessed a bohemian spirit and a "viper's tongue". Saint-Exupéry, thoroughly enchanted by the diminutive woman, would leave and then return to her many times — she was both his muse and over the long term, the source of much of his angst. It was a stormy union, with Saint-Exupéry travelling frequently and indulging in numerous affairs, most notably with the Frenchwoman Hélène de Vogüé (1908–2003), known as "Nelly" and referred to as "Madame de B." in Saint-Exupéry biographies. De Vogüé became Saint-Exupéry's literary executrix after his death, and also wrote her own Saint-Exupéry biography under a pseudonym, Pierre Chevrier.

On 30 December 1935, at 02:45 a.m., after 19 hours and 44 minutes in the air, Saint-Exupéry, along with his mechanic-navigator André Prévot, crashed in the Sahara desert. They were attempting to break the speed record in a Paris-to-Saigon air race (called a raid) and win a prize of 150,000 francs. The crash site is thought to have been near the Wadi Natrun valley, close to the Nile Delta.

Both Saint-Exupéry and Prévot miraculously survived the crash, only to face rapid dehydration in the intense desert heat. Their maps were primitive and ambiguous, leaving them with no idea of their location. Lost among the sand dunes, their sole supplies were grapes, two oranges, a thermos of sweet coffee, chocolate, a handful of crackers, and a small ration of wine. The pair had only one day's worth of liquid. They both began to see mirages and experience auditory hallucinations, which were quickly followed by more vivid hallucinations. By the second and third day, they were so dehydrated that they stopped sweating altogether. Finally, on the fourth day, a Bedouin on a camel discovered them and administered a native rehydration treatment that saved their lives. The near brush with death would figure prominently in his 1939 memoir, Wind, Sand and Stars, winner of several awards. Saint-Exupéry's classic novella The Little Prince, which begins with a pilot being marooned in the desert, is, in part, a reference to this experience.

Saint-Exupéry continued to write until the spring of 1943, when he left the United States with American troops bound for North Africa in World War II. During the war, he initially flew a Bloch MB.174 with the GR II/33 reconnaissance squadron of the Armée de l'Air. After France's 1940 armistice with Germany, he voyaged to North America, escaping through Portugal and arriving in New York on the last day of 1940 with the intention of convincing the U.S. 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. Consuelo followed him to New York several months later after a chaotic migration to the southern French town of Oppède, where she lived in an artist's commune, the basis of her autobiography, Kingdom of the Rocks: Memories of Oppède.

Between January 1941 and April 1943, the Saint-Exupérys lived in New York City's Central Park South in twin penthouse apartments: The Bevin House mansion in Asharoken on Long Island, New York; and a townhouse on Beekman Place in Manhattan.

Some researchers have implied that during his stay in the United States, Saint-Exupéry became intimate with Anne Morrow Lindbergh, wife of the famous American aviator Charles Lindbergh. Ironically, while his intention was to convince the U.S. Government of the need to fight fascism, both Anne and her husband Charles were strongly advocating against American intervention in the European war. Anne wrote a 41-page booklet, The Wave of the Future, in support of her husband, who was lobbying for a U.S.–German peace treaty similar to Stalin's treaty with Hitler. The Roosevelt administration subsequently attacked The Wave of the Future as "the bible of every American Nazi, Fascist, Bundist and Appeaser", and the booklet became one of the most despised writings of the period.

With further irony, Saint-Exupéry and Charles Lindbergh both became P-38 pilots during World War II, with a disgraced Lindbergh fighting surreptitiously in the Pacific War, and with Saint-Exupéry fighting and dying very publicly over the Mediterranean.

It was after Saint-Exupéry's arrival in the United States that the author adopted the hyphen within his surname, as he was annoyed with Americans addressing him as "Mr. Exupéry". It was also during this period that he authored Pilote de guerre (Flight to Arras), which earned widespread acclaim, and Lettre à un otage (Letter to a Hostage), dedicated to the 40 million French living under Nazi oppression, plus numerous shorter pieces in support of France. The Saint-Exupérys also resided in Quebec City, Canada for several weeks during the late spring of 1942, during which time they met a precocious eight-year-old boy with blond curly hair, Thomas, the son of philosopher Charles De Koninck, with whom the Saint-Exupérys resided.

Saint-Exupéry wrote and illustrated The Little Prince in New York City and Asharoken in mid-to-late 1942, with the manuscript being completed in October. It would be first published months later in early 1943 in both English and French, but only in the United States. It would later appear in his native homeland posthumously, after the liberation of France.

In April 1943, following his 27 months in North America, Saint-Exupéry departed with an American military convoy for Algiers, to fly with the Free French Air Force and fight with the Allies in a Mediterranean-based squadron. Then 43, soon to be promoted to the rank of commandant (major), he was far older than most men in operational units. Although eight years over the age limit for such pilots, he had petitioned endlessly for an exemption which had finally been approved by General Dwight Eisenhower. However, Saint-Exupéry had been suffering pain and immobility due to his many previous crash injuries, to the extent that he could not dress himself in his own flight suit or even turn his head leftwards to check for enemy aircraft.

Saint-Exupéry was assigned with a number of other pilots to F-5 Lightnings, which an officer described as "war-weary, non-airworthy craft". The Lightnings were also more sophisticated than models he previously flew, requiring him to undertake seven weeks of stringent training before his first mission. After wrecking a P-38 through engine failure on his second mission, he was grounded for eight months, but was then later reinstated to flight duty on the personal intervention of General Ira Eaker, Deputy Commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces.

After Saint-Exupéry resumed flying, he also returned to his longtime habit of reading and writing while flying his single seat F-5B (a specially configured P-38 reconnaissance variant). His prodigious studies of literature gripped him, and on occasion he continued his readings of literary works until moments before takeoff, with mechanics having warmed up and tested his aircraft for him in preparation for his flight. On one flight, to the chagrin of his colleagues awaiting his arrival, he circled the airport for an hour after returning, so that he could finish reading a novel. Saint-Exupéry frequently flew with a lined notebook (carnet) during his long solitary flights, and some of his philosophical writings were created during such periods when he could reflect on the world below him.

Prior to his return to flight duties with his squadron in North Africa, the collaborationist Vichy Regime unilaterally promoted Saint-Exupéry as one of its members — quite a shock to the author, himself. Subsequently, French General (later, French President) Charles de Gaulle, whom Saint-Exupéry and others held in low regard, publicly implied that the author-pilot was supporting Germany. Depressed at this, he began to drink heavily. Additionally, his health, both physically and mentally, had been deteriorating. Saint-Exupéry was said to be intermittently subject to depression and there was discussion of taking him off flying status.

 

Saint-Exupéry's last assigned reconnaissance mission was to collect intelligence on German troop movements in and around the Rhone Valley preceding the Allied invasion of southern France ("Operation Dragoon"). Although he had been reinstated to his old squadron with the provision that he was to fly only five missions, on 31 July 1944, he took off in an unarmed P-38 on his ninth reconnaissance mission from an airbase on Corsica. To the great alarm of the squadron compatriots who revered him, he did not return, dramatically vanishing without a trace. Word of his disappearance shortly spread across the literary world and then into international headlines. A French woman reported much later having watched an aircraft crash around noon near the Bay of Carqueiranne off Toulon. An unidentifiable body wearing French colors was found several days after his disappearance, east of the Frioul archipelago south of Marseille, and buried in Carqueiranne in September.

Discovery at sea

In September 1998, Jean-Claude Bianco, a fisherman, found east of Riou Island, south of Marseille, a silver identity bracelet (gourmette) bearing the names of Saint-Exupéry and of his wife Consuelo and his American publisher, Reynal & Hitchcock, hooked to a piece of fabric, presumably from his flight suit. The recovery of his bracelet was an emotionally-laden event in France, where Saint-Exupéry had by then assumed the mantle of a national icon, and some disputed its authenticity as it was found far from his intended flight path, implying that the aircraft may not have been shot down.

In May 2000, Luc Vanrell, a diver, found the partial remains of a Lockheed P-38 Lightning spread over thousands of square metres of the seabed off the coast of Marseille, near to where the bracelet was previously found. The discovery galvanized the country, which for decades had conducted searches for his aircraft and speculated on Saint-Exupéry's fate. After a two-year delay imposed by the French government, the remnants of the aircraft were recovered in October 2003.

On 7 April 2004, Patrick Granjean, head of the French Ministry of Culture, Captain Frederic Solano of the French Air Force, plus investigators from the French Underwater Archaeological Department confirmed that the remnants of the crash wreckage were, indeed, from Saint-Exupéry's P-38 F-5B reconnaissance variant. No marks or holes attributable to gunfire were found; however, that was not considered significant as only a small portion of the aircraft was recovered. In June 2004, the fragments were given to the Air and Space Museum in Le Bourget, Paris, where Saint-Exupéry's life is commemorated in a special exhibit.

The location of the crash site and the bracelet are less than 80 km by sea from where the unidentified French serviceman was found in Carqueiranne, and it remains plausible, but has not been confirmed, that the body was carried there by sea currents after the crash over the course of several days.

Speculations in 1981 and 2008

In March 2008, a former Luftwaffe pilot, 85-year-old Horst Rippert (the brother of the singer Ivan Rebroff), told La Provence, a Marseille newspaper, that he engaged and downed a P-38 Lightning on 31 July 1944 in the area where Saint-Exupéry's aircraft was found. Rippert, who was on a reconnaissance mission over the Mediterranean sea, said he saw and engaged a P-38 with a French emblem near Toulon. Rippert, who said he saw the P-38 crash into the sea, was the second Luftwaffe fighter pilot to state this publicly, after Robert Heichele reported in 1981 that he had shot down Saint-Exupéry's aircraft.

Two books were published by French and German researchers discussing the alleged Saint-Exupéry shootdown. Rippert's and Heichele's stories are unverifiable, possibly self-promotional, and have met with criticism from German, French and British investigators. Contemporary archival sources, including intercepted Luftwaffe signals, strongly suggest that Saint-Exupéry was not shot down by a German aircraft, although an American Lightning flown by Second Lieutenant Gene Meredith was shot down the previous day on 30 July.

By contrast, there were no claims on file from either of the Luftwaffe pilots, Heichele or Rippert, for a Lightning on 31 July 1944, nor any supporting Allied signals intelligence or radar reports for that area on that date. Rippert's explanation that he and his Luftwaffe squadron colleagues immediately 'covered up' the shootdown after-the-fact due to Saint-Exupéry's stature was met with extreme skepticism, as the Allies had made no mention of the author's status for two to three days after he failed to return from his mission.

Literary works

While not precisely autobiographical, much of Saint-Exupéry's work is inspired by his experiences as a pilot. One notable example is his novella, The Little Prince, a poetic tale self-illustrated in watercolours in which a pilot stranded in the desert meets a young prince fallen to Earth from a tiny asteroid. 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". Saint-Exupéry's notable literary works (published English translations in brackets) are constituted by:

• L'Aviateur (1926) (The Aviator, in the anthology A Sense of Life)
• Courrier sud (1929) (Southern Mail) – made as a movie in French
• Vol de nuit (1931) (Night Flight) – winner of the full prix Femina, and made twice as a movie and a TV film, both in English
• Terre des hommes (1939) – winner of the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française

Wind, Sand and Stars (simultaneous distinct English version) – winner of the U.S. National Book Award

• Pilote de guerre (1942) (titled in English as: Flight to Arras) – winner of the Grand Prix Littéraire de l'Aéro-Club de France
• Le Petit Prince (1943) (The Little Prince), posthumous in France – translated into more than 250 languages and dialects, and among the top three selling books in the world; made as both movies and TV films in a number of languages, and adapted to numerous other media in many languages
• Lettre à un otage (1944) (Letter to a Hostage), posthumous in English
• Citadelle (1948) (titled in English: as The Wisdom of the Sands), posthumous – winner of the Prix des Ambassadeurs
• Lettres à une jeune fille (1950), posthumous
• Lettres de jeunesse, 1923–1931 (1953), posthumous
• Carnets (1953), posthumous
• Lettres à sa mère (1955), posthumous
• Un sens à la vie (1956), (A Sense of Life), posthumous
• Lettres de Saint-Exupéry (1960), posthumous
• Lettres aux americains (1960), posthumous
• Écrits de guerre, 1939–1944 (1982) (Wartime Writings, 1939–1944), posthumous
• Manon, danseuse (2007), posthumous
• Lettres à l'inconnue (2008), posthumous

Other works

During the 1930s, Saint-Exupéry led a mixed life as an aviator, journalist, author and publicist for Air France, Aéropostale's successor. His journalistic writings for Paris-Soir and other newspapers covered events in Indochina and the Far East (1934), the Mediterranean, Soviet Union and Moscow (1935), and the Spanish Civil War (1936–1937). Saint-Exupéry additionally wrote a number of shorter pieces, essays and commentaries for various other newspapers and magazines.

Notable among those during World War II was An Open Letter To Frenchmen Everywhere, which was highly controversial in its attempt to rally support for France against Nazi oppression. It was published in The New York Times Magazine in November 1942, and also in its original French in Le Canada, de Montréal at the same time and in Pour la Victoire the following month.

Censorship and publication bans

Pilote de guerre (Flight To Arras), describing the German invasion of France, was slightly censored when it was released in its original French in his homeland, by removing a derogatory remark made of Hitler (which French publisher Gallimard failed to reinsert in subsequent editions after World War II). However, shortly after the book's release in France, Nazi appeasers and Vichy supporters objected its praise of one of Saint-Exupéry's squadron colleagues, Captain Jean Israël, who was portrayed as being amongst the squadron's bravest defenders during the Battle of France. 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, along with prohibitions against further printings of Saint-Exupéry's other works. Prior to France's liberation new printings of Saint-Exupéry's works were made available there only by means of covert print runs, such as that of February 1943 when 1,000 copies of an underground version of Pilote de guerre were printed in Lyon.

A further complication occurred due to Saint-Exupéry's and others' view of General Charles de Gaulle, who was held in low regard. Early in the war, de Gaulle became the leader of the Free French Forces in exile, with his headquarters in London. Even though both men were working to free France from Nazi occupation, Saint-Exupéry viewed de Gaulle with apprehension as a possible post-war dictator, and consequently provided no public support to the General. In response, de Gaulle struck back at the author by implying that the author was a German supporter and having his literary works banned in France's North African colonies. Saint-Exupéry's writings were, with irony, banned simultaneously in both occupied France and Free France.

Extension of copyrights in France

Due to Saint-Exupéry's wartime death, his estate received the civil code designation Mort pour la France (English: Died for France), which was applied by the French Government in 1948. Amongst the law's provisions is an increase of 30 years in the duration of copyright; thus most of Saint-Exupéry's creative works will not fall out of copyright status in France for an extra 30 years.

Honours and legacy

 

• Images of remembrance

 

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  Commemorative inscription in the Panthéon of Paris.

   

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  Portrait and images from The Little Prince on a 50-franc banknote

   

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  Historical marker where the Saint-Exupérys resided in Quebec.

   

• Saint-Exupéry is commemorated with an inscription in the Panthéon in Paris, France's repository of historical greats. Although his body was never identified, his name was added to the Panthéon in November 1967 by a French legislative act. The inscription reads: "A LA MÉMOIRE DE • ANTOINE DE SAINT EXUPERY • POÈTE ROMANCIER AVIATEUR • DISPARU AU COURS D'UNE MISSION • DE RECONNAISSANCE AÉRIENNE • LE 31 JUILLET 1944" (To the memory of Antoine de Saint Exupery, poet, novelist, aviator, missing during an aerial reconnaissance mission, 31 July 1944). Amongst other honours from France, he was named a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur in April 1931, promoted to an Officier de la Légion d'honneur in January 1939 and also posthumously awarded the Croix de guerre avec Palme in 1944.
• 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. The French Government also later minted a 100-franc commemorative coin, with Saint-Exupéry on its obverse side, and the Little Prince on its reverse. Brass-plated souvenir Monnaie de Paris commemorative medallions were also created in his honour, depicting the pilot's portrait over the P-38 Lightning aircraft he last flew.
• In 1999, the Government of Quebec and Quebec City added a historical marker to the family home of Charles De Koninck, head of the Department of Philosophy at Université Laval, where the Saint-Exupérys stayed while lecturing in Canada for several weeks during May and June 1942.
• In 2000, on the centenary of his birth, in the city where he was born, the Lyon Satolas Airport was renamed the Lyon-Saint Exupéry Airport in his honour. Lyon's TGV bullet train station was also renamed as 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 for him as Rue Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Museums and exhibits

 

A portion of the Saint-Exupéry exhibit, in the French Air & Space Museum, Le Bourget, Paris.

 

The facade of the Musée Antoine de Saint Exupéry in Tarfaya, Morocco.

 

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-Exupery-d'Agay, have created a permanent exhibit of 300 m² dedicated to the author, pilot, person and humanist. The Espace Saint Exupéry exhibit, officially inaugurated on the aviator's birthday in 2006, traces each stage of his life as an airmail pioneer, eclectic intellectual-artist and military pilot. It includes artifacts from his life: photographs, his drawings, letters, some of his original notebooks (carnets) he scribbled in voluminously and which were later published posthumously, plus remnants of the unarmed P-38 he flew on his last reconnaissance mission and which were recovered from the Mediterranean Sea.
• In Tarfaya, Morocco, next to the Cape Juby airfield where Saint-Exupéry was based as an Aéropostale airmail pilot/station manager, an exhibit 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.
• In São Paulo, Brazil, through 2009, the Oca Art Exhibition Centre presented Saint-Exupéry and The Little Prince as part of The Year of France and The Little Prince. The displays covered over 10,000 m² on four floors, and chronicled Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince and their philosophies, as visitors passed through theme areas of the desert, asteroids, stars and the cosmos. The ground floor of the giant exhibition was laid out as a huge map of the routes flown by the author with Aeropostale in South America and around the world. Also included was a full scale replica of the author's crashed Caudron Simoun, lying wrecked on the ground of a simulated Libyan desert following his disastrous Paris-Saigon race attempt. The miraculous survival of Saint-Exupéry and his mechanic/navigator was subsequently chronicled in the award-winning memoir Wind, Sand and Stars (Terre des hommes), and also formed the introduction of his most famous work The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince).
• In 2011, the City of Toulouse, France, home of Airbus and the pioneering airmail carrier Aéropostale, in conjunction with the Estate of Saint-Exupery-d'Agay and the Youth Foundation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, hosted a major exposition on Saint-Exupéry and his experience with Aéropostale. The exposition, titled L’année Antoine de Saint-Exupéry à Toulouse, exhibited selected personal artifacts of the author-aviator, including gloves, photos, posters, maps, manuscripts, drawings, models of the aircraft he flew, some of the wreckage from his Sahara Desert plane crash, and the personal silver identification bracelet engraved with his and Consuelo's name, presented by his U.S. publisher, which was recovered from his last, ultimate crash site in the Mediterranean Sea.
• On the 27 February 2012, Russia's Ulyanovsk State University inaugurated its new International Saint-Exupéry Centre, led by its Director, Elena Mironova, an associate professor of French. The center will serve as a permanent museum dedicated to the author-aviator, as well as a cultural and linguistics center for the university. The museum was established with the assistance of Civil Aviation College teacher Nikolai Yatsenko, an author of 12 publications on Saint-Exupéry who personally donated some 6,000 related items. Located in Ulyanovsk, the university's new center will also help support the study of international languages in a city which is promoting itself as a major aerospace and cultural centre. The centre's opening was attended by Ulyanovsk Governor Sergey Morozov, Sergey Krasnov of the Ulyanovsk Civil Aviation College and other aerospace and academic dignitaries, as well as Veronique Jober, Sorbonne professor of Slavic languages, who addressed the audience by video link from Paris.
• A number of other prominent exhibitions were created in France and the United States, many of them in 2000, honouring the centenary of the author-aviator's birth.

International

• Saint-Exupéry's 1939 memoir Terre des hommes (titled as Wind, Sand and Stars in English) was chosen to create the central theme (Terre des Hommes–Man and His World) of the 1967 International and Universal Exposition in Montreal, Canada (Expo '67), the most successful world's fair of the 20th century. The central theme, which also generated the 17 subsidiary elements used for the world's fair, was elucidated at a 1963 Montebello, Quebec, conference held with some of Canada's leading thinkers. At Montebello, French-Canadian author Gabrielle Roy helped choose the central theme by quoting Saint-Exupéry on mankind's place in the universe:

“ «Être homme, c'est précisément être responsable. C'est sentir, en posant sa pierre, que l'on contribue à bâtir le monde» (to be a man is to be responsible, to feel that by laying one's own stone, one contributes to building the world) ” Additionally, Michèle Lalonde and André Prévost's oratorio Terre des hommes, performed at the Place des Nations opening ceremonies and attended by the international delegates of the participating countries, strongly projected the French writer's 'idealist rhetoric'. The Countess de Saint Exupéry (1901–1979), Saint-Exupéry's widow, was also a guest of honour at the opening ceremonies of the world's fair.

• Asteroid 2578 Saint-Exupéry, discovered in November 1975 by Russian astronomer Tamara Smirnova and provisionally cataloged as Asteroid 1975 VW3, was renamed in the author-aviator's honour. Another asteroid was named as 46610 Bésixdouze (translated to and from both hexidecimal 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 as of 2011. Only three years after his death, the pilot-aviator was first featured on an 8 franc French West Africa airmail stamp (Scott Catalog # C11). France followed several months later in 1948 with an 80 franc airmail stamp honouring him (CB1), and later with another stamp honouring both him and airmail pioneer Jean Mermoz, plus the supersonic Concorde passenger airliner, in 1970 (C43). In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the writer's death, Israel issued a stamp honoring "Saint-Ex" and The Little Prince in 1994.
• In Argentina and Brazil, where Saint-Exupéry became the founding director of the pioneering South American airmail airline Aeroposta Argentina:
  • the Aguja Saint Exupery is a mountain peak located near the Cerro Chaltén (also known as Monte Fitz Roy) in the Los Glaciares National Park in Patagonia, Argentina, The mountain peak is named in Saint-Exupéry's honour;
  • the San Antonio Oeste municipal airport was named Aerodromo Saint Exupery. A small museum exhibit resides in the airport building;
  • the small Brazilian airport serving Ocauçu, São Paulo is named after the pilot, and
  • several Argentinian schools are also named after the author-aviator.

Institutions and schools

• In 1960 the humanitarian organization Terre des Hommes, named after Saint-Exupéry's 1939 philosophical memoir Terre des hommes (titled as Wind, Sand and Stars in English), was founded in Lausanne, Switzerland by Edmond Kaiser. Other Terre des Hommes societies were later organized in more countries with similar social aid and humanitarian goals. The several independent groups joined together to form a new umbrella organization, Terre des Hommes-Fédération Internationale (TDHFI, in English: International Federation of Terre des Hommes, or IFTDH). The national constituents first met in 1966 to formalize their new parent organization, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. As of 2009 eleven organizations in Canada, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and Syria belonged to the Federation. An important part of their works is their consulting role to the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).
• In June 2009, the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Youth Foundation (FASEJ) was founded in Paris by the Saint-Exupéry–d'Agay Estate, to promote education, art, culture, health and sports for youth worldwide, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. This organization, which follows Saint-Exupéry's philosophies and his memory, was financed in part by the sale of one of his original 1936 handwritten manuscripts at a Sotheby's auction for €312,750.
• Numerous public schools, lycées, high schools, colleges and technical schools have been named in honour of Saint-Exupéry across France, Europe, Québec and South America, as well as at least one in Africa. The École Antoine de Saint-Exupéry de Kigali, a French international school in Rwanda, is named after him.

Other

Numerous other tributes have been awarded to honour Saint-Exupéry's 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-Exupery's 110th birthday with a special logotype depicting the little prince being hoisted through the heavens by a flock of birds.
• Numerous streets and place names are named after the author-aviator throughout France and other countries.
• Cafe Saint-Ex, a popular bar and nightclub in Washington, D.C. near the U-Street corridor, holds Saint-Exupéry as its name source.
• Uruguayan airline BQB Líneas Aéreas named one of its aircraft, an ATR-72 (CX-JPL), in honor of the aviator.

Popular culture

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 1997 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 recreation.
• A 2004 German short dramatic film, "Der letzte Flug" (The Last Flight), portrays a fictional Luftwaffe pilot, Lieutenant Henrici Müller, who returns to his airbase on 31 July 1944 after having shot down a reconnaissance version Lightning during a mission to Corsica. He learns in the film's final moments that the missing pilot is Saint-Exupéry. The same Lufwaffe pilot is shown as an elderly man reminiscing that fateful day. He concludes the drama by reciting the final paragraph from The Little Prince. The 11-minute film was directed and written by Roger Moench, and starred André Hennicke.

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."
• In 2000, Jean-Pierre de Villers wrote a novella telling the imagined story of Saint-Exupéry's last flight, The Last Flight of the Little Prince.
• 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.

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.
• The Norwegian progressive rock band Gazpacho's concept album Tick Tock is based on Saint-Exupéry's desert crash.
• "P 38", a song about Saint-Exupéry's last mission, was written in 1984 by the Swedish popgroup Webstrarna.
• "On the Planet of the Living", a song sung by Eduard Khil, was dedicated to Saint-Exupéry.

Theatre

In August 2011, the world premiere of Saint-Ex, a theatrical production of Saint-Exupéry's life, was launched at the Weston Playhouse in Weston, Vermont. The live theatre musical explores in drama and song the aviator-author's early life, the aerial band-of-brothers he flew with at Aéropostale, and the raucous relations between him and his fiery Latin writer-artist wife, born Consuelo Suncín Sandoval Zeceña. The production was written by the husband and wife team of lyricist Sean Barry and composer Jenny Giering, and staged with the assistance of director Matt Castle and set designer Tim Mackabee, plus choreography by Jennifer Turey. The leading cast members include Alexander Gemignani (playing Saint-Exupéry), Krysta Rodriguez (playing his tempestuous wife Consuelo), Cass Morgan (Saint-Exupéry's mother, author Countess Marie de Fonscolombe), plus Charlie Brady (Aéropostale pilot and Air France director Henri Guillaumet). Although the musical production successfully debuted on 25 August 2011, the theatre was soon deluged with two-to-four metres of water generated by Hurricane Irene, which struck the east coast of the United States three days later. After pumping the floodwaters from the building and partially restoring the costumes and stage sets, the musical production "resurfaced" on 2 September.

Quotations

• A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
• A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He says "I was beaten", he does not say "My men were beaten".
• Tell me who admires and loves you, and I will tell you who you are.
• No single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be born slowly (Flight to Arras, 74)."
• A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
• Before we blame we should first see whether we cannot excuse.
• A pile of rock ceases to be a pile of rock the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
• He who would travel happily must travel light.
• I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.
• It is such a secret place, the land of tears.
• In giving, you throw a bridge across the chasm of your solitude.
• It is only with the heart that one can see properly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
• In every crowd are certain persons who seem just like the rest, yet who bear amazing messages.
• One can be a brother only in something. Where there is no tie that binds men, men are not united but merely lined up.
• Only children know what they are looking for.
• The most entertaining surface on earth is the human face.
• The time for action is now. It's never too late to do something.
• War is not an adventure. It is a disease.
• What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it.
• When you've finished getting yourself ready in the morning, you must go get the planet ready.
• Whoever loves above all the approach of love will never know the joy of attaining it.
• It is the duty of the ship's captain to make port, cost what it may.
• I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things.

Literary works

• The Aviator
• Courrier sud
• Flight to Arras
• The Little Prince
• Night Flight
• A Sense of Life
• Wind, Sand and Stars

Media and popular culture

• List of The Little Prince adaptations
• Saint-Ex, a 1997 British biopic