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Thanks to your invaluable help in finding our beloved northern star (Impressive, Spectacular, Enchanting) who we had been looking for and who we finally found in this beautiful city.
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.
More information: The National WWII Museum-New Orleans
Le Petit Prince, The Little Prince in English, is a novella written and illustrated by French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It was first published in English and French in the United States by Reynal & Hitchcock in April 1943 and was published posthumously in France following liberation; Saint-Exupéry's works had been banned by the Vichy Regime.
The story follows a young prince who visits various planets, including Earth, and addresses themes of loneliness, friendship, love, and loss. Despite its style as a children's book, The Little Prince makes observations about life, adults, and human nature.
The Little Prince became Saint-Exupéry's most successful work, selling an estimated 140 million copies worldwide, which makes it one of the best-selling in history. The book has been translated into over 505 different languages and dialects worldwide, being the second most translated work ever published, trailing only the Bible. The Little Prince has been adapted to numerous art forms and media, including audio recordings, radio plays, live stage, film, cinema television, ballet, and opera.
The story of The Little Prince is recalled in a sombre, measured tone by the pilot-narrator, in memory of his small friend, a memorial to the prince -not just to the prince, but also to the time the prince and the narrator had together. The Little Prince was created when Saint-Exupéry was an ex-patriate and distraught about what was going on in his country and in the world. According to one analysis, the story of the Little Prince features a lot of fantastical, unrealistic elements.... You can't ride a flock of birds to another planet... The fantasy of the Little Prince works because the logic of the story is based on the imagination of children, rather than the strict realism of adults.
An exquisite literary perfectionist, akin to the 19th century French poet Stéphane Mallarmé, Saint-Exupéry produced draft pages covered with fine lines of handwriting, much of it painstakingly crossed out, with one word left standing where there were a hundred words, one sentence substitut[ing] for a page... He worked long hours with great concentration.
According to the author himself, it was extremely difficult to start his creative writing processes. The French author frequently wrote at night, usually starting at about 11 p.m. accompanied by a tray of strong black coffee.
A native speaker of French, Saint-Exupéry was never able to achieve anything more than haltingly poor English. Adèle Breaux, his young Northport English tutor to whom he later dedicated a writing (For Miss Adèle Breaux, who so gently guided me in the mysteries of the English language), related her experiences with her famous student as Saint-Exupéry in America, 1942–1943: A Memoir, published in 1971.
Saint-Exupéry's prodigious writings and studies of literature sometimes gripped him, and on occasion he continued his readings of literary works until moments before take-off on solitary military reconnaissance flights, as he was adept at both reading and writing while flying.
Saint-Exupéry frequently flew with a lined carnet (notebook) during his long, solo flights, and some of his philosophical writings were created during such periods when he could reflect on the world below him, becoming 'enmeshed in a search for ideals which he translated into fable and parable'.
In April 2017, The Little Prince became the world's most translated non-religious book, with translations into 300 languages. This number had risen to 600 by November 2024.
More information: Medium
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