Nehaveigur

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was a French pilot in the early years of aviation. He flew military and civilian aircraft in the 1920s and 1940s before dying in a crash during a reconnaissance flight over Nazi-occupied France in 1944. He is most famous for his children’s book The Little Prince, which may be the most well-known work of French fiction.

Wind, Sand and Stars is probably Saint-Exupéry’s second most famous book. I read it first as a kid and remember someone telling me that Saint-Exupéry wasn’t actually a very good pilot, that he was overweight and in later years was only allowed to fly because of his reputation. Re-reading the book now I looked into it, and I think this isn’t entirely true. He was considered an excellent pilot by his colleagues. He did crash repeatedly, but it’s not clear if there would’ve been anything he could’ve done to avoid the crashes. Crashes were a lot more common back then. It’s true, though, that by the time World War II came around he had passed to maximum age for pilots and was only allowed to fly for the French Air Force because he lobbied for it.

Here is one of my favorite sections, on friendship:

Bit by bit, nevertheless, it comes over us that we shall never again hear the laughter of our friend, that this one garden is forever locked against us. And at that moment begins our true mourning, which, though it may not be rending, is yet a little bitter. For nothing, in truth, can replace that companion. Old friends cannot be created out of hand. Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of trials endured together, of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions. It is idle, having planted an acorn in the morning, to expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of the oak.

So life goes on. For years we plant the seed, we feel ourselves rich; and then come other years when time does its work and our plantation is made sparse and thin. One by one, our comrades slip away, deprive us of their shade.

This, then, is the moral taught us by [fellow pilot] Mermoz and his kind. We understand better, because of him, that what constitutes the dignity of a craft is that it creates a fellowship, that it binds men together and fashions for them a common language. For there is but one veritable problem – the problem of human relations.

If I summon up those memories that have left with me an enduring savor, if I draw up the balance sheet of the hours in my life that have truly counted, surely I find only those that no wealth could have procured me. True riches cannot be bought. One cannot buy the friendship of a Mermoz, of a companion to whom one is bound forever by ordeals suffered in common. There is no buying the night flight with its hundred thousand stars, its serenity, its few hours of sovereignty. It is not money that can procure for us that new vision of the world won through hardship – those trees, flowers, treasures made fresh by the dew and color of life which the dawn restores to us, this concert of little things that sustain us and constitute our compensation.

Happiness! It is useless to seek it elsewhere than in this warmth of human relations … And these human relations must be created. One must go through an apprenticeship to learn the job. Games and risk are a help here. When we exchange manly handshakes, compete in races, join together to save one of us who is in trouble, cry aloud for help in the hour of danger – only then do we learn that we are not alone on earth.

I’ve previously said that authenticity is overrated, but I have to make an exception for friendship.