Essays on literary works - 2024

The eyes only see what the heart already knows (Antoine de Saint-Exupery “The Little Prince”)

"Where do I come from? I come from my childhood." - A. Saint-Exupéry

Anyone who has read Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince knows how well this statement captures the essence of his work. Among the 20th-century artists, Saint-Exupéry is one of the most direct and natural. It's hard to imagine him as a professional writer. I think he remained a pilot at heart, simply sharing his own story and his view of the world.

And yet, Saint-Exupéry did more than anyone else to blur the lines between art and reality, between the individual and the vast human collective known as humanity.

Of course, Saint-Exupéry could have answered the question "Where do you come from?" in many ways. Born an aristocrat, the son of a count, Antoine was born in 1900 in the French city of Lyon. After his father's death, he moved with his mother to her family's ancestral castle on the Mediterranean coast. Antoine studied at a Jesuit college, then went to Paris to continue his education, preparing for the naval academy. However, in 1919, he enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts to study architecture. In 1921, Saint-Exupéry, having decided to become a pilot, joined the fighter aviation. He worked in repair shops, passed the exam for a civilian pilot's license, obtained a military pilot's license in Morocco, and began working for various aviation companies.

Saint-Exupéry's career as a writer began in 1926 with the publication of the novella "The Aviator." His subsequent works, including the non-fiction novels Southern Mail, Night Flight, and Wind, Sand and Stars, his essays and sketches about the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1937, the fairy tale The Little Prince, and the unfinished book of reflections on man and religion, Citadel, make up the main body of his work. Like Paul Éluard, Saint-Exupéry journeyed "from the horizon of the individual to the horizon of all."

Saint-Exupéry's life was full of dramatic events. He survived several severe aviation accidents, made many dangerous flights, and participated in the struggle of the Spanish Republicans. Returning to North Africa in 1943 to join the Resistance movement, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was killed during a combat mission just three weeks before the liberation of France.

Saint-Exupéry's books are not "novels of alienation" like Kafka's, but rather novels of solidarity. They depict the moral state of a special, closed, and small group. It is an oasis where the sources of humanity flow and high feelings grow. The writer's heroes—pilots—spend most of their lives at a height from which earthly life is seen differently, in its large and important outlines.

In aviation, camaraderie is an absolute law of the environment. If you don't come to my rescue today, you will certainly perish tomorrow. Death becomes a simple probability of daily risk. Therefore, for a pilot, the warmth of a home hearth is especially touching and dear. This interplay of the everyday and the heroic is translated by Saint-Exupéry into the language of poetry.

As a humanist writer, Saint-Exupéry has much in common with Romain Rolland. He preferred spiritual values to material ones and refused to measure the world by the standards of bourgeois society. A passionate desire for freedom and the liberation of man, a high concept of human brotherhood, friendship, and camaraderie defined the main motives of Saint-Exupéry's work.

Like Rolland, [Saint-Exupéry] emphasized the individual's responsibility for the fate of society. A free person, wrote Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, is one who has 'spread their wings,' who is no longer bound to fleeting pleasures, who is willing to die for all people, and who can say, "I am responsible for everything." Labor for the common good—such was the program of Saint-Exupéry, both artist and thinker.

Saint-Exupéry's novels are unconventional in form. They are the simple tales of a pilot about everyday life, its difficulties, and its concerns. Plot, for Saint-Exupéry, is of secondary importance. The generalizations that the writer arrives at do not arise from the plot but from the reflections of a man at the controls of a plane, crossing thousands of miles, flying from the Sahara to America, from America to France.

The world that Saint-Exupéry sees through the eyes of a pilot and an artist has a completely different scale from the world that is territorially divided and torn apart by contradictions. The writer sought to help readers understand the true scale of human life and human potential, but he did so with remarkable modesty, avoiding false pathos.

Saint-Exupéry's philosophical tale, The Little Prince, is the most poetic expression of the writer's ideas. The tiny inhabitant of the asteroid B-612 unexpectedly appears before a pilot who has crashed in the sands of the Sahara. The pilot, possibly doomed to perish and suffering from thirst, finds in the Little Prince a friend who saves him from loneliness. Over the week it takes to repair the plane, the little prince instills in the pilot a belief in life. While the man was perishing from thirst and feeling cut off from the world, forgotten by people, he heard an incessant voice and seemed to even see the Little Prince.

Was this really the case? Saint-Exupéry does not hide the fact that his story is a fairy tale. The Little Prince embodies an eternally living part of the human soul. The little boy personifies those qualities that give meaning and content to human life. He has a kind heart, a sensible view of the world. He is hardworking, constant in his affections, and devoid of any aggressive or greedy desires. From the Little Prince's stories, we learn about his small planet and his wanderings with birds to other worlds.

On other planets, the Little Prince saw many people who had devoted their lives to unreasonable goals. There was the king who "rules" the world without ruling anyone; the vain man, intoxicated by his vanity; the bitter drunkard; the "businessman" engaged in the meaningless counting of stars.

On Earth, where the Little Prince ended up, there were a great many such people (one hundred and eleven kings!). The life of adults generally seems unreasonable to the Little Prince. It turned out that without people it is bad, but with people it is also bad. What people do is incomprehensible from the standpoint of simple humanity. The meaningless has power, while the true and the beautiful seem weak. All that is best in a person—tenderness of soul, responsiveness, truthfulness, friendliness, sincerity—makes him weak.

However, in this absurdly topsy-turvy world, the Little Prince encountered genuine and profound truth. The Fox revealed to him a vital, wondrous secret: human beings can form bonds of love, affection, or what he termed "tameness." Only through love can one truly know another. "Farewell," said the Fox. "Here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." For a human's purpose lies solely in selflessly loving those who need them. The Little Prince, for instance, loves the rose he has cultivated. He easily makes friends and faithfully fulfills the reasonable duties life imposes upon him. Life is given to humans to be lived with others, to be lived meaningfully—such is the moral of "The Little Prince."

The theme of death emerges at the end of the tale. Addressing this topic, which contemporary foreign writers, poets, and playwrights frequently explore in diverse ways, Saint-Exupéry offers his unique perspective. Death is inevitable, the Little Prince reflects. But does this mean human life is devoid of purpose? The Little Prince thinks not. He encourages us to accept death's inevitability and assures the aviator that otherwise, he, the Little Prince, could never return to his planet...

Here, the motif of the immortality of the soul appears in the tale. Saint-Exupéry contrasts his own outlook on life and death with pessimistic and nihilistic philosophies that render human existence meaningless.

In his work, Saint-Exupéry poeticizes the simplest things: milk, water, bread, wheat. "Tomorrow, this wheat will be different. Wheat is more than just physical nourishment. To nourish a person is not the same as fattening an animal. Bread serves so many purposes! Bread has become a means of uniting people, for we break it together. Bread has become a symbol of the dignity of labor, for it is earned through sweat. Bread has become an inseparable companion of compassion, for it is distributed in times of need. The taste of shared bread is incomparable."

Saint-Exupéry's work is deeply optimistic, even though his approach to social issues is abstract. Building upon the ideas of 17th-century rationalists, Victor Hugo, and Romain Rolland, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry sought to articulate principles that would illuminate for humanity a moral purpose in life.