The Last Flight of Antoine de Saint Exupery

Saint_ExuperyBy Miguel Fernandez Martinez

Seven decades after the fateful shooting down, no one still knows for sure which of the Nazi Luftwaffe’s pilots -Horst Rippert or Robert Heichele- killed Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

On July 31, 1944, fifteen minutes before nine o’clock, Saint Exupery took off from Borgo, Corsica, piloting an old Lockheed P-38 F5B fighter for a reconnaissance mission from which he never returned.

The French war pilot died in his last mission, but a myth was born for the eternity: perhaps unintentionally, Saint Exupery would become one of the most read literary authors of the world.

His masterpiece, The Little Prince (1943), went beyond any of his attempts as a writer.

Neither South Post (1928) nor Red Eye (1931) or Pilot of War (1939), among several, could seduce millions of readers around the world, people who made the blond boy in blue coat an undisputed icon of various generations.

The Little Prince is one of the most widespread literary works, with over 140 million copies sold all over the world, translated into over 250 languages and dialects, including Braille reading system.

Originally published on April 6, 1943 in New York, this text is among the most widely read books, above monumental gems of literature as Don Quixote, Hopscotch and One Hundred Years of Solitude.

But the morning of July 31, 1944, as he soured up, Saint Exupery could not imagine that this would be his last flight.

“All people were children once, but few remember it.”

The Little Prince is a love story told from a child’s language, but able to make think millions of adults who feel reflected in the tiny space of Asteroid B-612.

According to Japanese researcher Yukitaka Hirao, in his book A Guide to Three Countries of Central America, Saint Exupery was inspired by Armenia, a small town in the Salvadoran department of Sonsonate, the birthplace of his wife, Consuelo Suncin.

The baobabs, the three volcanoes, the serpent and the rose accompanying the hero in this unique history, are associated somehow with the small Central American country, home of Consuelo, the undisputed muse of the French aristocrat.

His turbulent and passionate relationship with Consuelo, his beloved Salvadoran wife, was expressed in the pages of The Little Prince, from the reflective metaphor of a child who aspired to a better world.

“It is the time you spent with your rose what made her so important,” wrote Saint Exupery, who, despite his eventful life, had met love with this woman -almost exotic for her time-, who inspired him to leave a work for posterity.

For Antoine, Consuelo Suncin was his most prized rose and the spirit of the Salvadoran is on every page of The Little Prince.

“It’s much more difficult to judge oneself than others. If you manage to correctly judge yourself, you will be a truly wise.”

Antoine de Saint Exupery was born into a wealthy family in Lyon. He was the third of five children of Count Jean de Saint-Exupery, from whom he inherited the title.

Antoine dreamed of being a sailor, an artist and an architect, but he ended up dedicating his life to aviation, flying vigorously above the skies from around the world.

The same in Africa, Argentina or the Sahara Desert, Saint Exupery enjoyed to find himself from heights.

His new cosmological worldview allowed him, from journalism and narrative, telling his experiences and the others’ -which he watched as eternal apprentice of the human species-, finally materialized in a fictionalized speech he included between the pages of his outstanding work.

Seven decades later, Saint Exupery keeps wandering between us, between the shelves of bookstores or simply at the top of our beds, where, for sure, right now there will be millions of Little Princes, waiting for a next reading. (PL)

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