B.A. Thesis presented by J.W. MACKLEY (1962)
INTRODUCTION
It has become banal to say that the scientific advances of the twentieth century have brought about a tremendous upheaval of the values that were previously unchallenged. It is none the less true. No-where is this more true than in France, with its sensitivity to the vacillations of the Western world’s conscience. The writers of France reflect this growing attitude of rejection of traditional values. From the initial rebellion of Baudelaire, to the near-nihilism of Valéry and the existentialism of J-P Sartre the agony is ever increasing. The question remains the same: What is the meaning of human existence?
Pierre-Henri Simon suggests that for the first thirty years of the century they all found their solution in a basically humanist creed. With Les Conquérants by Malraux a new note is struck. There can be no finite solution to the problem of human existence.
The defeated characters, for Malraux, are those like Tchen Dai, who think they have found a permanent solution to this problem. To be a conqueror the hero must retain his lucidity and maintain at the same time the tension of knowing that life has no transcendental values. There is no such thing as humanism for Garine, the hero of Les Conquérants.
Je n’aime pas les hommes
he confesses early in the novel. The only value, the only reason for living is to be found in the tragic awareness of the individual of the futility of his own existence. This Monsieur Simon calls:
l’angoisse de s’éprouver contingent et mortel
There is a tendency, he says, for the authors to emphasize the physical and sensual aspects of their existence. Of these at least they are sure, though their duration is limited.
Yet however dark the gloom of La Voie Royale where man is fighting a losing battle against Death, the hero, Perken, is trying to transcend his contingency:
Je voudrais laisser une cicatrice sur cette carte
This is the first, almost barbaric, conception of the search for eternity which characterizes the new hero.
“Hero” indeed seems to have become the operative word. For Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, born a year before Malraux, in 1900, the notion of the hero is equally present. The thought of the two writers seems to have undergone largely similar influences. Both are indebted to Pascal for their awareness of the misery of the human condition, both borrow from Nietzsche the urge to find an individual transcendental solution to the problem of human existence.
The early Malraux was a turbulent figure, an adventurer. His outlook was profoundly pessimistic. The personal conflict was of a very lucid nature: he was tragically aware of the absurdity of existence and yet he felt there was some way of finding a solution. In Saint-Exupéry the conflict tends to be subconscious. On the one hand he feels the world is meaningless, on the other hand he is sure it cannot be so.
In his childhood and youth Saint-Exupéry enjoyed a succession of stabilizing influences. In spite of frequent changes of abode his childhood, we gather, was extraordinarily happy. He acquired a love of nature, he valued friendship and above all he seems to have had that joie de vivre which French literature has preserved from the time of Villon and Rabelais right up to such modern writers as Colette and Giono, but which is noticeably lacking in Malraux and Sartre. Indeed, Saint-Exupéry’s acquaintances are unanimous in indicating his warmth of personality and spontaneous, albeit somewhat shy, friendship. This warmth of personality is typified in one of his own works, Lettre à un Otage where he emphasizes the value of le sourire and where he remembers, with sincere depth of feeling, a pre-war Pernod he had shared with friends at Tournus on the banks of the Saône.
The joys of simple human relationships alone, it would seem, could not be sufficient to give life a meaning. Saint-Exupéry follows in the steps of Virgil and the Roman poets in wanting his life to achieve some sort of eternity by giving to it something which would give it a value after death. He could never accept work as merely a means of making a livelihood. It had, in addition, to fulfil two conditions: it had to have some intrinsic elevating value and it had to have a use. It had to serve in the material and moral advancement of man. Thus when he was forced for a time to accept an earthbound job, he had an inner compulsion to go back to flying, to escape from this apparently fruitless existence.
Saint-Exupéry’s temperament, it would seem, contains two tendencies which are diametrically opposed: the love of simple human relationships and the desire to escape from their bounds. It would be an exaggeration to say that Saint-Exupéry’s work consists entirely of an attempt to reconcile these two tendencies. There is however definitely a thread running through his work which attempts to put them into perspective. It is the progress of this thread which we shall try to follow in the coming pages. The question to be answered is: which (if either) of these two ways of life gives the true meaning to human existence and what is that meaning?
CHAPTER ONE
Courrier Sud : THE INITIAL CONFLICT OF IDEALS
Saint-Exupéry’s first attempt at novel-writing is Courrier Sud. He published the work in 1928, that is to say when he was still working for the Société d’Aviation Latécoère, the company which forms the background to the action of Courrier Sud. Briefly this work consists of the meditations of a young man called Jacques Bernis flying on the Toulouse-Dakar air-route. He is in search of a meaning to his existence. As he flies he reflects upon the two worlds which two months previously had seemed open to him: the world of the hero and the world of simple human relationships.
The author takes us back in time to tell us of the attraction that the simple world of human love had had for Bernis. This world is symbolized by a woman called Geneviève whom he had known when she was fifteen, who had since married and had one son. During his last leave which he had spent in Paris, he had revisited Geneviève. His relationship with her from childhood to manhood is described and from these details we obtain a reasonable picture of why the ultimate solution was not satisfactory.
The world to which Bernis returns after two years’ absence is a world of tradition, a world of simple human responsibilities. In Part Two, Chapter One of Courrier Sud we read:
Tous étaient prisonniers d’eux-mêmes, limités par ce frein obscure et non comme lui, ce fugitive, cet enfant pauvre, ce magicien
This world was not a changing world. It had never formed a part of progressive modern society. It was a world which evolved very slowly in the natural process of Darwinian evolution, a world beaten into shape by time and habits:
Dans le monde le plus immuable où, pour toucher un mur, pour allonger un champ, il fallait vingt ans de procès.
Geneviève belonged inextricably to this world even as a child. The author romanticizes it so that Geneviève is portrayed like a fairy living among the trees so essential to this almost mythical world of Nature to which she belongs, that she becomes identified with it.
Tu nous paraissais éternelle d’être si bien liée aux choses, si sûre des choses, de tes pensées, de ton avenir.
We have seen the first mention of eternity, with reference to Geneviève. It seems here to be only apparent eternity. It was the eternity of this young girl that was to capture their hearts. This is the eternity of the simple life:
Dans ton royaume une saison apporte les fleurs, l’automne les fruits, une saison apporte l’amour : la vie est simple.
Bernis’ hope in loving Geneviève was to have a taste of the happiness which he knew she enjoyed. If we examine the nature of her happiness we realize immediately why Bernis could never share it.
Her happiness is closely linked with her intuitive sense of eternity. This eternity resembles the Buddhist conception of Nirvana, which is the state of beatitude resulting from the extinction of individuality. Even though as a child Geneviève has not reached this state, she no longer exists as a detached individual. She is a sort of princess in the world of Nature in which she moved, closely bound to it and as nothing without it.
When she becomes a mother we can expect full integration into her compact little world, whose meaning is in the continuation of existence. These expectations are fulfilled and we see Geneviève bathed in the sacred mystery of her life like a simple priestess bathed in the mystery of her religion. When her son is born she becomes quite certain of this world.
Une évidence plus forte que les autres. Elle avait servi cet enfant à la surface des choses et parmi d’autres choses vivantes (…) Elle s’était sentie … mais oui, c’est cela : intelligente. Et sûre d’elle-même et liée à tout et faisant partie d’un grand concert
This conception of existence is perhaps based on intuition rather than reason and it is certain that Bernis would not be able to accept its passive nature. Nevertheless its value for so many women including Geneviève would not be diminished on that account. It is a world in which the natural procreation of Life is the prime object. As the men and women, the animals and plants, engaged in this process are working together towards the same ends they achieve a sort of pantheistic unity. In their unity they tend to lose their identity until they come together to form a concordant body of simple, joyful, satisfied life working together in making Life eternal. This then is a world with its foundations in an intuitive sense of security and belonging, rather than in rationalistic principles, but the mystic harmony between Geneviève and this world seems to be sufficient evidence for accepting its validity. As we shall see it is not valid for everyone, but for Geneviève (and later we shall see, for Simone Fabien) it is the only valid existence.
Thus we have for the first time in the works of Saint-Exupéry a notion of the eternity of life, though here eternity must mean going beyond the bounds of individual existence rather than “infinite” or “immortal” existence. In this eternity the individual becomes part of life which, in 1928 when the work was written, had been going on, perhaps improving and certainly increasing its strength, for a very long time, and which had every prospect of doing so for an immeasurable time in the future. So the individual becomes confused not only with its own surroundings but with life in general.
In direct contrast to this world of simple love we get a glimpse of the utopia for which Jacques Bernis is striving. Bernis was a childhood friend of the narrator, and it is largely by means of light thrown on his character by the narrator’s own reminiscences that we find the cause of Bernis’ search for a utopia beyond the traditional values he has been taught as a child to cherish. As children they had been convinced that beyond the tumulte vain de la surface in which their parents had lived, that is to say, beyond the parts of the house and grounds where people normally went, lay hidden mysteries and a hidden material treasure
exactement décrit dans les contes de fées : saphirs, opales, diamants.
In this childhood they had therefore an insuperable desire to get to know l’envers des choses. As the author twice remarks they cannot find the whole truth if they remain tied up in this evolutionary cycle:
Fuir, voilà l’important
It should come as no surprise to us to find that when he grows up and becomes a pilot, Jacques Bernis strives towards a utopia with values developed from this childhood dream. From a letter he sent to his friend, the narrator, we can deduce the main values of the world he is trying to attain.
From the whole tone of the letter we have the impression that Bernis is obsessed with the idea of novelty, the opposite pole to the idea of routine which most careers entail. This is revealed as he recalls the exciting experiences of his first flight over Spain to Tangiers. On this flight he had experienced new sensations which he would remember for ever, but which, alas, would soon become ordinary. He had discovered new towns from an angle which few people had seen before. He had discovered new people.
In spite of Chevrier’s view that the pilot had a strong emotional attachment to the earth the following passage would suggest that he was not satisfied with his discoveries but had to carry on to find new lands, new sensations:
Et puis, tu me connais, cette hâte de repartir, de chercher plus loin ce que je pressentais et ne comprenais pas, car j’étais ce sourcier dont le coudrier tremble et qu’il promène sur le monde jusqu’au trésor.
If we examine the routes of this pleasure and the desire to renew it elsewhere, we might possibly discover in the pilot’s motives a desire for the omniscience of the Godhead, an insatiable desire, similar to that of the Humanists of the early Renaissance period, to have a superficial acquaintance with every human experience. The difference, of course, is that their desire was intellectual while Bernis’ desire was emotional.
Much more important than the initial pleasures he obtained from his métier no matter what interpretation we give to them, is the goal at which he seems to be aiming. We see clearly that he has been aiming to find the secret behind human existence. This he expresses in despairing terms, because he has begun to presume that there would be no absolute and unique solution. Its sense is nevertheless clear:
Pourquoi, pour la première fois, je ne découvre pas de source et me sens si loin du trésor ?
Up to that time it seems that the new experiences he has undergone had been sufficient to provide for Bernis a taste of the treasure for which he has been searching. He was soon to realize that the more ardent his search, the more inaccessible this ‘treasure’ which would give a meaning to his existence, was to become. He turned his attention, inwards, homewards, and decided that the inspiration he needed was to be found in Geneviève. This of course proved to be an illusion so that after the Genevieve episode, he had still not discovered his solution.
However the letter to the narrator seems to give us the clue to what he is searching for. We see something which is at the same time a source and a trésor, the one is the beginning of the conquest, the other, the end. Surely the search for something which combines the two elements can be a search for only one thing that is the Supreme Truth of Life, the One, the Godhead, the immortal inspiration. The desire of Bernis, therefore, is to transcend the bounds of the human estate to become a sort of superman.
It would be impossible for him to accept the values of a limited society, for he had an insatiable urge to get beyond things he already knew, a secret driving force, an Urgeist as Goethe calls it, compelling him on
dans ce fond des mers où nous appelait notre inquiétude.
There can be no better way of summing up Bernis’ character than using the author’s own obituary of his friend by quoting two of his confessions
J’ai aimé une vie que je n’ai pas très bien comprise, une vie pas tout à fait fidèle. Je ne sais pas très bien ce dont j’ai eu besoin : c’était une fringale légère…
Ce que je devinais se cachait derrière toute chose. Il me semblait qu’avec un effort j’allais comprendre, j’allais le connaitre enfin et l’emporter. Et je m’en vais troublé par cette présence d’ami que je n’ai jamais pu tirer au jour…
And symbolically the narrator suggests that it was in trying to reach the highest of all the stars that Bernis met his death. Saint-Exupéry has realized that Man cannot reach perfection and Truth so easily:
Dans l’étoile la plus verticale a lui le trésor ô fugitif !
It is not difficult for us to realize that the worlds of Geneviève and Bernis were poles apart and therefore quite incompatible. The simple community of Geneviève was founded on the acceptance by its members that that community is the world best suited to their existence, a haven sheltered from the dangerous and treacherous seas of adventure which offered no temptation to their earth-bound minds. Geneviève lived in her royaume; Bernis and the younger narrator tried to drag her to their other world, but as the narrator points out Geneviève is alive in her own environment. To change her environment would be to change Geneviève
Et Geneviève, emportée par toi, sera privée de Geneviève.
This indeed proves to be true. Bernis does not make a decision to return from their elopement:
Cette décision, pensait Bernis, cette décision a été prise en dehors de nous.
Bernis is therefore the romantic character whose unhappiness lies in his loneliness in a sympathetic environment. Each society is ready to accept him: Genevieve, the worlds of the spiritual and carnal love, the world of the narrator, all seem to woo him and he sees how for other people these lives have a meaning. Even the world of action does not provide the meaning he is looking for. The question of the narrator:
Où vas-tu maintenant chercher le trésor… ?
remains unanswered for Bernis. For him there are no limits and there is no end to his search and so it can never bear fruit.
The narrator does not propose a full solution to the problem, but he suggests in the same paragraph that one must recognise the limitations of one’s existence:
Ce désert sur lequel je marche, moi qui suis retenu comme un plomb, au sol, je n’y saurais rien découvrir…
… and he seems to suggest that he would not want to look for anything …
… Mais il n’est pour toi, magicien, qu’un voile de sable, qu’une apparence
After this episode Bernis is about to find a last escape from the world of reality by landing in the middle of the desert into a strange fairy-land of wonderment where he meets the isolated sergeant.
Bernis is therefore in many ways an outsider to full human relationships. By trying to enjoy all kinds of existence, by trying to form a delicate balance between one and another he achieves nothing but disillusionment. There are several alternatives open to a man and he has to choose. Once the choice is made he has to plunge himself into that life with all that he has and by this sacrifice, by accepting the limitations, he reaps the harvest.
This solution which is developed more fully in Pilote de Guerre is only suggested in Courrier Sud as Bernis never really sees the choice – he sees love and marriage as a complement to his life, not as a different life.
The narrator on the other hand has made his choice. By his example we have some idea of the solution that he would advocate for Bernis. We saw above that he had accepted his limitations. He had escaped from the world of Geneviève but he had accepted another similar world, though one with more conscious ideals and limitations than was the case in the intuitive world of Geneviève.
We see his approval of her world, or at least his acceptance of it in his letter to Bernis:
Je crois…la vie s’appuie sur autre chose…Ces coutumes, ces conventions, ces lois, tout ce dont tu ne sens pas la nécessité, tout ce dont tu t’es évadé…C’est cela qui lui donne un cadre…
Thus the character of the narrator shows no internal conflict. He has arrived at the compromise which satisfies him, but which Sartre might describe as being “in bad faith”: he has left the mediocrity of the closed society to find a new existence which is practically earth-bound and whose limitations and finality he has accepted.
He seems satisfied with the life at Cap Juby though he gives little indication of the precise nature of the satisfactions which this existence gave him.
From his personal appearance towards the end of the work, we can assume that his work had a very active decisive nature which might have given it qualities which Rivière, the central character of Saint-Exupéry’s next work Vol de Nuit, might have admired, though his character has a very definite poetic streak which makes him in some ways close to Bernis himself. He seems however to accept his position with dignity and enthusiasm as witnessed by his efficiency in carrying out the operation searching for Bernis.
There seems to be little that is transcendental about this life, though there are surely early seeds of Terre des Hommes in the author’s incidental remark during Bernis’ last flight:
les camarades nous ont tiré de là. Et si nous étions faibles, nous ont hissés dans la carlingue : poignet de fer des camarades qui nous tiraient hors de ce monde dans leur monde.
CHAPTER TWO
Vol de Nuit : A SOLUTION “IN MINATURE”
In the three years that have elapsed between the publication of Courrier Sud and that of his next novel, Vol de Nuit, published in 1931, Saint-Exupéry’s thought seems to have crystallized and become more sure. In the first chapter the temptation of the world typified by Geneviève is set out in some detail, only to be regretted by the pilot:
ce village défendait, par sa seule immobilité, le secret de ses passions, ce village refusait sa douceur : il eût fallu renoncer à l’action pour la conquérir.
In this sentence we also see what is going to be the keynote of the novel: l’action. Action is going to be the inspiration for the heroes of Vol de Nuit. It might even seem that Bernis has found the treasure for which he was searching. The author at least seems more sure of himself.
In Vol de Nuit we have the description by Saint-Exupéry, in novel form, of an ideal society in microcosm. The action centres on Buenos Aires, where Rivière, the head of the South American Postal network, is awaiting the arrival of his aeroplane flying in with the mail from Patagonia, Chile and Paraguay, in time to catch the plane which is due to fly to Europe. Rivière is, as it were, the God of this society and the ideas in the novel show the author’s concern with the problem of running an ideal society based on more advanced precepts than those found in the society typified by Geneviève. As we see, when the unfortunate employee called Roblet is dismissed after a lifetime of service with the company because of one mistake, it is an authoritative society. Rivière is the master and upon his decisions depends the happiness of his staff.
Rivière combines the “solid” elements of the narrator in Courrier Sud with the sense of grandeur and a need to go beyond the bounds of simple existence. In spite of his assured attitude he does have doubts, but he always overcomes them.
For Rivière life is a continual battle. He is the leader of an army fighting not against another army but against nature. The motivating force of his life is to be found in the sustained feeling of responsibility which he has when he is working. As we have just said this feeling is “sustained” and this word is perhaps the keynote of Riviera’s character, for the meaning of life for him, as for so many of Malraux’s heroes is to be found in the maintaining of a certain tension, which prevents the hero from lapsing into a living death:
Il n’y a pas d’arrivée définitive de tous les courriers
says Rivière in Chapter Two.
Rivière even more than Fabien, rejects the escape from tension that human love would offer him:
Il s’aperçut qu’il avait peu à peu repoussé vers la vieillesse, pour quand il aurait le temps ce qui fait douce la vie des hommes
Love would not have been an escape from the métier. Rivière did not need an escape: his life was full and had a definite meaning.
Not that he was without doubt about his existence. Indeed while they are waiting for news of Fabien, he is powerless before the arguments of Simone Fabien. But he does not give in. There is just no point of contact between her world and his world.
Cette femme parlait elle aussi au nom d’un monde absolu et des devoirs et de ses droite… Elle exigeait son bien et elle avait raison. Et lui aussi avait raison…
Thus logically there is no reason why he should prefer his world to hers. There is, however, a moral one:
Aimer, aimer seulement, quelle impasse
says Rivière. There must be more to life than this and he hits upon a phrase which he has read somewhere.
Il s’agit de les rendre éternels
It is clear that Rivière is a man who recognizes the value of the world typified by Geneviève and now by Simone Fabien, but cannot find any personal reason to take refuge in this world. His world is not passive, but active: he needs to go beyond his mortality.
Rivière is a many-sided figure, but we have only space enough here to discuss this main ideal of eternity through action, and see how Rivière goes about achieving it through the people under him. To do this it is necessary to have a look at the world under his control.
The main characters of this world are, of course, the pilots. The administrators are concerned along with Rivière himself with the smooth functioning of the airmail company, that is to say, with extracting the maximum energy and efficiency from the pilots. Saint-Exupéry tells us very little about the pilots before they came to work for the company, but we can assume that they were quite ordinary, unpretentious, though quietly courageous, young men. The pilot of the plane that is to go to Europe is described in Chapter Ten as
cet homme au milieu de ces millions d’hommes
He would seem to be no one out of the ordinary and yet Rivière expects great things of him.
It is Rivière who must take most of the credit for the miracle he is to perform in transforming these men into the heroes they are to become. The strict discipline of Rivière seems to have been appreciated by the pilots, because it brought the required results; we learn in Rivière’s own words what his aims were:
Il ne pensait pas les asservir par cette dureté, mais les lancer hors d’eux-mêmes
It will be interesting to see what new meaning will be given to the pilots’ lives under the control of Rivière.
Even before the flight the pilot achieves a first limited ideal; he escapes beyond the bounds of routine. We see the description of the pilot’s expectations from his journey in Chapter Ten. He is not an insignificant bureaucrat but carries a manly responsibility:
Elle (sa femme) regardait ces bras solides qui, dans une heure, porterait le sort du courrier d’Europe, responsables de quelque chose de grand, comme du sort d’une ville.
But in Vol de Nuit the feeling of responsibility is not over-important as far as the pilots are concerned; it is Rivière who seems to make most of the decisions. However the pilots do have to make decisions and when they do so, they can be important ones. In the first chapter Fabien says one word which is to have far reaching consequences. The word is continuerons . The consequences include the wreckage of a plane, the loss of two men’s lives, the loss of a cargo of mail, deep sorrow for a newly-married bride and a severe blow to Rivière’s already hotly disputed plans. These, then, were all part of his responsibilities.
In any case the pilots can laugh at an existence bound up by routine and by the corresponding simple relationships which a regular life in a limited environment had to offer:
Elle (sa femme) le chargeait de tendre liens… mais à l’heure de chaque départ ces liens, sans qu’il en parût souffrir tombaient
Not that the security, which the town had to offer him, was likely to tempt him for very long. There was a sort of mutual distrust. He was not interested in the town and the town was not cut out to protect his safety, though for earthbound citizens it was a model of security:
Cette ville serrait les hommes dans ses cent mille forteresses ; tout était calme et sûr…cette ville endormie ne le protégeait pas : ses lumières lui sembleraient vaines, lorsqu’il se lèverait, jeune dieu, de leur poussière.
As for Bernis, flying represents an escape beyond the limited existence of an earthbound society. But the difference lies in the fact that the pilots of Rivière find a series of satisfying solutions to their desires. We see that in the action itself they have a first taste of the eternity for which Rivière has predestined them. This first taste did not come to all the pilots, but it came to Pellerin in his tremendous struggle with the elements over the Andes. The pilot of the plane bound for Europe also expected to renew the tension of life, to show that he was not “in bad faith” as Sartre would say, to show that he was aware of the intensity of the struggle for progress, the struggle to rise above the human estate and become a kind of superman:
Elle l’avait nourri, veillé et caressé, non pour elle-même, mais pour cette nuit qui allait le prendre. Pour des luttes, pour des angoisses, pour des victoires, dont elle ne connaîtrait rien.
We are not told of this pilot’s struggles. We are told of Pellerin’s. He is transported out of the world where mortal man is allowed to tread. He was flying in tranquillity over the Cordillère des Andes when suddenly he is caught up in a cyclone. But people have seen cyclones before and Pellerin remarks:
Le cyclone ce n’est rien. On sauve sa peau. Mais auparavant ! Mais cette rencontre que l’on fait !
We may ask ourselves what it was that he met. The answer seems to be a sort of pantheistic deity or perhaps simply a world of unreality, of mystery, the world of the supernatural. We are no longer in a world of physical objects, but in a world of moods. These moods were not human since there is no living soul within hundreds of miles. Pellerin describes the mood which seems to attack him as one of anger. Intuitively he sensed that it came from the natural objects that surrounded him:
A quoi devinait-il qu’elle (la colère) suintait des pierres, qu’elle suintait de la neige ?... Pellerin regardait, avec un serrement de cœur inexplicable, ces pics innocents, ces arêtes, ces crêtes de neige, à peine plus gris, et qui pourtant commençaient à vivre – comme un peuple.
There he was then in this fairyland to which his métier had brought him. He had had for a few seconds a glimpse of a supernatural world, but in the intensity of those few seconds he had engraved a new indelible experience on his memory.
We have seen earlier that Rivière aspired to a more lasting sense of eternity than this fleeting glimpse experienced by some of his pilots, when he said:
Il s’agit de les rendre éternels
Later however, he seems to contradict this thought by saying that he was not seeking for eternity, but for something else to protect man from the absurdity of existence:
…nous ne demandons pas à être éternels, mais à ne pas voir les actes et les choses tout à coup perdre leur sens. Le vide qui nous entoure se montre alors …
Paradoxically these two quotations seem to be complementary. Rivière is not seeking for individual eternity, but a collective immortality. In his doubt, which becomes quite anguished in Chapter XIV, Rivière asks why they are all acting as though there is something more important than human life:
…nous agissons toujours comme si quelque chose dépassait, en valeur, la vie humaine… Mais quoi ?
The answer for Rivière at any other time, would have been easy to find. Yet in his anguish it is some time before he compares his action to that of a nomad chieftain who determined to show humanity that his race had existed.
Et il menait son peuple dresser au moins des pierres, que n’ensevelirait pas le désert.
The stones which Rivière found to put up in the desert consisted of the establishment of a regular night mail service. The lasting eternity which the pilots found was in the sense of belonging to a band of men dedicated to the furthering of human progress. Thus we have the birth of a sense of fraternity to which the author rarely refers in Vol de Nuit although we are told at least once of its presence, as if it were taken for granted. When the pilot from Asuncion is told of Fabien’s death, the author makes this short comment:
Ils en parlèrent peu. Une grande fraternité les dispensait de phrases.
As Chevrier says:
Il (Rivière) veut les grandir et les lier les uns aux autres par l’exaltation lucide de leur responsabilité.
As with any absolute solution to a social problem, Rivière’s society brought inevitable hardship to people who failed, or contradicted his ideals. For the pilot Fabien this meant death. But for Rivière, like Saint-Exupéry, death is not tragic. It is regrettable, never for one moment does he deny this or underestimate its importance – it is a setback in the common struggle, but it must not be over emphasized.
Similarly other people are adversely affected by Rivière’s discipline. Roblet, the employee with a long record of irreproachable service is dismissed because of one mistake. Robineau, the inspector, is denied the right to enjoy the comradeship with the pilots that he would like because of his superior position. The pilot’s wife is separated sorrowfully from her husband before each flight.
Finally there is the shattering of a world which must be completely alien to Rivière’s world of action, though he recognizes the importance of those who believe in it. This world is now typified by Simone Fabien. Before it was shattered by Fabien’s death it had been a world of peace and happiness, the world of simple, human joys rather than superhuman satisfactions
.
Mais sa vérité était si forte que les regards fugitifs remontaient à la dérobée, inlassablement, la lire dans son visage. Cette femme était très belle. Elle révélait à quelle matière auguste on touche sans le savoir, en agissant…. Elle révélait quelle paix, sans savoir, on peut détruire.
But of course none of these setbacks, no mundane consideration, can thwart Rivière in his determination to succeed, in his will to preserve his thriving community. Thus we see that the last chapter is an optimistic one:
La défaite qu’a subie Rivière est peut-être un engagement qui rapproche la vraie victoire.
The final victory if there is such a thing as a final victory, is perhaps one step nearer and Rivière is still at the helm, the hero responsible for the fullness of his pilot’s lives:
Rivière-le-Grand, Rivière-le-Victorieux, qui porte sa lourde victoire.
CHAPTER THREE
Terre des Hommes : THE FIRST UNIVERSAL SOLUTION
In the next work, Terre des Hommes published in 1939, there is no Rivière. Chevrier tells us that Saint-Exupéry is now only interested in the individual in so far as he can draw universal conclusions from his behaviour.
Il ne s’intéresse au singulier que pour en tirer des constantes
He goes on to say that Saint-Exupéry is interested in the universal values of civilization that one can see through the individual.
It may be possible that Chevrier underestimates the importance of the individual for Saint-Exupéry. It is certain, however that in Terre des Hommes he seems to be turning his attention away from the specific to the general. Rivière was, as it were, the “god” of his limited universe. There is now no guide or enlightened despot. This is the Terre des Hommes, the world covered with men going about their different ways, discovering their own values in a somewhat arbitrary and chaotic manner. And so Saint-Exupéry’s description of the world has an arbitrary appearance about it. There are few apparent connections between one section and another. As in the world itself there is no apparent order. Nevertheless in the last section he tries to draw together his descriptive studies and find a universal pattern for human activities.
Whereas in Vol de Nuit it was only the hero who could find a transcendental meaning to existence, in Terre des Hommes it seems to be understood throughout that every man can find such a meaning, a meaning which is precise and definite and obeys absolute principles. We have the impression throughout the work that the author knows these principles, but is keeping them from us until “the day of judgment” when he will reveal them to us.
The nearer we get to this “day of judgment” the more the author indulges in this practice. The author, we feel, is about to reveal to his reader his considered opinion as to the real meaning behind human enterprises.
La vérité pour l’homme, c’est ce qui fait de lui un homme
This we may think is leading to a revelation of the exact nature of his truth. It may well be, but before the revelation we are told of a long list of half-truths. We are given illustrations of how people with conflicting ideals are given to experiencing the same edifying sensations.
One of these illustrations is taken from the Spanish Civil War. He says that for the man who has felt the awakening of the “unknown” in him by means of the discipline, sacrifice and comradeship binding him to his fellow anarchists will recognize for ever la vérité des anarchistes. On the other side the man who has on one occasion fought to protect a convent of nuns praying to God on their knees will recognise the truth of the Church.
But this truth is not as the examples above suggest, to be found only in a sense of fraternity. The author shows that it can be obtained through conduct which is upright and dignified, through work which has a given meaning for the worker, through the passing on of life from one generation to another. Indeed, in the case of fraternity found through warfare, its value is questionable for Saint-Exupéry. Where among these assorted ideas are we to find the truth which the author has concealed from us? It is revealed to us in the last but one chapter of the book.
Here it says that man must be conscious of his role in furthering the natural progress of the human race:
Ce que nous sentons quand nous avons faim, de cette faim…qui poussa Mermoz vers l’Atlantique Sud…c’est que la genèse n’est point achevée et qu’il nous faut prendre conscience de nous-mêmes et de l’univers. Il nous faut dans la nuit lancer des passerelles.
An action to fulfil its objectives must have a sense beyond its immediate material implications. When Mermoz crossed over to the Chilean side of the Andes the importance was not in the fact that he had managed to carry a merchant’s letter more quickly than it would otherwise have travelled, but in the fact that in doing so he had furthered human progress. He was a pioneer. Still it is the pioneer who is most important for Saint-Exupéry. After him other people can do the same thing and human achievement has been widened still more.
In this notion there is essentially a return to the two themes developed in Courrier Sud and Vol de Nuit. We are presented here with the synthesis. For there are essentially two valid ways in which a man can attain this goal of being conscious of his role in the furthering of human progress. There is the path of Geneviève and there is the path of Rivière. The former, rejected in Vol de Nuit in favour of the latter, is thus reinstated to its former position and indeed glorified in it, without doing so at the expense of the solution which displaced it.
Now, for Saint-Exupéry, the two values have the same status, even though he may have an unexpressed preference for one of them. The lignée paysanne as he calls it comes into the forefront in the section entitled Les Hommes. These people, we might say, are the salt of the earth. They are the people who for generation upon generation have carried the burden of human progress upon their shoulders. This progress has been not only material, but moral and social:
La mère n’avait point seulement transmis la vie : elle avait à ses fils, enseigné un langage, elle leur avait confié le bagage si lentement accumulé au cours des siècles, le patrimoine spirituel qu’elle avait elle-même reçu en dépôt, ce petit lot de traditions, de concepts et de mythes qui constitue toute la différence qui sépare Newton ou Shakespeare de la brute des caverne.
Somewhere along the line it would seem that progress, considerable progress, has been made. Yet it would seem fair to assume that no one individual ever made a gigantic stride, a huge leap forward similar to those taken by Mermoz. Thus each member of this lignée paysanne can be accredited with both preserving the progress made in the past and making a small but unmistakable step along the path of human progress. It is also very important to be conscious of this role. To act blindly seems to jar Saint-Exupéry’s sensitivity, so that without stating it, the action would be absurd. On the contrary the most humble of men, a simple shepherd, can give a metaphysical justification for his métier if he is conscious of the social importance of the role.
Et ainsi jusqu’au simple berger. Car celui-là qui veille modestement quelques moutons sous les étoiles, s’il prend conscience de son rôle se découvre plus qu’un serviteur. Il est une sentinelle. Et chaque sentinelle est responsable de tout l’empire.
The hero of course is not excluded from this scheme of the world, but is given what may be considered to be a privileged position in it. The heroes of Terre des Hommes are real men, contemporaries and friends of the author, and indeed the author himself. There is perhaps an understandable tendency on the part of the author to be more realistic, less poetic than he had been in his fictional works. The notions expressed are however very similar.
The hero, like the peasant but to a greater extent, is conscious of his role in furthering human progress and also of the importance of maintaining civilisation at the high level it has attained. The hero is not making a small step in the name of human progress, but a huge leap forward, or, in the case of Mermoz, a whole series of leaps forward. Guillaumet, the seemingly unsuccessful hero, is no less conscious of his role in preserving those human values which man has come to cherish over the centuries.
Ce que j’ai fait,…jamais aucune bête ne l’aurait fait.
Indeed in his apparent failure Guillaumet not only preserves established human values by acting on behalf of his wife’s social well-being, but he also achieves what might be called “moral” progress. His action shows man’s latent moral and physical courage pushed to its extreme limits: just as Mermoz had contributed to human progress on a material level, so Guillaumet has contributed to it on a moral level.
Thus as in Vol de Nuit by transcending the normal bounds of human activity, the heroes of Terre des Hommes achieve a similar sense of eternity. Even the glimpse at eternity through pantheistic wonderment remains present when we see the narrator imagining himself as part of the eternal universe, as he happens to land on a plateau in the desert, untouched since creation.
And in the same way as he sees the world at its creation as he approaches middle-age he begins to look for a solution to the problem of old-age. With his new lucidity the answer seems to come quite easily to Saint-Exupéry. For when we become conscious of our role and have set about fulfilling it successfully we can enjoy the fullest of all human joys. We have a new ideal: beyond human activity lies peace, the final peace which will be ours after all our difficulties have been faced and overcome:
Alors seulement nous pourrons vivre en paix et mourir en paix, car ce qui donne un sens à la vie donne un sens à la mort.
This is essentially the same for the hero and the peasant. For the peasant the struggle is long and often hazardous; for the hero the struggle is comparatively short, but always exacting and hazardous. In each case, after the struggle, in old age or in death, man can enjoy the peace to which he is entitled. After the struggles Christian principles are now allowed to replace the Nietzschean tension previously necessary. Saint-Exupéry, it seems, can permit his heroes, at last, to exist in what Sartre would term as “bad faith”.
It would be difficult to imagine any moralist basing his code of existence upon a few unadorned metaphysical principles. It would therefore be inappropriate to leave the impression that Terre des Hommes is a work dealing with men striving relentlessly towards a distant and absolute goal. The choice of this goal is important, as we have already seen. But when it has been chosen it brings in its wake certain human pleasures which it would be wrong to ignore, these we can group together for the sake of convenience under the title “Fraternity”.
Fraternity, implicit as a natural tendency in the earlier works of Saint-Exupéry remains to a certain extent intuitive, but it’s nature at least is explained in Terre des Hommes. The author has shown by numerous descriptions how people, when they are working together towards the same aims, feel a natural affinity, even though these aims may be execrable in moral terms. He gives the example of modern warfare. He mentions the joy of comradeship in warfare and intimates here and elsewhere that on both sides soldiers will find the same pleasures. It follows that, from a universal view-point, one or both of the ideals must be wrong. Yet he remarks that the soldiers will have achieved a limited part of their aim for eternity.
Ils auront trouvé ce qu’ils cherchent, le goût de l’universel. Mais du pain qui leur est offert, ils vont mourir.
When man realizes, as Saint-Exupéry realizes at the end of this chapter, the real meaning of existence, it is obvious that the original intuitive tendencies will remain and will be fortified by strength and conviction in the ultimate goal.
It is now that we see the full strength of this sense of fraternity. Fraternity, or human comradeship, is the cement which binds men together, which gives the fullness of their existence, which gives them a sense of belonging to the Universe. They strive not as individuals – for as individuals, like Bark the Moorish slave, they are lost without the full weight of human relationships – but as a collective body in sympathy with one another. They work towards the common goal, which if right they are bound to attain:
Liés à nos frères par un but commun et qui se situe en dehors de nous, alors seulement nous respirons et l’expérience nous montre qu’aimer ce n’est point nous regarder l’un l’autre mais regarder ensemble dans la même direction. Il n’est de camarades que s’ils s’unissent dans le même sommet en quoi ils se retrouvent.
CHAPTER FOUR
Pilote de Guerre : THE SHATTERING OF AN IDEAL AND THE BIRTH OF A PERMANENT ONE
It is with this solution in mind, with the additional emphasis on the importance of fraternity and harmonious human relationships that Saint-Exupéry writes his next work, Pilote de Guerre. The three years which have elapsed since the publication of Terre des Hommes have however seen a complete change in the order of the world. It is now 1942 and the world is at war.
Pilote de Guerre, though far from being a novel, has a more harmonious structure than Terre des Hommes. Briefly it consists of a series of ethical and metaphysical reflections grouped around the author’s own near-suicide mission to fly over Arras in May 1940. The action of the story brings the author face to face with the problem of “the absurd”. He has one chance in three of returning alive from his mission. The photographs they are to take will be useless since France is already virtually defeated. Finally even if he does return with the photographs he may have difficulty in finding his group which is constantly on the move. The author then flies over France, the symbol of civilisation, in chaos, to meet a useless death against which he can have no defence. Only good fortune can bring him and his two comrades back safely to their quarters:
Il n’est rien à décider. Ça regarde Dieu exclusivement.
In the face of death the mature reflecting author of Terre des Hommes finds the values he had cherished, strangely lacking in substance. In the words of Luc Estang:
L’absurdité qu’analysait Saint-Exupéry au moment du vol d’Arras se traduisait par une ‘vérité en morceaux’
Even in his presentation of the old conception of human values there is a slight change of emphasis. The present truth becomes more important than the eternal truth. The distinction between the hero and the peasant virtually disappears. The author indeed is almost ashamed of being a hero. Human comradeship, a subordinate value elsewhere, is portrayed as the most important of all values. At the height of his anguish , expecting to be shot down in the next few seconds, Saint-Exupéry finds that human love is the most important thing in life.
Il faut…il faut…j’aimerais cependant être payé à temps. J’aimerais avoir droit à l’amour. J’aimerais reconnaître pour qui je meurs…
The change of emphasis is important. Rivière, almost certainly would have said pour quoi je meurs. Unmistakably in his crumbling universe, Saint-Exupéry has turned his attention to humanity as a solution to his problems.
Nor is it man as an individual that is important. Bernis the outsider figure has no place in the world of 1942. Man has his value in a community. Cut off from that community he is worthless:
L’homme n’est qu’un nœud de relations et voilà que mes liens ne valent plus grand chose
As in all the works of Saint-Exupéry we find once more the two themes of the simple world of human relationships and of the pilot freed from the bounds of a limited existence. As in Terre des Hommes these elements are no longer conflicting but there is still a slight difference: though both are dependent upon the nœud de relations both are vitally afflicted if the thread of this “knot” is broken.
For the peasant this “knot” can be compared to a cartwheel whose driving force is in the hub which symbolizes for us the village community. The outer rim of the wheel is made up of the individual peasants bound to each other and bound to the community as a whole by the stout sense of belonging which the thick wooden spokes convey to us. In this community there is no place for the outsider. The narrowness of its limits is counter-balanced by the breadth and density of the bonds which weld them together. Each member of the community is responsible for the well-being of the others, just as each member is dependent upon the others for his own well-being. If one member of the community frees himself from these bonds the community no longer exists. Thus during the general evacuation before the German invasion, Saint-Exupéry and his friend Dutertre persuade the inhabitants of the village, where they are living, that they would be well advised to stay put rather than flee before the enemy. They are all agreed but they are forced to leave:
…le boulanger est parti. Qui fera le pain ? Le village est déjà détraqué. Il a crevé ici ou là. Tout coulera par le même trou. C’est sans espoir.
The pilot’s “knot” is much less symmetrical. It is more like loose strands of wool all jumbled up together. It has no limits except the ends of the earth. Some of his friends know each other, some are unknown to the others. The common bond is the pilot, the man in the centre of this nœud de relations. Without his bonds of friendship the man in the centre ceases to exist. As each bond is destroyed the man loses a part of his personality. On the other hand while the bond exists the man is shaped, replenished and edified by his friends. The thicker his bonds and the more numerous his friends the fuller is his life.
These are the real things which Saint-Exupéry cherishes and these are the things that will be lost if he dies. But as he reflects on his flight he realizes that some of the things at least can be salvaged. Indeed, in his own life, he finds as he emerges from behind the enemy lines, his bonds of friendship have been intensified. Whereas before he felt unworthy of his friends he was now sure that he belonged to them and they belonged to him.
Life at a personal level has a meaning – intrinsic if not transcendental. He has, like his comrade, Hochedé, found the right to exist in a community. What is now most important for the individual is to be accepted as an integral and necessary part of the community. To be accepted one must have filled the requirements, all the requirements of that community. Thus the hero, or the author, can be accepted at the peasant’s table if he accepts the invitation with humility, as a participant, not as an onlooker:
Ce livre eût pu me donner l’apparence d’un témoin abstrait. Et cependant je ne faisais figure, malgré lui, ni d’intellectuel, ni de témoin. J’étais des leurs.
Even more important for the pilot is the fact that he can now participate to the full in the real comradeship of the Group 2/33. The fraternity of this group is deep and sincere. Right of entry into this fraternity is gained by the man who has suffered the same trials as the other pilots.
Je ne suis pas le citadin qui joue, en vacances, au paysan. J’ai été chercher, une fois de plus, la preuve de ma bonne foi sur Arras. J’ai engagé ma chair dans l’aventure. Toute ma chair. Et je l’ai engagée perdante. J’ai donné tout ce que j’ai pu à ces règles du jeu. Pour qu’elles soient autre chose que des règles du jeu. J’ai acquis le droit de me sentir penaud, bientôt, quand le Commandant n’interrogera. C’est-à-dire de participer. D’être lié.
The ultimate sense of belonging has only been attained by a pilot called Hochedé. He is a hero in the true sense of the word. He is a man who is a natural volunteer, a natural participant:
Hochedé est volontaire naturellement. Il est cette guerre. C’est si naturel que, s’il s’agit d’un équipage à sacrifier, le commandant pense aussitôt à Hochedé.
Now after his mission Saint-Exupéry is more pétri de liens than he was before. The reason for Hochedé’s full belonging to the community is that he is pétri de liens. He is directly attached to things that exist, things for which he will fight to the last:
Il luttera pour son chronomètre. Son chronomètre existe. Et il mourra pour son pays. Son pays existe. Hochedé existe, qui est lié à eux. Il est pétri de tous ses liens avec le monde.
Similarly, as we noted above, if one of these bonds of friendship is destroyed, part of the man himself is destroyed. Thus when Guillaumet is killed, there is a part of the author that dies at the same time:
Je me sens un peu mort en lui. J’ai fait de Guillaumet un des compagnons de mon silence. Je suis de Guillaumet.
Thus, Saint-Exupéry has proved himself strong enough to withstand the anguish caused by the apparent absurdity of warfare. His immediate life is strengthened. He can look forward to a fuller existence because of the sacrifice he was asked to make. This is not true of France as a whole. Civilisation, as it had been understood in France, has been destroyed by the advancing German army. Hundreds of peasant communities had similarly been destroyed. For ever optimistic, Saint-Exupéry is convinced that there is some reason for the hopeless pitting of forty million French peasants against eighty million German industrial workers. Using a Cartesian method of analysis he sets about resolving his problem.
He analyses what has happened to the values that have been so dear to the civilized French man. By analysing an army in disorderly retreat and comparing it with the victorious army, he tries to find out what happened to the morale of the defeated army, the defeated army which symbolizes his broken ideals. He hopes by this method to find a universal justification for this defeat which at the moment appears absurd.
He finds that victory unites the army, defeat disintegrates it. Each defeated Frenchman contains in himself the properties of France, the defeated nation, and of civilisation in ruins:
Si les fuyards ne pleurent pas sur la France qui croule, c’est parce qu’ils sont vaincus. C’est parce que la France est défaite non autour d’eux mais en eux-mêmes. Pleurer sur la France serait déjà être vainqueur.
A comparison could be made between France and a cannon ball. While it is whole it has potential force. Should it disintegrate into atoms by some scientific process, each of the atoms still retains the properties of the cannon ball, but, without the power to unite with others it is useless.
The conclusion we would draw is that France’s sacrifice has been absurd. France has been destroyed. Individual personalities have been destroyed. Comradeship has been destroyed. Life for these men no longer has any meaning.
Saint-Exupéry thinks differently. Out of the ruins will grow a new, virile civilisation. As in his personal world participation in this civilisation can only be full if accompanied by the total sacrifice of each individual to that civilisation. Forty million Frenchmen have made that sacrifice, the rest of the world must benefit from it:
La France a joué son rôle. Il consistait pour elle à se proposer à l’écrasement, puisque le monde arbitrait sans collaborer ni combattre, et à se voir ensevelir pour un temps dans le silence. Quand on donne l’assaut il est nécessairement des hommes en tête. Ceux-là meurent presque toujours. Mais il faut pour que l’assaut soit que les premiers meurent.
The French have made the supreme sacrifice. They have served as an example to the world. The world will follow their example. From their sacrifice will be born the hopes of a new civilisation.
The value of human life consists in this total sacrifice which must be active and not indifferent, of oneself to the body of which one would be a part. Saint-Exupéry compares this sacrifice to someone working on an estate:
Celui-là seul comprendra ce qu‘est un domaine, qui lui aura sacrifié une part de soi, qui aura lutté pour le sauver, et peiné pour l’embellir. Alors lui viendra l’amour du domaine. Un domaine n’est pas la somme des intérêts, là est l’erreur. Il est la somme des dons.
It is upon this idea of participation through sacrifice that the whole code of human behaviour that we find in the last third of Pilote de Guerre is constructed.
Saint-Exupéry at last has found a universal solution to the meaning of human existence. The individual Frenchman is part of France which is part of Humanity (we note the Capital “H”). Saint-Exupéry calls this concept l’Homme. France has sacrificed her individuals to create the hope which will provide the adhesive substance necessary to unite her desperate individuals into this new super-comradeship called Humanity. Humanity is the unification through sacrifice of all men for their mutual benefit and enrichment:
Ma civilisation repose sur le culte de l’Homme au travers des individus. Elle a cherché des siècles durant, à montrer l’Homme, comme elle eût enseigné à distinguer une cathédrale à travers des pierres. Elle a prêché cet Homme qui dominait l’individu… Car l’Homme de ma civilisation ne se définit pas à partir des hommes. Ce sont les hommes qui se définissent par lui. Il est en lui, comme en tout être, quelque chose que n’expliquent pas les matériaux qui le composent. Une cathédrale est bien autre chose qu’une somme de pierres. Elle est géométrie et architecture. Ce ne sont pas les pierres qui la définissent, c’est elle qui enrichit les pierres de sa propre signification …
There is no need then to seek any further for a transcendental value for life. This value is to be found in Humanity. Man by sacrificing his personal interests to that cause will be wholeheartedly accepted by the cause and will be improved and embellished by it. The new question which one must inevitably ask oneself is: what would be the position of the individual in this society which appears so similar to the near-totalitarian society of Rivière?
Saint-Exupéry rejects totalitarianism:
Je-combattrai quiconque prétendra asservir à un individu --- comme à une masse d’individus – la liberté de l’Homme
The new civilisation will be founded on individual liberty:
Or ma civilisation a cherché à fonder les relations humaines sur le culte de l’Homme au-delà de l’individu, afin que le comportement de chacun vis-à-vis de soi-même ou d’autrui ne soit plus conformisme aveugle aux usages de la termitière mais libre exercice d’amour.
His civilisation, he admits, is based on Christian ethics. He takes seven Christian virtues and translates them into virtues of his civilisation. The virtues are: Liberty, Equality, Respect for one’s fellow men, Fraternity, Charity, Self-respect and Responsibility.
It seems that Fraternity and Responsibility have been put on the same level as a host of other virtues. This is not quite true. There is an essential rule of conduct which the author proposes for himself upon which the survival of the society depends. This rule is based upon solidarity with those belonging to the same body or community as oneself. If a man belongs to a family, he must not renounce that family. If he cannot defend a miscreant, the best he can do is to observe silence on the matter. For each person is responsible for the moral well-being of the community to which he belongs. It is his duty to rise up inside that community and inspire it along the right path. Hochedé typifies this attitude:
Hochedé ne rejette pas la défaite sur d’autres que lui. Il se dit : « moi, Hochedé, moi de France j’ai été faible. La France de Hochedé a été faible. J’ai été faible en elle et elle faible en moi ».
This does not mean, as one might be led to believe, that Saint-Exupéry is advocating social conformism. He is advocating that the individual should fight for a revival of those basically Christian principles which would defeat the mediocrity that has taken its roots in modern society. Man must be liberated so that he will be capable of ruling himself, and of directing himself towards the desired goal.
His basic aim, like that of Rivière, is to further human achievement by allowing only the enriching human values to prevail and by suppressing mediocrity:
Je combattrai quiconque, prétendant que ma charité honore la médiocrité, reniera l’Homme et ainsi emprisonnera l’individu dans une médiocrité définitive.
Human achievement, he maintains, can best be furthered by fighting for universal values against particular interests. In this way individual weaknesses will be suppressed. Only the transcendental qualities will remain. By his sacrifice to the cause of Humanity, the individual will improve that cause. That is the essence of life:
Je crois que le culte de l’universel exalte et noue les richesses particulières – et fonde le seul ordre véritable, lequel est celui de la vie
CONCLUSION
Now that we have seen the development of Saint-Exupéry’s thought from the early days of Courrier Sud to his last major completed work, it is possible by way of conclusion to examine the main themes that have been noted and to consider their development.
The development of the hero is perhaps the most interesting. The concept is born in Courrier Sud of an ardent need to escape from the earthbound existence, on the part of Bernis. The failure of Bernis to achieve anything but a sense of bewilderment and frustration is, paradoxically, closely related to the success of the heroes of Vol de Nuit. Bernis was frustrated because his action was not directed towards an ideal but was merely action for action’s sake. This theme is constant. Later on Saint-Exupéry is to condemn the toreador on the same grounds. The hero’s action has a meaning only in so far as it is directed towards a definite goal, be it a limited one as in Vol de Nuit, or part of a universal pattern as in Terre des Hommes and Pilote de Guerre.
The hero of Vol de Nuit is almost a pure hero. He thrusts away the world of simple happiness, even though it has some attraction for him. Rivière’s world is an absolute world, there is no time for human love. This conception is purely Nietzschean: for Rivière
it is necessary to kill the man so that the superman may live.
From Terre des Hommes onwards the hero ceases to be apart from the common throng. The new note is struck: everyone becomes a hero. There are no longer two absolute poles apart but a graded hierarchy of heroic attributes from those of the simple shepherd to those of the pilot-adventurer. The latter is still at the top of the hierarchy, but we feel his autonomy diminishing. By Pilote de Guerre it has almost disappeared. The important thing is that Humanity as a whole should strive through individual upsurges to self-surpassment. The hero no longer seeks to show his superiority over the common throng. His value is measured in terms of the strength of his ties with his fellow men and the strength he adds to the common effort.
It is indeed the theme of Fraternity which takes over the role of the hero concept. As the hero diminishes in stature, Fraternity grows in importance. There is little room for Fraternity in Courrier Sud, Bernis is at his happiest when alone in the aeroplane; he believes there is something more important than human love of any kind. In Vol de Nuit Fraternity is only permitted among equals. The need is already felt strongly and urgently by Robineau, but he his reprimanded for it. He is not in a position to fraternize with the pilots whom he has under his control. In Terre des Hommes and Pilote de Guerre it blossoms out to its full proportions. It becomes the joy that makes life worth living, indeed the prime need of man if he is to achieve the goals he has set himself.
The world of simple human relationships undergoes a similar fate. Given as the key to all human activity in Courrier Sud it is rejected as incompatible with the heroic goals which man was made to aim for. This rejection is reiterated in Vol de Nuit . In Terre des Hommes it becomes identified with the simple peasant community and the lignée paysanne, the handing down of the family traditions from one generation to another. Its value has been re-established. Indeed, it is by reflection upon one such family that the author arrives at the notion of human progress as the new goal at which to aim. It is the breaking up of the small village community during the war that Saint-Exupéry regrets the most. It is for its preservation that he is fighting. His new personal solution to the problem of existence is modelled on this nœud de relations to which he has come to attach so much importance.
All these themes have a common denominator. The quest is for eternity. Geneviève finds a sort of eternity and so do the heroes of Vol de Nuit. Their eternity is different and each kind is incomprehensible to the other. It is largely the eternity found by Geneviève that is accepted as the true basis for true eternity: the identification of the individual with a cause that goes beyond the bounds of human mortality. But the hero’s conception of eternity is not forgotten, for it is as a development of this that Saint-Exupéry forms the idea that the individual must be conscious of his role in the evolution that is taking place. That is the essential theme of Terre des Hommes and Pilote de Guerre.
Thus the conflict which was suggested in the Introduction as one of the seeds of Saint-Exupéry’s works, has been resolved. The author has found a meaning to human existence which he can accept without conflict. A meaning which satisfies his needs and fulfils all ideals.
This final solution to the problem of human existence has one basic fault. If this society is to be created, how can the author expect men with their own ideas and interests to submit themselves to his demands? Even he admits that he has forgotten these principles at the beginning of his flight over Arras:
Mais peu à peu j’ai oublié ma vérité.
Thus from the basically realistic solution of Terre des Hommes, Saint-Exupéry has become very much an idealist, though it must be admitted that his ideals had considerable propaganda value in the United States when Pilote de Guerre was first published there as Flight to Arras.
The unfinished work Citadelle provides a logical conclusion to Saint-Exupéry’s thought. Just as the ideal sought for in Courrier Sud is realized by the firm discipline imposed by Rivière on the pilots in Vol de Nuit, so the ideal of Pilote de Guerre finds its expression in the enlightened despotism of the desert chieftain. The meaning of existence remains the same for the individual: self-surpassment becoming once more the main object. The only problem which is given a vitally different aspect is one which we have not considered in detail, the problem of individual liberty. Thus the pilot, who fought against totalitarianism, is seen a few years later advocating despotism as the only feasible solution.
It is an admission of defeat on the part of the author. He realizes that his own ideals, if not contrary to human nature in general, are at least contrary to current trends. His last correspondence shows his personal anguish before the growth of impersonalisme and pseudo-“American” values. The values which he had set out in his works were trodden underfoot. His final notes are despairing. In his letter, Lettre au General X, we read the following words:
Ça m’est bien égal d’être tué en guerre. De ce que j’ai aimé, que restera-t-il ? Autant que des êtres, je parle des coutumes, les intonations irremplaçables, d’une certaine lumière spirituelle.
It is difficult to see how Saint-Exupéry could have carried any further his message of hope. He was sure there was a meaning to existence: he set out to find it and he evolved his solution. But when he faced up to reality Saint-Exupéry was doomed to despair, for his solution was almost “idealistic”: it was a glimpse of the essence of life. Human values on the other hand had become more materialistic, more superficial, according to his standards. The trend towards mass-culture, or rather mass-entertainment, shocked him because of the debasement of “spiritual” and artistic values that followed in their wake. These trends have provided a constant butt for the criticism of post-war artists. Could Saint-Exupéry have forced himself to make a new start and join the bandwagon of social satire, as his last letters suggest that he was about to do? Or, would he, as the still small voice, have continued to advocate his own solution carefully evolved through the years of his manhood?
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Reference to the works of Antoine Saint-Exupéry are taken from the Pléiade edition of his works published by Gallimard (nrf) July 1959. These references are simply indicated by page numbers. Other references are to the following editions:
Pierre-Henri Simon : L’Homme en Procès (La Baconnière, Neuchâtel, 1950).
Pierre Chevrier : Saint-Exupéry (Bibliothèque Idéale, Gallimard, 1958).
Luc Estang : Saint-Exupéry par lui-même (Ecrivains de Toujours, Editions du Seuil, 1959).
André Malraux : Les Conquérants (Livre de Poche).
Acknowledgements
I would also like to thank Jennifer for her painstaking work in retyping the faded typescript of my thesis.