SAINT-EXUPÉRY Antoine de (1900-1944) - Lot 114

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Lot n° 114
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SAINT-EXUPÉRY Antoine de (1900-1944) - Lot 114
SAINT-EXUPÉRY Antoine de (1900-1944) Autograph and partly typed MANUSCRIT for Pilote de guerre, [ca. 1940-1941]; 124 ff. in-4, of which 62 ff. autograph, and 33 ff. typed and partly autograph; in sheets (some stains; some folds and marginal tears, some with small lack). Important manuscript of twelve chapters of Pilote de guerre. Intended to celebrate the heroism of French aviation in the war, this book was published in New York on February 20, 1942, in English under the title Flight to Arras, and in French under the title Pilote de guerre; then in France by Gallimard, on November 27, 1942, initially censored by the German occupation authorities, but banned on February 11, 1943, and distributed clandestinely by the resistance movements. The book had a great impact in the United States, whose involvement in the conflict Saint-Exupéry wanted; it was strongly attacked in France by the collaborationist press. The present file gathers chapters V, IX, X, XIV, XVI, XX, XXI and XXIIIXXVII of the book. The BnF holds an important composite manuscript of this work (Mss, N.a.fr. 25 126), donated by Helen Mac Kay, an American Francophile, author of La France que j'aime, and godmother of Nada de Bragance, to whom Saint-Exupéry offered a completed typing of the same work (see below). The present manuscript, sometimes in ink and sometimes in black or colored pencil, on yellow or white sheets of paper, or on watermarked Fidelity Onion Skin paper; bears a partial autograph and later foliation. Like the BnF manuscript, our manuscript is composed of entirely handwritten pages (69) and typed pages often overloaded with corrections, sometimes edited through collage, all largely crossed out and corrected by the author. The variants with the published text are thus very numerous and several passages are unpublished. We will give only a few examples of this vast work. Chapters V and IX (6 ff.) offer a very old state of the text, comprising passages inserted then in chapters V and XI. In a plan entitled "The war. Themes", which the author seems to have organized into groups and subgroups, several themes: "History of a mission", "Life of the group", "Armistice", etc. In chapter X (1 f.), one can read paragraphs that the author has written about the situation in the village: "The story of a mission / Lebrun and Yatapan / dressing / oxygen / the laryngophone: one can always run, n'esy plus près, language essays [...] Armistice / Country broken down on the roads / Images of the press / impossible supply / Evacuation of the village: the baker gone / the cement wall / tears / general liquidation "...), one can read paragraphs that will be found, very modified, in the published text, with here in incipit this question repeated several times: "Attention à quoi, Commandant Alias? In chapter XVI (1 f.), we find this very beautiful passage, from an earlier state of the text: "I remember a striking impression: we were going around my group and I that day in a village through which a stream of refugees was passing. The passage of these refugees had eaten the village to the bone. There were no more tins on the shelves of the grocery stores. Grasshoppers on the tarmac. A woman asked us for milk... - but there was no milk here. Maybe to the next village, but how many hours did it take to reach the next village on a completely jammed road? And suddenly the life of this child who had not suckled since the day before was subjected to the rotation of the hands of a watch. [...] They disappeared, but all afternoon I watched the village clock. How many children it was crushing as it turned slowly... We were at the height of the emergency and already it was not. The whole population was giving up the emergency. It was suspended in an unstable balance between hope and expectation. .... In chapters XX and XXI (3 ff.), the paragraphs are in a completely different order than in the published text, one of them is deleted by strikeouts, and another passage, in which Saint Exupéry goes before a court, is reminiscent of the Letter to a Hostage, of which, precisely, a typed part contains an extract. Chapter XXV is the most developed in this manuscript, with 75 pages, half of which are autographs, in which successive versions follow each other (the chapter finally only counts 4 pages in the Pléiade edition). Many paragraphs crossed out, or completely rewritten. The author has cut out typed passages to paste them in a different order and insert handwritten passages. One will note a continuation of 6 ff. in pencil, where the text will be divided between chapters XXIV to XXVII. "My farmer, if he receives some vagabond at his table, will accept him as he is, in spite of his defects [...]. He will not ask him to be like him. The vagrant, if he is lame, will put his stick in a
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