One expects certain things of a book named Wind, Sand and Stars. Le Petit Prince remains one of my most beloved stories and so I put off reading this memoir for fear I would be disappointed. Wind, Sand and Stars captures more of la grande personne of The Little Prince. It's a memoir about aviation, primarily, which I had thought would bore me. Some parts do read like a typical memoir. And so I sometimes found myself blinking in mild annoyance at having to pay attention to the details of bibliographical events, some of which felt dry. Perhaps this was hard also because that old world of de Saint-Exupery's seems so different from the reality I inhabit today.
What I loved though, and what kept me reading, was de Saint-Exupery's approach to life. Who he was, it seems, is so blatantly woven through pages of this book. An aviator is perhaps the best word to describe him. He did carry mails through wind, sand and stars, gazing at civilization from a couple thousand feet up. Similarly, metaphorically, he looked at himself and at his world in the same way. I read Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil at the same time as this memoir and what struck me in their similarity was the eagle's perspective that both seem to share. As in, there is a a certain degree of distance, of removedness, that is required for spiritual and philosophical insight. Anyway, ever an observer and wanderer and a lover, de Saint-Exupery tells of his aviation adventures and the little insights that strike him along the way. Of course, as in The Little Prince, the word "little" conceals a profound nature.
So, if you pay attention, you can hear Le Petit Prince whispering to you from these pages:
"What could they know of those stars that one by one were going out? I alone was in the confidence of the stars."
"And that heart which was a wild garden was given to him who loved only trim lawns."
"Whether we dub it sacrifice, or poetry, or adventure, it is always the same voice that calls. But domestic security has succeeded in crushing out that part in us that is capable of heeding the call. We scarcely quiver; we beat our wings once or twice and fall back into our barnyard."
"What we feel when we are hungry...is that the birth of man is not yet accomplished, that we must take stock of ourselves and our universe. We must send forth pontoons into the night."
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