{"id":65628,"date":"2003-05-31T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2003-05-31T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2003\/05\/31\/la-france-et-saint-exupery-vus-par-un-americain-lewis-garantiere\/"},"modified":"2003-05-31T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2003-05-31T00:00:00","slug":"la-france-et-saint-exupery-vus-par-un-americain-lewis-garantiere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2003\/05\/31\/la-france-et-saint-exupery-vus-par-un-americain-lewis-garantiere\/","title":{"rendered":"La France et Saint-Exup\u00e9ry vus par un Am\u00e9ricain, Lewis Garanti\u00e8re<\/em><\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

La France et Saint-Exup\u00e9ry vus par un Am\u00e9ricain, Lewis Garanti\u00e8re<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

\t L’extrait<\/strong> est en fait compos\u00e9 de deux textes. Il s’agit d’abord d’un article paru dans la revue L’\u00e2ge nouveau<\/em>, num\u00e9ro baptis\u00e9 Visages des \u00c9tats-Unis<\/em>, n\u00b0 74-75-76, Juin-juillet-ao\u00fbt 1952, Paris. Le second texte est un article paru dans The Atlantic Monthly<\/em>, avril 1947. (Le premier texte est en fran\u00e7ais, le second en anglais.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00a0L’auteur<\/strong>, Lewis Garanti\u00e8re, Am\u00e9ricain, \u00e9diteur, \u00e9crivain, traducteur, mais aussi expert financier (Chambre Internationale de Commerce de Paris de 1920 \u00e0 1927 et Federal Reserve Bank de New York de 1928 \u00e0 1929), haut fonctionnaire de l’administration Roosevelt (dirige l’Office of War Information de 1942 \u00e0 1945). Pour notre compte, Garanti\u00e8re est surtout connu comme l’un des grands traducteurs am\u00e9ricains d’\u00e9crivains et auteurs fran\u00e7ais du XIXe et du XXe si\u00e8cle (les Goncourt, Joseph Delteil, Jean Anouilh, Antoine de Saint-Exup\u00e9ry, Sacha Gu\u00e9try, Jacques Maritain ; par cons\u00e9quent, remarquable connaisseur de la langue fran\u00e7aise et de la culture fran\u00e7aise.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00a0Les circonstances<\/strong> de ces deux textes, deux articles. Le premier, chronologiquement, paru dans The Atlantic Monthly<\/em> en avril 1947, est un portrait de Antoine de Saint-Exup\u00e9ry, dont Garanti\u00e8re fut le traducteur et le proche, notamment pendant le s\u00e9jour nord-am\u00e9ricain de Saint-Ex, pendant la guerre. Le second (premier dans notre pr\u00e9sentation) est une contribution de Garanti\u00e8re \u00e0 un num\u00e9ro sp\u00e9cial de L’Age Nouveau<\/em>, num\u00e9ro consacr\u00e9 \u00e0 l’Am\u00e9rique en mai 1952 ; Garanti\u00e8re y donne une vision am\u00e9ricaine de la France, par une description directe autant que par une comparaison des deux pays.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00a0La situation<\/strong> de ces deux articles permet de donner une appr\u00e9ciation am\u00e9ricaine de la France il y a un demi-si\u00e8cle, et essentiellement de la France vue d’un point de vue culturel de la part d’un homme qui fut grand connaisseur de cette culture et aussi un grand amoureux de la France. Il faut signaler que Garanti\u00e8re n’est pas un de ces \u00e9crivains am\u00e9ricains r\u00e9volt\u00e9s, dont l’affection pour la France se mesure \u00e0 son hostilit\u00e9 pour le syst\u00e8me am\u00e9ricain. Garanti\u00e8re reste Am\u00e9ricain tout en pr\u00e9sentant sa vision pleine de chaleur de la France et de reconnaissance (\u00ab La libert\u00e9 culturelle, cette libert\u00e9 absolue qui r\u00e8gne en France, est une des gloires de notre temps.<\/em> \u00bb). Le second article est un \u00e9tonnant et superbe portrait de Saint-Exup\u00e9ry en Am\u00e9rique, pendant les sombres ann\u00e9es de guerre, avec des notations d’un tr\u00e8s grand int\u00e9r\u00eat, voire des anecdotes qui durent \u00eatre des r\u00e9v\u00e9lations en leur temps. (Comme Saint-Ex imaginant un plan d’invasion de l’Afrique du Nord en m\u00eame temps que l’\u00e9tat-major anglo-am\u00e9ricain mettait au point l’op\u00e9ration Torch<\/em> de novembre 1942, tout cela aboutissant \u00e0 l’affolement des autorit\u00e9s washingtoniennes d\u00e9couvrant qu’un Fran\u00e7ais avait imagin\u00e9 de son c\u00f4t\u00e9 leur plan secret, et le contactant pour l’y faire collaborer.) Un passage nous donne une superbe comparaison des conceptions am\u00e9ricaines (anglo-saxonnes) et europ\u00e9ennes (fran\u00e7aises) de la d\u00e9mocratie, avec leurs diff\u00e9rences fondamentales. Tout cela, avec une culture et une connaissance de la France exceptionnelles. En un mot pour conclure, deux textes am\u00e9ricains sur la France et \u00e0 propos de la France, qui font mesurer, \u00e0 c\u00f4t\u00e9 de ce qui se dit et s’\u00e9crit aujourd’hui \u00e0 Washington sur ce sujet, la grande d\u00e9cadence de l’esprit et du jugement, et la progression effrayante du conformisme aux d\u00e9pens de la libert\u00e9. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Un Am\u00e9ricain regarde la France<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

\tPar Lewis Galanti\u00e8re<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tLa libert\u00e9 culturelle, cette libert\u00e9 absolue qui r\u00e8gne en France, est une des gloires de notre temps.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tJe me rappelle avoir lu dans l’autobiographie de Leish Hunt l’histoire d’un original qui dirigeait un journal provincial en Angleterre pendant les guerres napol\u00e9oniennes. L’homme \u00e9tait obs\u00e9d\u00e9 par l’id\u00e9e que la plus importante chose du monde \u00e9tait de mettre fin aux punitions corporelles dans l’arm\u00e9e britannique et il \u00e9crivit dans un de ses \u00e9ditoriaux : \u00ab Pourquoi ne pas le faire, puisque m\u00eame les Fran\u00e7ais ne fouettent pas leurs troupes ! \u00bb Il fut aussit\u00f4t inculp\u00e9 par le procureur g\u00e9n\u00e9ral d’Angleterre, qui citait comme.chef d’accusation que, d’apr\u00e8s cette remarque, l’homme d\u00e9sirait l’invasion de l’Angleterre par les arm\u00e9es napol\u00e9oniennes ! C’est cette sorte de nervosit\u00e9, de peur de sa propre ombre, qu’on ne trouve gu\u00e8re parmi les Fran\u00e7ais.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tIl y a deux raisons pour lesquelles ce peuple extraordinaire est moins effray\u00e9 par les id\u00e9es que nous. La premi\u00e8re en est que l’individualisme fran\u00e7ais est d’une intensit\u00e9 avec laquelle nous ne pouvons pas nous mesurer. La seconde, est qu’il poss\u00e8de un respect pour tout ce qui touche \u00e0 l’esprit qui n’est pas g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement r\u00e9pandu chez nous. Je veux essayer de r\u00e9sumer ce que sont les Fran\u00e7ais en v\u00e9rit\u00e9. Ils sont la plus ancienne nation politique de l’Europe. Leur conscience nationale s’est affirm\u00e9e pendant un millier d’ann\u00e9es; elle a surv\u00e9cu, au cours de ces mille ann\u00e9es, \u00e0 tous les avatars qui peuvent s’abattre sur un peuple par la faute des b\u00eatises de ses dirigeants ainsi que des d\u00e9ficiences de son propre caract\u00e8re. C’est dans leurs faiblesses que tous les hommes sont fr\u00e8res. C’est dans leur volont\u00e9 et leur g\u00e9nie que les hommes et les nations diff\u00e9rent. La volont\u00e9 et le g\u00e9nie du peuple fran\u00e7ais se sont av\u00e9r\u00e9s hors de toute comparaison.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tOn chercherait en vain dans l’histoire de tout peuple, \u00e0 commencer par la Chine, vers l’ouest jusqu’\u00e0 la c\u00f4te atlantique, mille ann\u00e9es d’accomplissement spirituel et culturel comparables \u00e0 celui des Fran\u00e7ais : dans l’architecture, dans la litt\u00e9rature, dans la pens\u00e9e politique ou m\u00e9taphysique, en peinture, en sculpture, en strat\u00e9gie militaire, dans l’exploration ou dans la d\u00e9couverte, dans chaque branche des humanit\u00e9s, dans la d\u00e9fense des droits de l’homme. Additionnons-les. L’envergure m\u00eame de cet accomplissement peut \u00e0 peine \u00eatre saisie par l’esprit. Jetons un regard sur le temps \u00e9coul\u00e9 : depuis Ab\u00e9lard et les d\u00e9buts du gothique jusqu’aux grandes \u00e9coles de peinture et les g\u00e9ants d’hier et d’aujourd’hui : Proust, Gide, Val\u00e9ry, St-John Perse, dont les noms sont familiers \u00e0 tous les Am\u00e9ricains. Quand on parle de la culture fran\u00e7aise, on parle de quelque chose d’unique dans l’histoire de l’humanit\u00e9 ; on parle en termes d’eons et non pas d’une seule \u00e9poque.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tSi on oublie tout cela, si on se borne \u00e0 dessiner l’image de la France d’apr\u00e8s ce qu’on lit dans la presse sur la politique fran\u00e7aise, on se trompe non seulement sur ce qui se passe en France, mais aussi sur la sc\u00e8ne politique fran\u00e7aise. Ce qui d\u00e9concerte dans la politique fran\u00e7aise, c’est la m\u00eame d\u00e9ficience si on veut l’appeler d\u00e9ficience qui rendait si d\u00e9concertante la politique de l’ancienne Ath\u00e8nes, une passion effr\u00e9n\u00e9e pour le libre exercice de l’esprit, c’est-\u00e0-dire la passion pour l’essence m\u00eame de l’individualisme.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tJe pense \u00e0 la fa\u00e7on dont cet individualisme fran\u00e7ais se manifeste \u00e0 travers la proc\u00e9dure judiciaire. On a, chez nous, l’impression que, devant un tribunal fran\u00e7ais, un inculp\u00e9 est consid\u00e9r\u00e9 coupable tant qu’il n’a pas prouv\u00e9 son innocence. C’est une grave erreur. Il est exact que les Fran\u00e7ais n’appliquent pas les r\u00e8gles de l’\u00e9vidence anglo-am\u00e9ricaine. Mais ce qui est, en fait, pratiqu\u00e9 en France, c’est une proc\u00e9dure qui donne \u00e0 l’accus\u00e9 toute possibilit\u00e9 de prouver son innocence, le privil\u00e8ge au moins tacitement inclus de pouvoir d\u00e9battre sa cause avec le pr\u00e9sident du tribunal, le procureur de la R\u00e9publique et les t\u00e9moins \u00e0 charge. Habitu\u00e9s que nous sommes \u00e0 nos r\u00e8gles, nous trouvons la proc\u00e9dure d’un tribunal fran\u00e7ais parfois d\u00e9sordonn\u00e9e, parfois si \u00e9trange qu’elle frise la com\u00e9die. Je suppose qu’elle l’est et je pr\u00e9f\u00e8re la n\u00f4tre de m\u00eame que je pr\u00e9f\u00e8re, quand je suis malade, \u00eatre trait\u00e9 par un m\u00e9decin am\u00e9ricain. Mais c’est un fait que le tribunal et le barreau fran\u00e7ais ont toujours pr\u00e9sent \u00e0 l’esprit l’enjeu du d\u00e9bat, la r\u00e9putation ou m\u00eame la vie du citoyen. C’est la raison de tout ce qui se passe devant un tribunal fran\u00e7ais : l’accusation ne doit pas seulement prouver, comme c’est le cas chez nous, que l’inculp\u00e9 est coupable, mais l’inculp\u00e9 a toute libert\u00e9 de constater que l’accusation se trompe et m\u00eame qu’elle est de mauvaise foi. Avec cette notion des droits absolus de l’individu et non pas seulement \u00e9tablis par la loi il ne peut jamais arriver, en France, qu’un inculp\u00e9 accepte docilement d’\u00eatre malmen\u00e9 par qui que ce soit. Quelle que soit en th\u00e9orie la sauvegarde de la dignit\u00e9 de la Cour, en pratique personne devant un tribunal fran\u00e7ais, aucun avocat plaidant \u00e0 la barre ne jouit de privil\u00e8ges aussi grands que l’inculp\u00e9. Chacun de nous ayant assist\u00e9 \u00e0 un proc\u00e8s am\u00e9ricain sait que ce n’est pas toujours le cas devant nos tribunaux.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tSi les enqu\u00eates du Congr\u00e8s se d\u00e9roulaient \u00e0 la mani\u00e8re fran\u00e7aise, aucun Am\u00e9ricain ne serait emp\u00each\u00e9 de r\u00e9pliquer \u00e0 un s\u00e9nateur, dans un langage aussi libre, avec une immunit\u00e9 aussi totale que ceux de son juge s\u00e9natorial ou du procureur. Si nous suivions la proc\u00e9dure fran\u00e7aise, il semblerait naturel au plus effac\u00e9 des t\u00e9moins d’avoir des droits aussi fondamentaux que ceux d’un s\u00e9nateur. Ce qui est encore plus important, ces droits seraient consid\u00e9r\u00e9s comme \u00e9vidents par toute notre soci\u00e9t\u00e9. Les directeurs de la N. A. M. (Association Nationale des Industriels<\/em>), les \u00e9diteurs des publications dirig\u00e9es par des agents en retraite de la police f\u00e9d\u00e9rale d’information, les l\u00e9gislateurs eux-m\u00eames ne songeraient pas \u00e0 nier que les droits d’un t\u00e9moin sont aussi absolus que ceux d’un politicien couvert par son immunit\u00e9.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tJe pense aussi \u00e0 l’\u00c9glise, en France. Aucune institution n’est aujourd’hui plus respectueuse des droits politiques du citoyen. En France, l’\u00c9glise est puissante, mais ses \u00e9v\u00eaques sont des hommes d’une haute culture. L’\u00c9glise est naturellement anti-communiste, mais elle n’est pas anti-humaniste. Elle est l’ennemie d\u00e9clar\u00e9e d’un socialisme anticl\u00e9rical, mais aussi ennemie d\u00e9clar\u00e9e de ceux qui vivent seulement pour amasser des profits personnels et exploiter les pauvres. Pour toutes ces raisons, L’\u00c9glise de France n’a jamais essay\u00e9, au cours de ces ann\u00e9es de guerre froide, d’intervenir aupr\u00e8s des autorit\u00e9s civiles pour les inciter \u00e0 soumettre \u00e0 une torture mentale des hommes qui ont eu autrefois certaines id\u00e9es, qui ont appartenu \u00e0 certains groupes ou m\u00eame ceux qui ont \u00e9t\u00e9 les adeptes d’une foi fervemment profess\u00e9e dans l’insouciance de leur jeunesse. On n’a jamais, jusqu’\u00e0 pr\u00e9sent, entendu parler, en France, d’un communiste converti qui aurait \u00e9t\u00e9 encourag\u00e9 \u00e0 faire une carri\u00e8re dans la d\u00e9nonciation, et quand on voit, des ph\u00e9nom\u00e8nes de ce genre se produire en Am\u00e9rique, il ne faut pas les consid\u00e9rer comme des ph\u00e9nom\u00e8nes catholiques, mais plut\u00f4t comme strictement am\u00e9ricains.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tCe respect absolu de la personnalit\u00e9 humaine, que nous appelons dans la vie civique individualisme, est la source principale de la libert\u00e9 culturelle qui r\u00e8gne aujourd’hui en France. Une autre source importante de cette libert\u00e9 culturelle est le respect que les Fran\u00e7ais \u00e9prouvent pour les id\u00e9es en elles-m\u00eames. Je m’explique : <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tJe n’aime pas beaucoup ce propos plut\u00f4t condescendant et fr\u00e9quemment employ\u00e9 par les Europ\u00e9ens que nous sommes un peuple \u00ab jeune \u00bb. Nous avons la plus ancienne constitution \u00e9crite qui est toujours en vigueur. Nos institutions politiques sont peut-\u00eatre les plus anciennes qui existent au monde dans leur forme primitive. Nous avons laiss\u00e9 le colonialisme loin de nous pour devenir une force culturelle extraordinairement puissante partout \u00e0 travers le globe. On trouve \u00e0 Shangha\u00ef, \u00e0 Buenos-Aires, \u00e0 Moscou des gratte-ciel qu’on a pour la premi\u00e8re fois consciemment d\u00e9velopp\u00e9s \u00e0 Chicago. Le langage courant et m\u00eame les vocabulaires parlementaires de l’Angleterre fourmillent de locutions qu’on a, depuis: longtemps, cess\u00e9 d’appeler des \u00ab am\u00e9ricanismes \u00bb. Notre roman des trois derni\u00e8res d\u00e9cades pr\u00e9c\u00e9dant l’ann\u00e9e 1940 a succ\u00e9d\u00e9 au roman russe (qui a succ\u00e9d\u00e9 au fran\u00e7ais, successeur \u00e0 son tour du roman anglais) comme la plus grande force d’influence dans la litt\u00e9rature europ\u00e9enne. Le jazz<\/em> et, plus tard, le swing<\/em>, ont exerc\u00e9 une action parall\u00e8le sur la musique s\u00e9rieuse en Europe. Quels que soient les m\u00e9faits d’Hollywood, on y trouve encore toujours plus de films de premier ordre et plus d’id\u00e9es cin\u00e9matographiques originales que dans tout autre centre industriel du film. C’\u00e9tait le colonel Cooper et d’autres ing\u00e9nieurs am\u00e9ricains qui ont b\u00e2ti Magnitogorsk, et appris aux Russes comment construire les bases d’un \u00e9quipement industriel national. A l’exception du plan charbon-acier de M. Schuman et du projet de l’arm\u00e9e europ\u00e9enne de M. Pleven, presque chaque grand instrument de la coop\u00e9ration internationale des derni\u00e8res vingt ann\u00e9es a \u00e9t\u00e9 con\u00e7u ou \u00e9labor\u00e9 sous sa direction, depuis le projet du pr\u00eat-bail jusqu’aux quatre points. Je ne mentionne que pour m\u00e9moire la science am\u00e9ricaine, car m\u00eame les critiques, chez nous, qui sont pour la plupart des hommes de lettres, n’en tiennent pas compte en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral, ignorants qu’ils sont de l’\u00e9conomie politique, de la science de l’histoire, de la linguistique, de l’esth\u00e9tique ainsi que de toute autre branche des humanit\u00e9s qui ne se trouvent pas repr\u00e9sent\u00e9es dans leurs revues litt\u00e9raires.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tEn d\u00e9pit de toutes les raisons qui me font h\u00e9siter \u00e0 nous consid\u00e9rer comme un peuple jeune, je suis oblig\u00e9 de m’accommoder de cet adjectif quand je pense qu’en tant que nation, nous ne respectons pas les id\u00e9es en elles-m\u00eames et pour elles-m\u00eames.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tLes Fran\u00e7ais, par contre, les respectent, non pas parce qu’ils sont intellectuellement plus profonds que nous, mais plut\u00f4t parce qu’ils sont intellectuellement plus \u00e2g\u00e9s que nous. Ils poss\u00e8dent cette particuli\u00e8re sorte de sagesse qui est la sagesse de l’\u00e2ge, de l’exp\u00e9rience accumul\u00e9e la sagesse, disons dont fait preuve le g\u00e9n\u00e9ral Koutouzov dans La Guerre et la Paix<\/em> de Tolsto\u00ef ; la sagesse qu’on pouvait attendre \u00e0 son \u00e2ge du g\u00e9n\u00e9ral Mac Arthur et dont il semble cependant manquer.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tNous, Am\u00e9ricains, nous savons que les hommes agissent sous des impulsions, que c’est l’ambition qui les pousse \u00e0 faire certaines choses : d\u00e9fricher les champs, abattre des for\u00eats, b\u00e2tir des villes, r\u00e9pandre l’\u00e9vangile d’une am\u00e9lioration mat\u00e9rielle, rendre leurs femmes fi\u00e8res d’eux et la vie de leurs enfants plus facile que la leur. Ce que les Fran\u00e7ais savent est quelque chose de tout \u00e0 fait diff\u00e9rent. Ils savent que les id\u00e9es sont pr\u00e9cieuses, non pas d’une fa\u00e7on alti\u00e8re, esth\u00e9tique ou acad\u00e9mique, mais pratiquement pr\u00e9cieuse par le fait que ce genre d’homme qu’on devient et non pas le genre de choses qu’on fait est d\u00e9termin\u00e9 par le genre de pens\u00e9es qui se d\u00e9roulent dans un cerveau, par le genre de croyances qu’on ch\u00e9rit.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tQuelqu’un a dit que les hommes se refusent de vivre tant qu’ils n’ont pas quelque chose qui vaut la peine qu’on lui sacrifie la vie, et cette affirmation ne para\u00eet ni paradoxale ni inintelligible pour des Fran\u00e7ais. Si on ne donne pas une alternative morale au communisme, ils ne se donneront pas la peine de lui r\u00e9sister ; il leur importera peu qu’ils soient vivants ou morts. Quiconque doute de la v\u00e9rit\u00e9 de ce que j’avance n’aura qu’\u00e0 se rappeler ce qui s’est pass\u00e9 en Europe, au cours de ces trente derni\u00e8res ann\u00e9es. Si, un Fran\u00e7ais par exemple, lisait cette phrase de John Stuart Mills : \u00ab Les hommes sont s\u00fbrs non pas que leurs id\u00e9es soient justes, mais qu’ils ne sauraient pas s’en passer <\/em>\u00bb, il comprendrait imm\u00e9diatement son sens profond. Pour un Fran\u00e7ais, la chose la plus \u00e9vidente au monde est que la vie est soumise aux id\u00e9es comme guide et contr\u00f4le, que les id\u00e9es sont des forces qui s’emparent de l’homme et en font ce qu’il est.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tJ’ai fait un tr\u00e8s long d\u00e9tour pour arriver \u00e0 mon point de d\u00e9part, qui est si \u00e9vident que je m’en excuse. Les Fran\u00e7ais respectent les id\u00e9es. Ils les respectent \u00e0 cause de cette transformation qu’elles op\u00e8rent chez un \u00eatre humain. Les Fran\u00e7ais sont individuellement aussi \u00e9go\u00efstes, avides, aussi peu charitables et marqu\u00e9s par le p\u00e9ch\u00e9 originel que le reste de l’humanit\u00e9, mais ils partagent avec les Ath\u00e9niens cette l’habitude d’admettre les intellectuels \u00e0 la direction des affaires publiques. Gr\u00e2ce \u00e0 cette particularit\u00e9, le combat entre les dirigeants en France est un combat id\u00e9ologique. Si un tel conflit doit \u00e9clater, et les r\u00e8gles du jeu politique en France le rendent in\u00e9vitable, il ne pourra pas \u00eatre question de supprimer les id\u00e9es ou les hommes qui les repr\u00e9sentent. De cet \u00e9tat de choses d\u00e9coule ce que nous appelons un gouvernement \u00ab inefficace \u00bb, mais il en d\u00e9coule aussi la libert\u00e9 culturelle.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tOn pourrait se demander pourquoi un gouvernement inefficace doit \u00eatre n\u00e9cessairement un corollaire de la libert\u00e9 culturelle ? Je ne pr\u00e9tends pas qu’il le soit parce que je suis assez au courant de la situation pour pouvoir distinguer entre l’administration fran\u00e7aise qui est de premier ordre, et les conflits parlementaires qui sont tout ce que le monde en sait. Je veux dire seulement que si la fa\u00e7on dont la France est gouvern\u00e9e para\u00eet inefficace j’\u00e9cris \u00e0 dessein para\u00eet une des raisons et m\u00eame la raison principale en est que tout ce qui se discute dans l’Assembl\u00e9e nationale fran\u00e7aise concerne plus souvent des probl\u00e8mes de doctrine que des questions mat\u00e9rielles. J’affirme aussi que ce d\u00e9bat et le respect pour les id\u00e9es en elles-m\u00eames qu’il r\u00e9v\u00e8le sont la sauvegarde principale du r\u00e8gne de la libert\u00e9 culturelle en France.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tDeux choses seraient \u00e0 ajouter : premi\u00e8rement, nous n’avons pas \u00e0 exiger de la France ou de tout autre pays de mener sa barque exactement de la m\u00eame fa\u00e7on que nous le faisons, ne serait-ce que pour la raison que la n\u00f4tre n’est pas si impeccablement men\u00e9e non plus. Si la France n’a pas un Bob Lovett comme ministre de la D\u00e9fense nationale, elle n’a pas non plus un Jo\u00eb Mac Carthy investi de sa propre autorit\u00e9 comme ministre de la S\u00e9curit\u00e9 publique.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tEn second lieu, si les Fran\u00e7ais ne se \u00ab rangent pas \u00bb comme on dirait chez nous politiquement, une des raisons en est qu’ils discutent de v\u00e9rit\u00e9s \u00e9ternelles, ce que nous ne faisons pas en tant que nation dans notre vie politique. Nous les approchons par le biais, si nous ne pouvons pas les \u00e9luder. Notre gouvernement n’a pas besoin d’\u00eatre plus soutenu qu’il ne l’est. Mais il a besoin de l’opposition sur un plan sup\u00e9rieur, moral. Les Fran\u00e7ais m\u00e9ritent notre admiration au lieu d’\u00eatre d\u00e9sapprouv\u00e9s quand ils discutent de la grande question : que doit \u00eatre l’homme ?, tandis que nous continuons \u00e0 d\u00e9battre cette question secondaire : que doit-il faire ?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tParis est toujours la capitale mondiale de la libert\u00e9 culturelle. Les Fran\u00e7ais sont peut-\u00eatre trop rationalistes. Peut-\u00eatre sont-ils trop \u00e9pris d’id\u00e9es. On court un risque terrible quand on confie<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tun gouvernement \u00e0 des doctrinaires, le risque de se trouver sous le r\u00e8gne d’un roi-philosophe. Ce roi-philosophe peut s’appeler Cromwell ou Mussolini, Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Hohenzollern ou Staline, Napol\u00e9on ou Hitler. Il n’est jamais bon pour un peuple d’\u00eatre gouvern\u00e9 par un homme qui sait mieux que lui-m\u00eame ce qui est bon pour lui. Personne n’arrivera \u00e0 me persuader qu’un dirigeant tout puissant est capable de rendre les gens heureux en st\u00e9rilisant leurs sources d’erreurs. Tout d’abord, la seule conception que j’aie de l’infini est l’infinit\u00e9 de ces sources. En plus, ces sources d’erreurs sont aussi des sources de sagesse, de vertu, d’amour et celles dont on ne voudrait pas \u00eatre priv\u00e9 au b\u00e9n\u00e9fice de vivre une vie passivement conformiste selon des r\u00e8gles calqu\u00e9es sur Platon ou Marx.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tIl se pourrait que les Fran\u00e7ais par leur passion pour les id\u00e9es et les doctrines naviguent trop pr\u00e8s des \u00e9cueils dangereux. Si c’est le cas, ils le font en observant fid\u00e8lement les r\u00e8gles de Mills : \u00ab si l’humanit\u00e9 tout enti\u00e8re moins un seul \u00e9tait de la m\u00eame opinion, et une seule personne \u00e9tait de l’opinion contraire, l’humanit\u00e9 ne serait pas plus justifi\u00e9e en r\u00e9duisant cette personne au silence, que cette personne, si elle en avait le pouvoir, serait justifi\u00e9e \u00e0 r\u00e9duire au silence l’humanit\u00e9 <\/em>\u00bb. Mills se d\u00e9signait lui-m\u00eame comme fils des Encyclop\u00e9distes. Il n’aurait pas tort, je crois, aujourd’hui, de proclamer cette r\u00e9f\u00e9rence pour la France, qu’il exprimait \u00e0 l’\u00e9poque, il y a trois-quarts de si\u00e8cle.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Antoine de Saint-Exup\u00e9ry<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

\tBy Lewis Galanti\u00e8re, The Atlantic Monthly, April, 1947 Books and Men, pp 133-141<\/strong><\/p>\n

I.<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

\tIN 1940, nearly a quarter century of Bolshevism and almost as many years of Fascism had accustomed the world to the existence of the political refugee, and when the France-German Armistice was signed in June it seemed a natural thing that Frenchmen should fly their country. To help them out of France was a pious act, and Britishers who a day before were talking of the \u00a0\u00bbdesertion\u00a0\u00bb of France were not behind Americans in lending a hand. In the case of Antoine de Saint-Exup\u00e9ry, it was his publishers, Eug\u00e8ne Reynal and the late Curtice Hitchcock who cabled, proposing to arrange for his visa and to facilitate his passage to the United States. What actually persuaded Saint-Exup\u00e9ry to leave France and exile himself among us is a question I never put to him directly. He had friends and a great reputation in the United States, of course. His books were very popular and he was sure to have no material worries in this country. But we were a neutral power, the French were a defeated and humiliated nation; and with the best will in the world the American people could not be expected to share the ceaseless gnawing anxiety by which he, as a Frenchman, was then beset. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tI have never known a man so little made for neutrality, for emigration, for exile. Saint-Exup\u00e9ry was obsessed by the notion that France must stay in the war. He wanted passionately to serve his country, but as a soldier, by fighting for it. As early as September, 1939, he had refused to lend his pen and his name to the French propaganda ministry and had insisted upon serving as a pilot though he was in his fortieth year. When the invitation of his American publishers reached him, Saint-Exup\u00e9ry borrowed a plane and flew off to Tunisia to consult his comrades of the reconnaissance group with which he had fought the Battle of France. \u00a0\u00bbI wanted to know,\u00a0\u00bb he said subsequently, \u00a0\u00bbif they were going to be able to go on fighting. They looked at me in astonishment. ‘You are out of your mind,’ they said. ‘We have no reserve planes, no fuel, no tires, no spare parts, How many missions do you think a plane can fly without spare parts? Of course we can’t fight. The best that we can do is to hide as much of our equipment as possible from the enemy Armistice inspectors bury it and hope to use it another day.\u00a0\u00bb’ <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tSaint-Exup\u00e9ry returned from Tunisia to France and had a look round Vichy. There were, in those early days, men at Vichy whom he admired and knew to be honorable and patriotic Frenchmen. These men and others invited him to join them in le double jeu, the \u00a0\u00bbdouble game\u00a0\u00bb of salvaging what they could of French self-respect and French resources by pulling the wool over the Germans’ eyes. Saint-Exup\u00e9ry tried to convince himself that this was what he should do. But no double game was possible to him. He had no gift for intrigue, for dissimulation. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tThere remained General de Gaulle, and here we meet Saint-Exup\u00e9ry’s second obsession. He was persuaded, and proclaimed, that in a time of national defeat and humiliation, no Frenchman had the right to fight against another Frenchman. Unity was now the first requisite of the nation. Rightly or wrongly, he look it into his head that the war which General de Gaulle was inviting the French to fight under his banner was a war of fratricide, and in such a war he refused to participate. (Not to intervene in the debate, but merely to contribute a note of clarification this was in substance the position of the French Army, including General B\u00e9thouart and General Juin, officers who followed Giraud in November, 1942, and yet were successively made Chief of the General Staff by de Gaulle himself when he assumed power.) \u00a0\u00bbDe Gaulle,\u00a0\u00bb Saint-Exup\u00e9ry said when we talked about him, \u00a0\u00bbceased to be a soldier and became a political leader. I should have followed him with joy against the Germans. I could not follow him against Frenchmen.\u00a0\u00bb <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tEven so, Saint-Exup\u00e9ry was six months making up his mind to come to the United States, and he came here, I always thought, out of desperation, as a last resort. I conclude that it was in the vague hope of being somehow useful to France that Saint-Exup\u00e9ry disembarked at New York from a small Portuguese vessel on the last day of the year 1940. Incidentally, he had deemed it prudent to avoid the Pyrenees and make his way to Lisbon via Morocco. Ever since he had served as correspondent during the Spanish Civil War he had been in the black books of Franco’s police spies. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t Saint-Exup\u00e9ry was not happy in the United States. He would have been unhappy anywhere in 1941 except at the front, and in 1941 there was no front possible for him. Miserable as he was, not to be fighting, he was not the kind to shut himself up in an ivory tower and write. Restless, tormented, tense, he spent his days and nights discussing the military and political dispatches, analyzing the enemy’s strategy, going over the fine points of weapons and inventions with physicists and engineers (he was a first-rate mathematician and know a lot about physics), drawing up plans for supplying Britain with planes and France with foodstuffs. And whatever the subject under discussion, the conversation always came round to France in the end, for he was incapable of any other preoccupation. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tOne of the most pathetic expressions of love of country that I know is to be found at the close of a letter written by M\u00e9rim\u00e9e to his friend Mme. de Beaulaincourt on September 13, 1870, following the crushing defeat of Napoleon III by the Prussians at Sedan. Here it is: \u00a0\u00bbAll my life I have sought to be free from prejudice, to be a citizen of the world before being a Frenchman; but all these philosophic cloaks are of no avail. I bleed today from the wounds of these imbeciles of Frenchmen; I weep for their humiliation; and however ungrateful and absurd they be, I still love them.\u00a0\u00bb <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tIn these noble lines there are thoughts which it would never have occurred Saint-Exup\u00e9ry to utter. He who hated the self-styled \u00a0\u00bbphilosophy\u00a0\u00bb of racism, who had traveled even more widely than M\u00e9rim\u00e9e, whose sympathy went spontaneously towards that which is universal in men, would never have called himself anything but a Frenchman. He who was excessively intolerant of fools would never have spoken of \u00a0\u00bbthese imbeciles of Frenchmen,\u00a0\u00bb but only of \u00a0\u00bbthat imbecile, X.\u00a0\u00bb \u00a0\u00bbSince I am one with the people of France,\u00a0\u00bb he wrote, \u00a0\u00bbI shall never reject my people, whatever they may do. I shall never preach against them in the hearing of others. Whenever it is possible to take their defense, I shall defend them. If they cover me with shame I shall lock up their shame in my heart and be silent.\u00a0\u00bb Yet this patriot was not a nationalist in the hideous exclusive manner of a Fichte among the Germans, or a Maurras among the French. \u00a0\u00bbIn my civilization,\u00a0\u00bb he wrote, \u00a0\u00bbhe who is different from me does not impoverish me, he enriches me. … I shell fight against all those who strive to impose a particular way of life upon other ways of life, a particular people upon other peoples, a particular race upon other races, a particular system of thought upon other systems of thought.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n

II.<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

\tSaint-Exupery’s American publishers, who brought him out of France, were kindness and sympathy incarnate. They arranged for his visa and his place on board ship. They smoothed his way through the formalities of immigration and customs. They found him a handsome apartment in the twenty-third story of a house overlooking Central Park for Europeans are as romantic about our upper stories as we about their inns and ch\u00e2teaux. Together with his patient and tactful agent, Maximilian Becker, they procured for him the toys with which he endeavored, in his early weeks among us, to distract himself among others, a magnificent recording machine with which the inventive Saint-Exup\u00e9ry sought to still his restlessness. He would record a Mozart symphony broadcast by Toscanini and then, on the same disk, introduce readings by himself and his friends, of French classical verse scanned to accord with the beat of the music. Herv\u00e9 Alphand would do his celebrated imitation of a dialogue between the doddering P\u00e9tain and a certain senile general descended from the Marquis de Lafayette. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tOne day Saint-Exup\u00e9ry recorded his own voice in such a way that the result seemed to be a whole chorus of voices intoning plain chant a Vatican Choir. A group of friends did a comic scene representing French provincials seeing New York for the first time from the top of a Fifth Avenue bus. Among the most delightful records were those of Claude Alphand’s simple and moving singing of Breton and other folk songs. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tA publisher exists by virtue of his authors, and it is the business of the publisher to persuade his authors to write books. Saint-Exup\u00e9ry was a French writer from whom Americans wanted to hear. He was allowed five or six weeks in which to adjust himself to his new life, and then, tactfully, it was indicated to him that he ought to be at work. When tact failed, a little pressure was applied: \u00a0\u00bbIt is your duty to explain France, to explain the defeat to people who believe that the French did not put up a fight.\u00a0\u00bb <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tIn the beginning, words like these infuriated Saint-Exup\u00e9ry first because they seemed to him insulting to France, and again because they appeared to imply that he was a literary tradesman, ready to grind out copy for a fee. He had spent four years writing Night Flight. Seven years of composition and polishing went into Wind, Sand and Stars. He was at the other pole from Saint-Cyran, that seventeenth-century theologian of whom the abb\u00e9 Bremond said that \u00a0\u00bbhe wrote badly, but without the slightest effort,\u00a0\u00bb But Saint-Exup\u00e9ry had to agree that everybody was writing about France, and that with the exception of Maritain, nobody in America seemed to know what he was writing about. Every newspaper in the land was discussing France. The German and Austrian refugees in America, whom the French had been the first to shelter in 1933, were washing in public not their own dirty linen but that of the Third Republic. The propaganda of the Vichy embassy at Washington was feeble, false, and ludicrous. The New York Gaullists were denouncing one another and thus confirming the general American belief that unity among Frenchmen was not to be looked for. Against his will, therefore, out of a sense of duty, Saint-Exup\u00e9ry, sat down to write a war book. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tHe wrote two or three chapters, but the book would not advance. The news from France, in 1941, was too upsetting. The repealed incidents between Englishmen and Frenchmen were too disheartening. Meanwhile, the telephone never stopped ringing: magazine editors, directors of French cultural and relief associations, managers of lecture tours, never ceased soliciting his services. And in the French colony, in the \u00c9migration as it was known, the wagging tongues were really too poisonous. \u00a0\u00bbSaint-Exup\u00e9ry? I saw him yesterday in Washington, lunching with Chautemps, who is here doing a job for Vichy.\u00a0\u00bb Not only had Saint-Exup\u00e9ry never lunched with Chautemps, he had never talked to the man. \u00a0\u00bbSaint-Exup\u00e9ry, he’s a Vichy agent, you know. He’s here buying Planes for Vichy.\u00a0\u00bb Not only had Saint-Exup\u00e9ry, no contact with Vichy or its Washington embassy, but the people he saw most frequently, the Alphands, the Manz\u00e9arlys, Colonel de Chevign\u00e9, and others, were fervent and official Gaullists. \u00a0\u00bbWe are not content to make known to the world our follies and vices by hearsay,\u00a0\u00bb Montaigne says; \u00a0\u00bbwe go abroad to show them off before foreigners in the flesh. Set down three Frenchmen in the deserts of Libya: before a month is out they will be wrangling and scratching at one another.\u00a0\u00bb <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tWith all this, the man was ill, suffering from defectively healed injuries consequent upon a whole series of airplane crashes. Saint-Exup\u00e9ry knew that he was in bad shape, but how badly off he was he did not know. He complained of internal pains, and the sedatives that were prescribed were not effective. He ceased to be able to sleep. In the late sprang of 1941 he went off to stay with friends in California. There, one day, he fainted. He had the luck to be treated by a master diagnostician and to be operated on by a first-rate surgeon. After a month in hospital and a period of convalescence he came back to New York. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tDuring his convalescence he had reread certain notebooks in which, as early as 1937, he had begun to set down what he called with a smile \u00a0\u00bbmy posthumous work.\u00a0\u00bb He said very little about it, and as I rarely asked my friend idle questions, I do not know much of what went into it. He had read aloud to me the first dozen pages in 1938, which I had not liked because of their florid, prose-poetry style the style of the early Gide, say. As regards its form, the book was apparently to be a great conte philosophique in the manner of the eighteenth century, a succession of dialogues spoken at the court of an imaginary sultan; and Saint-Exup\u00e9ry seemed to believe that he had found a mold, so to say, into which he would be able to pour his meditations and his feelings on all things man, the state, religion, war, love, civilization. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tBack in New York, he worked hard at the notebooks, and when he was finally able to get away to North Africa and rejoin the air force, in the spring of 1943, there must have been 1200 or 1300 pages of them. But I am very sure that this was not, properly speaking, a book at all. It was a heap of notes flung haphazardly on paper, a shapeless mass not destined for publication in that state. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tI speak of it here because, in concentrating upon his \u00a0\u00bbposthumous work,\u00a0\u00bb Saint-Exup\u00e9ry found one day what he had sought in vain to express in the unfinished war book. It was those months of meditation over his notebooks that made it possible for him to write Flight to Arras. <\/p>\n

III.<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

\tPaul Val\u00e9ry used to talk about the \u00a0\u00bbideal reader\u00a0\u00bb to whom every author subconsciously and necessarily addresses himself. If Flight to Arras is not a completely successful book the reason is, I believe, that Saint-Exup\u00e9ry sought to write at one and the some time for Americans and for Frenchmen, and thus lost from view his \u00a0\u00bbideal reader.\u00a0\u00bb Nobody was ever so little endowed as he with that sort of cleverness (finesse) that Pascal despised. Nobody, therefore, was so little fitted for writing propaganda. He had undertaken I repeat, against his will to explain to Americans the defeat of France. But it was impossible that Americans should interest him at a moment when France lay under the German heel. He could not fix his attention upon us. His glance strayed ceaselessly across the Atlantic. He did not knew how to write except for Frenchmen, and even in the closing chapters of the book, where his subject is Man and Charity, it is through the French people that he addresses himself to others. The pages written deliberately for American readers, those pages in which be demonstrates by logic and statistics that the defeat of France was inevitable, are much the weakest part of Flight to Arras. The French read those pages, agreed with them, and promptly forgot them as of minor interest. American readers were scandalized by them and called them \u00a0\u00bbdefeatist.\u00a0\u00bb <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tI did not see then, as l have seen since, where the misunderstanding lay. The book was published, in English translation, in February, 1942. A man who publishes in New York, two months after Pearl Harbor, a book in which he declares that the important question is not \u00a0\u00bbWhat ought we to do?\u00a0\u00bb but \u00a0\u00bbWhat ought we to be?\u00a0\u00bb is bound to seem to Americans a mystic or a madman. It did not occur to us that Saint-Exup\u00e9ry, was writing for the French, and that their Pearl Harbor had taken place twenty-one months earlier, in May, 1940. On the other hand, Saint-Exup\u00e9ry was at fault in forgetting that he had started to write a book for Americans, and that his American readers were faced with a situation which was not to be resolved by essays on the moral nature of man. He ended by writing for the French, a people whose morale needed support after a humiliating defeat. He published among the Americans, a people whose only thought was how to organize and employ the resources they must bring to bear if they were not to suffer a defeat no less humiliating. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tTwo months after Pearl Harbor, at a time when Laval was about to return to power at Vichy, American readers wanted Saint-Exup\u00e9ry to write about Democracy with a capital D: he wrote about Man. They wanted him to celebrate the Bill of Rights: he sang the beauty of Charity. They asked him to announce to them like Heine in \u00a0\u00bbThe Two Grenadiers\u00a0\u00bb that the French Army was about to rise up out of its grave, sword in hand: he brought them tidings of the immortality of the substance, the \u00a0\u00bbseed\u00a0\u00bb as be put it, of France. Only the French, in 1942, were in a mood to appreciate Flight to Arras. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tSaint-Exup\u00e9ry wrote beautifully, but at the price of great effort. He went out rarely, but he had friends in almost every day to lunch and dinner. In the evening, when his friends had gone, he would brew himself a great pot of coffee and sit down to work at his dining table (his desk served merely as a catchall in which his checkbook could never be found). Now and then he would write in an all-night restaurant, where, having eaten a dish of raw chopped beef drowned in olive oil and crusted with pepper, be was likely to scribble from two in the morning until dawn. When be had written himself stiff, be would stretch out at home on a sofa under a lamp, take up the mouthpiece of a dictaphone, and record his copy, revising as he went along. Then, towards seven or eight o’clock in the morning, he would go to bed. The secretary would come in at nine and type while be slept. Often, when friends arrived for lunch at one o’clock, they would ring and pound for twenty minutes before he woke up and let them in. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tThis man who wrote like an angel was convinced that he did not know how to write. He needed constantly to be reassured by his friends concerning the quality of the writing he was engaged upon. My wife, who was very fond of Saint-Exup\u00e9ry and loved to hear him talk, had nevertheless one subject of complaint concerning him: he telephoned me too often in the middle of the night. I was then translating Flight to Arras chapter by chapter as it came from his hands, and was therefore Intimately associated with his torments of composition. Whenever he had written a particularly difficult passage, and felt that he had to read it aloud immediately, it was to me that he would telephone. And I, at two o’clock in the morning, under the half-mocking and half-furious stare of my wife, understanding not a word of what the rapid muffled voice was reciting into the telephone for I was of course more than half asleep would nod my head, interject an appropriate \u00a0\u00bbAh!\u00a0\u00bb or \u00a0\u00bbThat’s good, that is!\u00a0\u00bb while I sought in vain to catch at the thread of his discourse; and upon his insistent demand, when he was through, that I tell him what I thought, would repeat mechanically and hypocritically, \u00a0\u00bbMagnificent! Magnificent!\u00a0\u00bb Generally the session ended with a long silence in which I seemed to hear Saint-Exup\u00e9ry turning his ideas over in his mind, then a sudden \u00a0\u00bbGood! Sorry to disturb you. Good night,\u00a0\u00bb and he would hang up. <\/p>\n

IV.<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

\tIn Flight to Arras Saint-Exup\u00e9ry had come with real difficulty to the end of a transitional stage between two contrasted vocations, that of \u00a0\u00bbpoet of the air\u00a0\u00bb and that of moralist. He had always been a contemplative writer. But in his first period he had frequently been content to write about action pretty much for its own sake. In his second period, in Flight to Arras, he had made action the pretext of meditation. In the period into which he had emerged when he vanished out of Ibis world on July 31, 1944, somewhere in the skies between Tunisia and the Maritime Alps, he was the pure moralist that we find in Letter to the Hostage. Already, in 1938, I had been enabled to see the beginnings of this inner mutation. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tSaint-Exup\u00e9ry paid his first brief visit to the United States in January or February, 1938. He had arranged to have a plane shipped from France to Montreal, and his purpose was to essay a record flight over all the countries of the Western Hemisphere, from Canada to the tip of Patagonia. \u00a0\u00bbIf you will look at an air map,\u00a0\u00bb he said when he came to dinner with the Roussy de Sales, \u00a0\u00bbyou will see that I can do it by flying practically in a straight line. It’s a silly thing to do, perhaps, but I want to do it.\u00a0\u00bb Two days later he had taken off, and in another day or two we read that he had crashed with an overload of fuel in Guatemala. After some weeks in hospital, first in Guatemala City and then in Mexico, he spent a brief period of convalescence in New fork as the guest of Colonel (later Major General) William Donovan, creator and director of !he OSS. Here he finished a book upon which he had been at work for a number of years. The manuscript, turned over to me for translation, was entitled Du vent, du sable, des \u00e9toiles. The translation was published in the following year under this same title: Wind, Sand and Stars. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tSaint-Exup\u00e9ry had sailed home to France, and I had gone to work on the translation of Sherwood Anderson’s, in the mountains of southwestern Virginia, when I received the first of an absolute rain of letters transmitting changes that he was then engaged in making in the French text. Later, when I started to tell this story to Pierre Lazareff, he laughed as he interrupted me: \u00a0\u00bbBut you don’t know the half of it. Each time that Antoine gave us a piece for Paris-Soir, it was the devil’s own job to get it into the paper. There was no getting rid of the man. He would slip into the composing room at midnight to take out commas and change the order of the sentences. He would demoralize the whole shop, bribing the printer’s devils with bottles of wine, in the middle of the night, to let him get at the forms.\u00a0\u00bb <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tTo be sure, there was something of this in those letters commas to be removed or inserted, verbs altered from the optative to the imperative mood, the syntax and rhythm of scores of sentences to be modified in the interest of a simpler, more fluent line. But there were other things too. In the first place, Saint-Exup\u00e9ry was purifying his style, ridding it of rhetoric, eliminating the florid and moving towards the severe. He had conceived such a horror of the\u00a0\u00bbliterary,\u00a0\u00bb the falsely poetic, that he dropped his evocative title and substituted for it Terre des hommes, literally \u00a0\u00bbMan’s Earth\u00a0\u00bb with the sense of \u00a0\u00bbthe planet on which men live.\u00a0\u00bb Not only had he rewritten certain chapters in their entirety substituting meditation for action and description, but he ended by cutting out altogether one third of the text he had left with me. It was clear that he was anxious to give the reader the impression that this was not a book of adventure, and that his aim was a book in which the reader should see unmistakably as he put it \u00a0\u00bbhow the airplane, that tool of the airlines, brings man face to face with the eternal problems.\u00a0\u00bb All this was very laudable except that in his concern with the moral aspects of his subject, Saint-Exup\u00e9ry was throwing overboard a great deal of beautiful and moving writing which (in my view) he had no right to jettison. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tIn the beginning, my protests were cautious and mild. When, from his replies, I saw that I had shaken him and induced him to hesitate, I pressed my points; and I ended by telling him that he knew how to write but not how to read. The result was unexpected. He sent his version to the printer in France and allowed me to send mine to the printer in America. Then, when his French text was in proof, he turned up suddenly in New York, in February, 1939. He said that he was sailing back four days thence in the ship that had brought him, and that he had come only to tell me that he was sorry to have given me so much trouble. I was appropriately touched; but I reminded him that he had promised his American publishers two additional chapters and had not produced them. He made a face, and said he thought he could write one, at any rate, in a couple of days; it had been ripening in him for several years and was ready to drop. And in a room at the Ritz, in New York, he wrote what some readers believe to be the most exciting chapter in Wind, Sand and Stars, the chapter called \u00a0\u00bbThe Elements.\u00a0\u00bb Our moralist was himself so convinced of the excellence of this narrative of fiction that he cabled Paris to ask that Terre des hommes be held up for its insertion; but it was too late. There is a nice thesis for a Sorbonne doctorate in a comparison of the two books. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tSaint-Exup\u00e9ry was not in the least a man of letters in the fashion of Gautier, for example, ever prepared to deliver copy on any subject and in any form. He was not like George Sand, of whom the great editor, Buloz, said that in the delivery of copy she was \u00a0\u00bbas punctual as a notary.\u00a0\u00bb He never stopped writing, but he tore up a hundred pages for every page he sent to the printer. He was always late, always pressed for time, never certain that he had expressed exactly what he meant to say. And he was born a moralist. Christopher Morley called him \u00a0\u00bbthe Joseph Conrad of the air\u00a0\u00bb; but if he had lived, he might have given the world not a second Conrad but a second Pascal. <\/p>\n

V.<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

\tSaint-Exup\u00e9ry, who was six feet tall, had the head of a bird. His skull was round and his hair was beginning to recede, his nose was tilted and rather pointed, his chin (like Bedell Smith’s) was stubborn but not prominent, and his eyes, which were protuberant, seemed almost to be set sideways. This bird’s head, meanwhile, was mounted on the body of a Negro prize-fighter: the neck and shoulders of a bull, a great barrel chest, a fine slim waist, thin knock-kneed shanks that ended in long flat feet on which, when he was in a hurry, he shuffled rather than ran. Not very flattering, you say, and yet his bearing was so noble, the dignity, the intelligence, and the open fearlessness of his countenance were so endearing, that he was actually one of the most attractive of men. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tSaint-Exup\u00e9ry was a man of great breeding and extraordinary personal distinction, but he was as little worldly as can be imagined. I do not mean that he was a bohemian; he was not. Naturally gay, easily amused, he did not know what it was to be superficial or frivolous. He made no effort to win anyone’s liking or to draw attention to himself. He was not a tease, and he did not know how to flirt. When he met a woman who took his fancy, he blushed; and his way of showing that she pleased him was to explain to her a \u00a0\u00bbfascinating\u00a0\u00bb theorem or to offer to read to her something that he was writing. He certainly never sought to make himself \u00a0\u00bbinteresting\u00a0\u00bb by talking to her of his adventures. It goes without saying that he was no Puritan, but he was of a remarkable fastidiousness; he had a physical horror of everything that smacked of depravity or morbidity. An English friend whom I introduced one day said to me later: \u00a0\u00bbI know how touchy you are about the French, but I hope you won’t mind my saying that it is rare to meet a Frenchman as male as your friend is.\u00a0\u00bb <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tHe was a great ruminant, and from this cause flowed the consequence that women who were meeting him for the first time were likely to be disappointed in him. Having spent the day ruminating a problem of physics or metaphysics, he would arrive at your house with the sole object of telling you what was in his mind. You would introduce him to three pretty women, but to no end. Saint-Exup\u00e9ry, quite unaware that he might be rude, would turn his back on the ladies and drag you off into another room to discuss what he had been ruminating. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tAs to women, it seemed to me that his preference was for frail, young, gentle persons with whom he could feel himself perfectly secure, by which I mean, not in danger of incurring towards them other responsibilities than those he was prepared to impose upon himself. But like the rest of us, like Swann with Odette, he found himself now and then involved with women who were \u00a0\u00bbnot his type\u00a0\u00bb handsome viragoes, so to say, who attached themselves to him, listened with calculated attention to his reflections, tried to arrange his existence for him, and whom he had a hard time gelling rid of because he simply did not know how to be brutal. (Choleric he could be, but never brutal.) <\/p>\n

VI.<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

\tIt ‘s only since the war that we of America have begun to see that there are more ways than one of being a democrat. Saint-Exup\u00e9ry could not be a democrat in our way for one thing, because he insisted upon re-examining premises which are to us sacrosanct, untouchable, the fables of our law. When, in Europe, an American colonel or businessman has finished declaiming against the ineptitude of our Congressmen or the corruption of our politicians, and a European asks him, \u00a0\u00bbWhy, then, do you believe in democracy?\u00a0\u00bb his answer goes something like this: \u00a0\u00bbWhy shouldn’t I? I can tell Congress and the City Hall to go hang, can’t I?\u00a0\u00bb That is not an answer that can help the European to make up his mind about the sort of political system he wants for his country. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tFor another thing, Saint-Exup\u00e9ry belonged to that post-1918 generation in France, for whom the decisive moment in their political education came with the series of stock-market scandals which culminated in the Stavisky affair and the Place de la Concorde riot of February 9, 1934. Democracy, for a Frenchman of his years, was summed up entirely and exclusively in the darker side of the Third Republic; and as democracy is by definition the regime of the middle classes, it represented for that generation the regime of a morally decadent bourgeoisie. To find it working in America meant, for such a Frenchman, that he must think the whole subject through from the beginning; and Saint-Exup\u00e9ry was not the sort of thinker to be content with easy answers. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tFinally, there is this fundamental difference: Frenchmen, Belgians, Italians, Spaniards, Germans, ask that democracy be, not a way of life, but a doctrine, a code logical and self-consistent, affording mathematical proof that the system does serve the common good. On the moral or spiritual side, everybody proclaims himself a democrat the Communist, the Protestant Socialist, the Catholic Socialist, the irreligious Socialist, even yesterday’s fifth columnist. And all these doctrinaires differ from us (and from the British with whom we are co-heirs of their seventeenth-century political thinkers) in blaming doctrines rather than men when things go wrong. Their impulse is to throw out the baby with the bath water, to pull down institutions, rather than draft protective legislation, when an Oustric and a Stavisky are found to have corrupted a handful of public servants. We who are intuitively and historically aware that democracy is a living thing, and not a blueprint, know better than to blame democracy for corruption and for crises that have flourished under every kind of political regime. Never having been governed by intellectuals, we have no habit of doctrine and no taste for it. When things go wrong, it is men and not systems that we blame. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tAll this is not entirely a digression. Saint-Exup\u00e9ry was a democrat in the sense that a Lord Acton or a Tocqueville was a democrat, though he was not, like them, a practicing Catholic. He shared their passion for liberty. Fraternity was with him as with them an article of faith by which he lived. Like them, he feared both the tyranny of the minority and the tyranny of the majority (\u00a0\u00bbI shall fight against all those who seek to subject the liberty of man either to an individual or to the mass of individuals\u00a0\u00bb). Possessing to a prodigious degree both the intuitive intelligence and the deductive intelligence, Saint-Exup\u00e9ry, saw clearly that we were living in an age when all premises required re-examination. He refused to accept the conventions of any ideology, even the most idealistic. Thus he wrote: \u00a0\u00bbI have preached Democracy without the least notion that I was merely giving expression to an aggregate of wishes and not to an aggregate of principles.\u00a0\u00bb To wish was never enough for Saint-Exup\u00e9ry. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tIn the Autobiography of that venerable agnostic of a century ago, John Stuart Mill, I came recently upon these lines: \u00a0\u00bbWhen the philosophic minds of the world can no longer believe its religion … a transitional period commences, of weak convictions, paralysed intellects, and growing laxity of principle, which cannot terminate until a renovation has been effected in the basis of their belief, leading to the evolution of some faith, whether religious or merely human, which they can really believe; and when things are in this state, all thinking or writing which does not tend to promote such a renovation, is of very little value beyond the moment.\u00a0\u00bb I believe I may bear witness that Saint-Exup\u00e9ry, in writing, had rigorously no other purpose than \u00a0\u00bbto promote such a renovation\u00a0\u00bb and that he rejected with scorn every proposal that he write only for the moment. And as he thought ceaselessly of something like Mill’s \u00a0\u00bbrenovation\u00a0\u00bb; as he never uttered a thought that he did net believe, being incapable of fear or hypocrisy, he could but become the subject of grave misunderstanding in a time when bitter partisanship and mental malady, and prejudice, and rancor were rife. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tWhen I said on an earlier page that Saint-Exup\u00e9ry was not happy in America I did not mean to leave the impression that he was morose; and indeed I have perhaps not sufficiently stressed that he was almost daily in the company of friends he cherished and with whom he delighted to chat and laugh. Nevertheless, only once did I see him profoundly, radiantly happy, gay without a single thought for anything else than the moment. That was the day on which he gave lunch to a group of friends, all of them airline or war pilots, whom chance had brought together in New York. The lunch was noisy and the conversation inexhaustible. When we rose from table, everybody remained for hours on his feet, for these men were too excited at seeing one another again to be able to sit still. They told stories, brought out old memories of early flying days and forced landings on exiguous racetracks and perilous mountainsides. They formed and re-formed in small groups and moved from group to group, calling out to one another for help with a forgotten mime or an incident half gone from the memory. Now and then someone would excuse himself to rush to the telephone, remembering that he had promised to ring a mignonne met for the first time the night before This went on for four or live hours, and they were assuredly the happiest hours that Saint-Exup\u00e9ry spent in our country. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tI looked at him as he stood with shining eyes, ecstatic to find himself bathed in this atmosphere of frank, manly comradeship. It seemed to me that for him the others were his elders towards whom he felt a sort of gratitude for their having let him play with them. I said to myself, \u00a0\u00bbExtraordinary, how like a schoolboy he looks of a sudden.\u00a0\u00bb And I thought of those little boys in private schools, children of divorced parents, or unhappy at home for another cause, who hate holidays and are happy only at school, among the only beings they respect and want to be respected by their comrades. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tAll this is obscure and rather difficult to elucidate. For one thing, I repeat, it was only an impression an intuition, if you prefer. For another, I am talking about something which, if it existed at all, lay at the very core of Saint-Exup\u00e9ry’s nature, which I am far from pretending to plumb. Obviously, Saint-Exup\u00e9ry was not a man who gave the impression of a schoolboy or of anybody’s subordinate. There was nothing timid or irresolute in his bearing. He knew how to talk to men, how to lead them; by station, character, and intellect he was born to command and had proved himself a great squadron leader. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tLater, when I thought about it again, I remembered that each time that he had mentioned his family in France and their fate was constantly in his mind, he was constantly engaged in devising means to get funds and supplies to them it was of women that he had spoken, never of men. I know nothing of his family, but I took it into my head that he had been brought up by women, and this fact if it was one seemed to me to explain many things about him: from the respect he instinctively showed all women to that nostalgia for his comrades of the air which emerged again and again in his conversation. Like all virile men, he preferred the company of one woman to the company of several women, and the company of several men to that of one man alone. <\/p>\n

VII.<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

\tThe entry of the United States into the war furnished him with a fresh subject of concern. From that time onwards, he could think of nothing but how to hasten our participation and supply our British and Russian allies. He was one of the few Europeans who did not consider that President Roosevelt’s initial program of production was mere \u00a0\u00bbAmerican bluff.\u00a0\u00bb \u00a0\u00bbSixty thousand planes and ten million tons of shipping in a single year? Why not?\u00a0\u00bb he would say to skeptical compatriots. \u00a0\u00bbA nation that suddenly stops building five million motorcars a year certainly possesses the manpower, the raw materials, and the skill to carry out Roosevelt’s program.\u00a0\u00bb <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tSome of his notions were worthy of Jules Verne. For example, to supply planes to England at a time when the German U-boats were infesting the North Atlantic waters, he proposed the construction of large underwater barges which would be loaded with dismounted planes and hauled by giant American submarines. Another idea, which was more daring, and indeed romantic, seemed nevertheless so possible of realization that I ended by taking it seriously. Like everybody else, Saint-Exup\u00e9ry had been jubilant over General Giraud’s escape from the fortresses of Koenigstein. His mind leapt instantly to a search for the means to make use of this gift of the gods. This is what he worked out. He would have liked the War Department to set him down in North Africa, whence it would be a simple matter for him to make his way to France. There, he would go to see Giraud as an emissary from the Department. He would persuade the General to accompany him in a plane that he would easily get hold of, to a rendezvous at sea with an American war vessel. The cruiser would take them to Washington, where the Combined Chiefs of Staff would plan with Giraud a North African expedition, supported by the French troops in that region, who, Saint-Exup\u00e9ry, believed, would be overjoyed to place themselves under Giraud’s command. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tI was so struck by this plan that I went down to Washington and talked it over at dinner with two friends, one from the Combined Chiefs and the other from the OSS. That was in July, 1942. I did not know then that the President and the Prime Minister had just given their approval to Operation Torch, which was to culminate in the North African landings of November 8, 1942, and that, on the French side, Giraud was to be the keystone in the arch of this operation. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tNever have I been the object of such a rebuff I had bother say frankly, bawling out as at the end of my little speech. My friend Saint-Exup\u00e9ry might perhaps be a genius, but he was certainly a complete idiot. As for me, what right had I to intervene in matters that did not concern me and about which I could not be more ignorant? If they ever heard that I had repeated a single word of this grotesque pipe-dream to anybody at all, they would take personal and particular pleasure in seeing that I was put away in a Federal penitentiary for a dozen years. And my friend Saint-Exup\u00e9ry the same. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tNext day, in New York, I made my report to Saint-Exup\u00e9ry, who heard me through without a word. We looked at each other for a long moment. Then Saint-Exup\u00e9ry smiled faintly, \u00a0\u00bbAh?\u00a0\u00bb he said. \u00a0\u00bbSo that’s how it is! They’re cleverer than I had imagined.\u00a0\u00bb <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tBut that is not the end of my story. Not long afterwards a friend brought to Saint-Exup\u00e9ry’s apartment one of the highest dignitaries of the American air services, a general who had already distinguished himself by a sensational exploit in the Pacific theater and was later to command our most powerful bombing force in Europe. A good deal of what the Combined Chiefs’ planners knew of airports, installations, and flying conditions in North Africa resulted from the contact thus established. It was not from Saint-Exup\u00e9ry that I learned of the American general’s visit, nor did he speak to me again, by the time I started overseas on October 3, of Giraud or of a North African landing. For Saint-Exup\u00e9ry was not only a man, he was a soldier. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tIt is hard to sum up a reminiscence of so great a soul. Knight of the Round Table, Lancelot for whom beauty in distress was the whole of mankind, Parsifal and warrior and Einsteinian armorer in one I find myself forced back to the age of chivalry for terms proper to characterize my friend. Strange that he should belong a little bit to America, though nothing in our country (any more than on the Quai de Passy or the Place de la Bourse) is here to recall his deepest spiritual roots. Yet the thought occurs to me that he was in some measure ours, and I see a lesson for Frenchmen that our land is marked by other values than the inhuman ones they tend to see in it in the fact that it was here that Saint-Exup\u00e9ry, was able to write The Little Prince and the Letter to the Hostage, as well as Flight to Arras and a good part of Wind, Sand and Stars. In America as in France, this heroic figure, who vanished as by miracle, who died the airman’s death he would have wished to die, has his monument in men’s hearts. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t[Notre recommandation est que ce texte doit \u00eatre lu avec la mention classique \u00e0 l’esprit, Disclaimer: In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only..]<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

La France et Saint-Exup\u00e9ry vus par un Am\u00e9ricain, Lewis Garanti\u00e8re L’extrait est en fait compos\u00e9 de deux textes. Il s’agit d’abord d’un article paru dans la revue L’\u00e2ge nouveau, num\u00e9ro baptis\u00e9 Visages des \u00c9tats-Unis, n\u00b0 74-75-76, Juin-juillet-ao\u00fbt 1952, Paris. Le second texte est un article paru dans The Atlantic Monthly, avril 1947. (Le premier texte… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[2631,4022,4024,2685,2645,3851,3080,4023],"class_list":["post-65628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-extraits","tag-de","tag-ecrivain","tag-garanciere","tag-gaulle","tag-guerre","tag-mondiale","tag-roosevelt","tag-saint-exupery"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65628\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}