Poet Of Fight

Press, Volume C, Issue 29638, 7 October 1961, Page 3

Poet Of Fight

Saint-Exnpery. By Marcel Migeo. Macdonald. 329 pp. Index. Saint-Exupery, a name to conjure with until 1944, is now not often heard in the mouths of British readers. Thera are several reasons for this, one of which is the fact that air travel has become almost commonplace since the end trf the war. What gave a particular flavour of romance to ““Night Flight” and “Wind, Sand and Stars” would not be quite so remarkable in 1961, as it was in 1931. “My world was the world of flight,” Saint-Exupery wrote. “Already I can feel the oncoming nights within which I should be enclosed as in the precincts of a temple—enveloped in the temple of night for the accomplishment of secret rites and absorption in inviolable contemplation.” It was his contention that “contary to vulgar illusion the machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature, but plunges him more deeply into them.” Certainly flight filled SaintExupery with a sense of mystical well-being which sharpened all his faculties. The pilot high above the world of men could judge them and their affairs as it were in cosmic terms; but the lyrical vision thus attained is perhaps no longer possible. It was, nevertheless, unique and will probably always be accepted as such, so that there was little need for Marcel Migeo to spend so much effort in the central part of his book on tracing Saint-Exupery’s similarities with Gide or Conrad or Giraudoux or Malraux. Nor, on balance, is a great deal achieved by quoting rough and ready comments like “Saint-Exupery is a gem; he

is the only one in the world who succeeded in sythesising the aviator, the mechanical universe and the poet in one great talent.” On the other hand, the author brings out very well a quality in Saint-Exupery’s work which has a more universal human value. This is his belief that the ideas and the acts of man create a network of relationships, from which grow the values by which life may be lived at its best. As he once remarked, “the Spirit takes no thought for objects as such; it is concerned with the intelligence that links objects together.” In “Terre des Hommes” he expressed this idea poetically. “What does a stroke of the pickaxe mean if it does not link that labourer with the mass of men? Nothing at all. On the other hand, even to watch over a few sheep under a starry sky means a great deal if the shepherd realises what he is doing, if he realises he is not just a servant, but a sentinel; for a sentinel is responsible for a whole empire.” SaintExupery believed that every individual could foster, and even in a small way increase, the common stock of human values. Even to grasp this idea was a great consolation. "In inspired moments we have tasted a certain quality in-human relations, and there, for us, lies the truth in life.”

Mr Migeo speaks of his subject from personal knowledge and affection. The two men met at the end of the First World War, when neither was out of his teens. Both of them were mad about flying; and although circumstances separated them, they never quite lost touch. SaintExupery is by no means idealised in these pages, hod his character remains full of contradictions, in spite of the author's effort to impose some sort of order. For instance it is hard to reconcile SaintExupery’s generally considerate attitude with his thoughtless behaviour to his longsuffering mother. Nor can his extravagance be made to appear anything but ill-timed and sometimes senseless. However, leaving aside the rather heavy-handed literary criticism, Mr Migeo has written what will probably be the biography most frequently consulted by British readers for a long time to come.