Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry: la rose du Petit Prince

by Paul Webster

Em julho de 1944, durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial, um avião de reconhecimento da Força Aérea Francesa desapareceu no Mar Mediterrâneo.
O corpo do piloto nunca foi encontrado. A aeronave era um dos aparelhos mais rápidos e modernos da aviação aliada, um P-38 Lightning americano. Aos comandos ia Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. A sua morte, aos 44 anos, ficou assim envolta para sempre em mistério e romantismo.
Todo o percurso de Saint-Exupéry é recheado de aventuras e episódios fascinantes, até porque a sua vida abrange os mais controversos anos da história francesa. E se por um lado era um aristocrata, com o título de Conde, que representava toda uma classe em extinção, por outro lado foi um corajoso pioneiro da aviação e um aclamado romancista, que privou com as personalidades mais importantes do século XX.
Baseada numa investigação meticulosa, esta biografia relata todos esses detalhes. Com uma escrita empolgante, revela também novas informações que irão fascinar quer os leitores mais aventureiros quer os mais apaixonados. E surpreender os fãs de O Principezinho!
Poucas personalidades do século XX inspiraram tanto a investigação por parte de historiadores e biógrafos. Esta biografia traz de volta à vida um herói, um homem apaixonado que combinou a carreira perigosa de aviador com a de autor de clássicos como O Principezinho.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography

157 pages

First published September 1, 1993

Reviews

[Tannaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

زود امدی و ناگهان دلم پر از تو شد
و این درد شیرینی بود
دردی چونان درد زادن
نه به سرعت

بلکه کم کم از دلم رفتی و جهان از تو خالی شد
و این درد تلخی بود
دردی چونان درد مردن

[atefe · Rating 4 out of 5]

اى سپيده دم

اى سپيده دم
اى خورشيد
يارى كن
تا امروز را بسازم
امروز
فقط امروز
براى ساختن دنيا
كافى است

[Roger Norman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Antoine de St Exupery is remembered mainly for two things – Le Petit Prince, which has been translated into most of the languages of the world – and the manner of his death. He was flying a Lockheed Lightning reconnaissance plane somewhere over the northern Mediterranean but despite intensive searches neither his body nor any traces of the plane were ever found. He may have been shot down by German fighters, he may have been taken ill at a high altitude or he may have committed suicide. The last theory is firmly rejected by his family and friends, who point out that he never talked or wrote of suicide and was a lifelong Catholic for whom to take one’s own life is a cardinal sin. Yet he was besieged by bouts of deep melancholy throughout his life and the last chapters of this book depict a man upset by the failure of his marriage, worried by financial concerns, bitter that the Free French forces wouldn’t allow him to serve as a combat pilot, and depressed by the war, by the deep divisions in France and by the prospects for the future. The only really happy period of his life was his early childhood, the only person with whom he had an ever affectionate and rewarding relationship was his mother, and the only thing that always gave him a sense of freedom and beauty was flying. It was writing that made his name, of course, but it was often an agonising pursuit. He believed in the perfect sentence, the perfect paragraph and the perfect chapter, and his search for such perfection led to endless revisions, right up the moment of handing over the manuscript for publication. He needed constant reassurance from his friends that his latest work was up to scratch, phoning people at any hour of night to read to them what he had just written. He crashed his aeroplane several times and bore scars from the crashes that never fully healed. He was a hypochondriac. His marriage to Consuelo Suncin was torrid, veering between passionate love and desperate conflict. He never had enough money for her or for himself. Both of them were extravagant and neither of them would do their sums. St Exupery’s best friends were fellow pilots from the early pioneering days, but all of them were dead by the time of the Second World War, leaving him with a feeling of being very much alone. He remained loyal to General Petain in the war and refused to shift his support to de Gaulle. The reaction of the Gaullists was spiteful and wounding. It would be hard to argue that suicide was out of the question for a man with such a record, and Paul Webster does not quite do so. He dutifully collects the arguments against it, but you can tell that he himself was not quite certain.
St Exupery wrote six books, five of them about flying. The sixth and last was Le Petit Prince. His favourite subject was the dangerous, solitary life of the pilots who flew the mail in Africa and South America for Aeropostale, later devoured by Air France. Certain passages in these books arrested my attention fifty years ago and were the reason I picked up this biography. But I never really cared for Le Petit Prince. It’s a fable that needs to tug at the heart strings and for me it failed to do so. In Tbilisi not long ago I became friends with a big Georgian farmer who always carried the book in his pocket. He swore by it, adored it, worshipped its every page. The sight of this burly man with tears in his eyes as he held the battered volume in his hand, nearly converted me. But not quite.

[Miguel · Rating 4 out of 5]

«Nunca ninguém saberá no que pensava Saint-Exupéry no momento da sua violenta morte, a qual lhe escapara tantas vezes.»

https://www.facebook.com/silenciosque...

http://silenciosquefalam.blogspot.pt/...

[Mohamadhosein · Rating 3 out of 5]

برای چشم به خوبی زیبایی
برای گوش به خوبی لالایی
و برای دل به خوبی هدیه...
تو از کجا می‌آیی ای پری؟
راه گم کرده‌ای بر این خاک،
یا مسافری؟
و من باید به موقع می‌خوابیدم
تا خواب تورا می‌دیدم...

[Justin Labelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful, playful and factual informative.
I read The Little Prince much later than most people do in life, roughly 22-23 years old on a french Polynesian island. I hadn't read any french books in ages and figured I'd try and understand the hype.
Needless to say The Little Prince reminded me of what it was like to be filled with a sense of wonder at the sheer magnitude of the world.
Webster does well to capture Antoine De St Exupery's sense of wonder.
I was most surprised to find out he was quite the ladies man and a devoted, dare I say, slightly deranged pilot.

[Caroline Segal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Histoire d'une union peu probable, celle d'une jeune San salvadorienne, Consuelo, mariée déjà deux fois et Saint Exupéry, futur auteur du Petit Prince. Leur vie commune, leurs déchirements et désaccords. Consuelo serait la rose qui a tant fait souffrir mais qui a tout de même été aimée. Peu d'intérêt.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Através desta obra é possível conhecer e entender um pouco mais o Ser Humano Antoine e suas obras. As opiniões dos diversos intervenientes nesta biografia são importantes, mas não deixam de ser opiniões com base nas suas percepções. Recomendo a leitura!