Terre des Hommes [Wind, Sand and Stars]

[Madrid, Paris, May-June 1937].
9 f. (210 x 270 mm) on orange paper. Black ink and graphite.

Unpublished first draft autograph manuscript.

The first page is reproduced in the Album Pléiade Saint-Exupéry (1994, p. 148).

An important account of a decisive “Spanish night”: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s “Madrid” report for Paris-Soir, published on June 27, 28 and July 3, 1937.

This article, “Hep, Sergent, pourquoi es-tu parti” (“Hep, Sergeant, why did you leave”), is the last of three to be published; its central and final part will be repeated, in form and content, for the conclusion of Terre des hommes and the important chapter VIII: “Des hommes” (“Of Men”).

With four original drawings, on the first and last leaves.

The first bears this autograph note: “Pour toi” (For you) – it is not possible to attribute a provenance to this mention.

We apologize for the imperfect translation generated by Deepl for the purposes of the show.

Terre des hommes is Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s great book. It was in this collection that the writer-pilot first brought together the major themes of his literary humanism, filling the pages with his memories as a modern-day adventurer. After the publication of his first two stories, Courrier Sud (1929) and Vol de nuit (Prix Femina, 1931), and before the universal fable of Le Petit Prince (1943), its publication made him an internationally renowned author.

This decisive book was originally a collection of scattered texts previously published in the weekly and daily press; a weaving of articles published between 1932 and 1938 – in Marianne (1932-1934), La NRF (1933), Air France Revue (1935), Minotaure (1935), L’Intransigeant (1936-37) and Paris-Soir (1936-1938), which the author divided into eight chapters. This singular genesis reveals much about the upheaval in the writer’s status during the inter-war period, and the evolution of the media available to bring his work, be it reportage, to the attention of his readers. The first seven chapters pay tribute to his friends (Mermoz and Guillaumet, to whom the book is dedicated) and to all the men and women he met in the deserts of Africa and South America: the first chapter is entitled “The Line”, followed by “The Courageous Comrades”, “The Plane”, “The Plane and the Planet”, “Oasis”, “In the Desert” and “In the Center of the Desert”; all chapters punctuated by accounts of perilous rescues. “A curious but skilful assembly which, begun in the spring of 1938, eventually found its coherence and overall meaning – that of its author’s biographical and moral journey – and naturally adopted its definitive title: “Étoiles par grand vent” became, on proof, a few weeks before its publication, Terre des hommes” (Alban Cerisier and Delphine Lacroix, Au Centre du désert, June 2009).

A collection to which he decided to add a final chapter: “Des Hommes”. It should be noted that this title was added to the proofs, the only previous addition being the number “VIII” (Pléiade, I, p. 1057), proof of its separate status from the various previous chapters, all titled much earlier.

From Guillaumet’s geography lesson on the Madrid front to the final image of the murdered Mozart in the child subjected to migration, “only the Spirit, if it blows on clay, can create Man”, he writes at the end of the chapter, as if to sum up his thoughts. This chapter is the fruit of war and the fury of men, discovered following two trips to Spain: first in August 1936, when the newspaper L’Intransigeant sent him to Barcelona, for five articles to be published under the generic theme of “L’Espagne ensanglantée” (“Bloody Spain”). Less than a year later, in April 1937, Paris-Soir sent him across the Pyrenees, this time to the capital and surrounding villages, where the assault by Nationalist troops had failed. Saint-Exupéry returned to France in early June and set to work writing his articles; Paris-Soir published the first on June 27, 1937, illustrated with Robert Cappa’s famous photograph “Mort d’un soldat républicain” (Death of a Republican soldier), today a symbol of the Spanish War. It is entitled “Defense of Madrid”.

The second article is entitled “Madrid: War on the Carabancel front” and is published the following day, June 28, 1937: Saint-Exupéry and his guide advance to the front lines of the village, where an attack is being prepared for the following day, in the hope of winning some 30 houses. A dozen or so of them keep watch. They drink, tell funny stories and play chess. Then, when the time comes, they buckle up “and throw themselves into the stars”.

The story of the “day after” was published on July 3, 1937. Entitled “Hep, Sergeant! Why did you leave?”, it is the longest and least journalistic of the three papers: the attack that would have pushed back the cannons has been called off, and at daybreak the sergeant who was to leave first is still asleep and unaware of the cancelled order: when he wakes up, he is offered his life, like a pardon to a condemned man. Saint-Exupéry – for the first time in his life at the heart of a front line and a pillbox – wonders. Why had this man agreed to advance towards certain death? Faced with the inhumanity of war, which transforms individuals into masses, he is shocked by the military logic that sacrifices men for no reason, and underlines the heroism of ordinary people who reveal their deepest nature when confronted with the danger of death.

This exceptional manuscript sheds valuable light on the complex genesis of the article, as much as it gives access to a first-hand account, concomitant with the episode it describes – the articles were given to Hervé Mille (director of Paris-Soir) between May and June 1937, i.e. three weeks after his return from Spain – of one of the intense moments in Saint-Exupéry’s life: that night spent keeping watch among the compañeros, and the awakening that followed:

[DETAILS ON DEMAND]

Literary documents of this significance are rare.

Four drawings illustrate it: a full-length figure on the first page (ink and pencil) and three faces on the back of the last page – two profiles, in ink, and one frontal, in pencil, with a framed word, “mardi”, in pencil.

Saint-Exupéry, Album Pléiade (1994, no. 27, p. 148, reproduced and credited as follows: “page de travail, avec dessin de Terre des Hommes; vers 1938. Autograph”); Œuvres, I, Pléiade, pp. 416-423 and notes p. 1087 ff.