Citadelle [The Wisdom of the Sands]

Paris, Gallimard, (1 March) 1948.
1 vol. (140 x 205 mm) of 531 p., [1] and 1 f. Brown half morocco with corners, smooth spine decorated with blind fillets, gilt title, date at bottom, covers and spine preserved (binding signed by P.-L. Martin).

First edition.
One of 60 copies on laid Holland paper (No XVI) – after 13 copies on Imperial Japan.

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

The manuscript of Citadelle, from its first drafts in 1936, never left Saint-Exupéry, from France to Portugal, via Morocco, Algeria or Italy, as far as the United States, where he said with a laugh: ‘I will never have finished it… It is my posthumous work!’.

Collected in a suitcase, these pages, filled with notes over several years, form a collection of reflections on the human condition and its link to God, which he continued to enrich in parallel with the last books published during his lifetime: Terre des hommes, Pilote de guerre and Le Petit Prince.

The manuscript published in 1948 is structured in 219 chapters, in a text compiled by Nelly [Hélène] de Vogüé, Léon Wencelius (captain of the Free French Forces) and Simone de Saint-Exupéry, the author’s sister for the original edition, in an order that is perhaps not the one that the author would have favoured if he had been able to complete his work.

Citadelle, a ‘lyrical song of biblical inspiration’ according to Nelly de Vogüé, brings together the major themes of Saint-Exupéry’s humanist and spiritual message: ‘Giving meaning to man’.

A fine copy.

From the Marcel de Merre library (ex-libris; Paris, Sotheby’s, 2007).