Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Yes, I know. I said that I was going to write about less popular people and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is familiar to all of us. After all, he wrote The Little Prince, a book read by children, teenagers and adults all around the world. It has been translated into 300 languages or dialects! But actually, I think that he is perceived only through the prism of The Little Prince whereas his life and other books are so interesting!

Antoine de Saint Exupéry was born in 1900 in Lyon, France. He studied architecture but then, after his military service, decided to become a pilot. He worked in a company responsible for transfering the post from Africa to France. Then, Antoine became the director of an airport in Buenos Aires. 

The most interesting and inspiring (although debatable) is his attitude to life, presented in a book Night Flight. Antoine de Saint Exupéry writes in this novel about the challenge for defending the idea of night flights which had at that point a lot of opponents. They emphasised the fact that they were extremely dangerous (the technology was not as developped as nowadays, obviously). The author introduces a new perspecive to literature: the world seen from the viewpoint of a pilot. Thanks to the distance, we can learn that the welfare and higer goals are more important than individual happiness and although human's life is a crucial value, there is (or should be) something more in life. 

For Antoine de Saint Exupéry it weren't only empty words, he lived that way. He died in a spotter plane during a mission he voluntarily came forward. He said that he couldn't benefit from the privilege which being a writer can give.

To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible.