Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry — A Personal Reading
Saint-Exupéry has long been a singular figure: that of the pilot-poet in search of truths. I found that his books offered a way of approaching certain themes that are close to my heart, and this article allows me to introduce myself to you indirectly. Perhaps it will even give you the desire to read or reread him. His books blend adventure and reflection, and can be read on several levels.
What follows is not a literary analysis in the academic sense. I have not consulted specialist critics, and I am of course not seeking to be right. I sought to understand what this book could say to me today, several decades after a first reading, after a career as a pilot and many reflections on the themes it addresses.
It is very often the accounts and reflections of others that help us grow. I thought that my humble reading, as a pilot, of the reflections of another pilot and excellent writer, might serve another journey: the one each of us undertakes towards a better understanding of life and of oneself.
Rereading at sixty what I had read at twenty
The first time I opened Terre des hommes, I was a young man who dreamed of flying. Saint-Exupéry offered me what I was looking for: the confirmation that the sky was a place where existence took on a different meaning — more intense, more real — and that flying was a means of approaching these truths.
Rereading it decades later, after thousands of hours of life and flight, stopovers in the four corners of the world, countless encounters, and many readings and courses of study, I discovered an almost entirely new book, because I myself had changed. This experience in itself was already deeply enriching.
Adventure as a place of knowledge
Saint-Exupéry writes in a style I would readily call rationalising epic: a tone of his era, sincere and almost ingenuous, that likes to categorise, yet carries within it a conviction that has nearly disappeared: that the world is there to be explored, and that this exploration must engage the whole person. The world represents a challenge against which the individual can measure himself. Today this vision has largely disappeared, replaced by the belief that we already know the essentials about the world, and discoveries are often reduced to the status of anecdotes.
There is in this book a genuine fascination with exploration, which in Saint-Exupéry is never merely geographical. It is simultaneously poetic, psychological, philosophical, technological, sociological, political… The desert is therefore not a backdrop, but a revealer: “The desert for us? It was what was born within us. What we learned about ourselves.” The aircraft, in this context, is merely a tool. What the aviator truly seeks is a form of truth he would not find on the ground, because height, novelty, solitude and stripped-down simplicity create conditions in which what is essential becomes more legible.
I recognise in this intuition something that resonates within me. Flying and travelling impose a form of absolute presence. One is compelled to live in the present moment, and one wishes to as well. In that space, something essential sometimes becomes visible: about the world, about others, about what truly matters. Yet it is true that travel has changed greatly, and my own vision finds itself at odds with the way it is currently experienced. And because of technology, globalisation and the means of communication, it becomes ever easier to avoid confronting the world.
Fraternity as an attempt to respond to the absurd
What unites people in Saint-Exupéry is less friendship in the ordinary sense than what I would call the roped party: that bond which forms when beings share a purpose that transcends them. “Bound to our brothers by a common goal that lies outside ourselves, only then do we truly breathe.“
One might see in this a glorification of the struggle against nature, or even of war, or a naively virile vision of existence. That would be, I believe, a misreading. What Saint-Exupéry celebrates is less the combat itself than what it makes possible: the camaraderie of stopovers, of nights on watch, or of breakdowns in the middle of the desert allows a presence to the other without calculation, a closeness that would otherwise not be possible. “Thus, in the heart of the desert, on the bare skin of the planet, in an isolation from the earliest years of the world, we built a village of men.“
It is worth noting here also the very hierarchical vision of working relationships, certainly a product of the era, but also of Saint-Exupéry’s social origins. This fraternity is thus absent from his relationship with his flight mechanic Prévot, with whom he nonetheless shares the experience of flight. His miraculous survival in the desert alongside his mechanic cracks this vision of fraternity. Faced with death, it appears that each person remains alone, separated from the other by countless barriers. It is interesting to note that Saint-Exupéry speaks of this fraternity in death, which he witnessed among the combatants of the Spanish Civil War, yet does not experience it himself.
The end of the book desperately seeks an external and universal common denominator: the truth that will unite people and give meaning to life. The shared struggle, as beautiful as it may sometimes appear, does not seem to open a path towards oneself. The individual seems to have to discover himself differently: in silence, in intimate relationship with himself, in the awakening of consciousness.
The search for a universal truth
The sentence that struck me most in this rereading is this one: “When we become aware of our role, however modest it may be, only then will we be happy. Only then will we be able to live in peace and die in peace, for what gives meaning to life gives meaning to death.“
Wind, Sand and Stars is the book of a man tormented by what the human being is and, in my view, certainly already by who he himself is. He wants to believe that his personal questionings are those of humanity as a whole. He wants to believe in a universal ideal that transcends the individual.
I believe, nonetheless, that reality is more complex and more nuanced. Death is not the only mirror. Life too can reveal, if one grants it calm and attention. And to be happy, it is not necessary to have the answer to all our questions. Saint-Exupéry nevertheless touches on this idea, which he would not fully explore until later in The Little Prince: he sees also that true richness lies neither in possession, nor in action, nor even in fraternity, but in that inner life which every being carries within himself like a secret continent. What is paradoxical is that he sees this with remarkable clarity, yet cannot inhabit it. His search remains oriented towards the outside: the mission, the comrades, the world to be confronted. He had to brush very close to death in order to allow himself a moment of peace with himself. It is in the acceptance of death that he found himself, simply, as he was — and he immediately wonders how to relive that experience.
What this book can teach those who reflect on existence
Wind, Sand and Stars is the sincere testimony of a man wrestling with the great questions: the meaning of life and of the world, death, solitude, fraternity — without having the answers, and without pretending to have them. It is in this that it remains precious, a hundred years on.
Yet as perceptive as he may be — and I find myself somewhat saddened in reading him — Saint-Exupéry remains alone in the face of his questions. Without outside help, he did not receive the clues that might have helped him move forward. Life is too complex for an individual, in a solitary quest, to find answers to his great questions. Even the most brilliant minds, drawing on the knowledge of their era, did not find definitive answers, and they very rarely lived happily.
This book thus functions as a triple mirror: that of his era set against ours, with its beliefs and its blind spots; that of the human quest to find answers to the essential questions of existence. But also a more intimate mirror: in reading Saint-Exupéry one is invited to ask oneself what one is seeking, and what conditions facilitate this inner journey. Is it in struggle? In silence? In creation? In relationship with another person?
In reading Wind, Sand and Stars, I am reminded of how illusory it is to believe in the possibility of finding alone the answers to one’s questions. I would not have known this at twenty. Since then, I have come to understand that we have answers to many questions, and that for the others it is often the questions themselves that are poorly framed. Structured conversations such as coaching offer a space that allows for the personal exploration of these questions and, first and foremost, of the deeper reasons that drive us to ask them.
A note on the title for French-speaking readers: the English version of Terre des hommes, translated by Lewis Galantière under the title Wind, Sand and Stars, is a distinct version of the original book. Saint-Exupéry himself adapted it for an American audience, notably removing the prologue, which he considered too metaphysical for that readership at the time. The French title, literally Land of Men — or Land of People, better reflects the human and philosophical dimension at the heart of the book. It is this original version that informs the reflection above.
