Os pilotos de Exupéry : sobrevoando as lembranças de infância

Abstract

This study aims at a new reading possibility regarding Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s works produced during World War II. These are Flight to Arras (1941) and The little prince (1943); both written during the period of the author's exile in the United States. We first verified the author's critical fortune, so that we could notice the lack of works in the literature area. We sought to observe how the exile theme permeates these narratives and is transposed through language by narrators. We intend to understand how the political positioning and writing context of these works resignify the look at them. We also analyze the relationship that the narrators construct with their childhood memories and with the spaces represented by the sky and the Earth, and what the in-between place represents in these narratives. As a purpose of our research, we observe the narrators in both works, not only because of their approximation regarding their professions (both aviators), but also because of the way they narrate their memories, which are quite fixed in their childhood and in relation to their "inner self". In order to legitimate this study, we use Edward Said's (2003) postulates on the concepts of exile. We also base our study on a work by Biela (1996) in Canada, which presents a notion of exile also present in Exupéry's works. Additionally, we consider the great contribution of Patrícia Munhoz (2014), regarding the relations between Saint-Exupéry and the War. We also resort to some testimonies by Saint-Exupéry’s friends about the writing process. These testimonies are presented by Cerisier (2013) and other sources. We conclude that it is in this inbetween place that the pilots are, sometimes in the sky, sometimes on Earth, sometimes in the memories of childhood, sometimes remembering the bitterness of adult life. Perhaps this in-between place is the balance and resting place for those who belong to nowhere, neither to childhood, nor to adulthood, nor to heaven, nor to Earth. It is in this "non-space" that the narrators find the possibility of existing, of living the exile and living with their memories.