The aviator (Saint-Exupéry)

The book Der Flieger (French name: L'Aviateur ), published in 1926 , is the first published work by the French writer and pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry . It appeared in the journal Navire d'argent by Jean Prévost .

The expressiveness of Saint-Exupéry is combined with the rich language with which he describes his impressions. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry has flown from a young age. This first flight experience and his literary qualities show the impressions that all pilots experienced firsthand in the pioneering days of aviation.

The visualization of impressions is remarkable in the description he gives of the preparation for a flight. He becomes a hybrid, he does everything together with his machine: "The silence seems strange while he hooks his seat belt and the two straps of the parachute, when he adapts the aircraft cabin to his body with a movement of his shoulders and trunk." also plays with metaphors by comparing the propeller wind with a river: "Driven by the wind of the propeller, the grass seems to flow up to twenty meters in front of it." Then there is this description of the physical experience of the frozen sky: "He is looking the black bonnet that stands out against the light against the sky ”. This is exactly what one experiences during flight maneuvers when the speed of the aircraft is sufficiently high.

Without being a major work, Der Flieger reflects the talent and humanistic worldview of the writer, who would later achieve world fame through books like Nachtflug or The Little Prince .