Südkurier (novel)
The novel Südkurier (French title: Courrier Sud) is a work by the French writer and pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry . The writer wrote the novel in the deserted area of Saguia el Hamra , which inspired him.
After his novella L'aviateur ( The Aviator ) appeared , Saint-Exupéry revised it and turned it into his first novel. Using notes made during the flight, he tells the story of a mail plane who is supposed to fly south, via Spain , Morocco and Mauritania to Dakar , where he does not arrive. A search party finds his body next to the destroyed aircraft in an area of Mauritania controlled by armed gangs. The mailbag is intact. The novel ends with the telegraphic message: “Dakar to Toulouse: Post arrived safely Dakar. Stop."
action
Jacques Bernis is a pilot and flies mail planes to Africa . As a loner, the airplane cockpit serves him as a refuge to escape the monotony of the years after the First World War . One day he meets the married Geneviève. Bernis decides to leave his "cocoon" for her, he goes out with her, has adventures with her, but the life he proposes to her does not correspond to her ideas and he brings her back to her husband. There are fragmentary descriptions of this love throughout the novel.
classification
It is both an autobiographical story and a literary testimony to the author's preoccupation with heroism and loneliness that always accompanied aviators in the pioneering days of aviation. Indeed, one has to keep in mind the circumstances of these beginnings: Man is the only one at the mercy of unruly, unreliable machines, a plaything of the elements that often went crazy and about whose behavior he hardly knew about the lack of radio. He flew over inhospitable areas with maps on which the white spots could still be seen. Any breakdown could mean death from a failed emergency landing or from the hands of hostile Bedouin tribes.
In the novel, one can already recognize the poetic and metaphorical style typical of Saint-Exupéry , which was already recognizable in Der Flieger and which was to become world-famous through the Little Prince .
Movie
In 1937 the novel was made into a film by Pierre Billon under the title Courrier Sud . The main roles were played by Pierre Richard-Willm (Jaques Bernis) and Jany Holt (Geneviève). The film music was composed by Jacques Ibert .
literature
- Courrier sud French edition ISBN 3-15-009174-8
- Südkurier German edition ISBN 3-7920-0034-2