Word: exup
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...LITTLE PRINCE-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry-Reynal & Hitchcock...
...with the controls frozen (it was 60 below zero), and with a village "a handful of gravel" beneath them, Dutertre sighted six enemy planes a quarter of a mile, ten seconds, below, and these planes swept upward. With an effort which at that altitude left him gently fainting. Saint-Exupéry freed the frozen rudder and lost his enemies...
They flew over the chaotic tragedies of a landscape which from that height was as unpeopled as if it were in a museum case: "All that I see is the bric-a-brac of another age exhibited under a pure crystal without tremor." Saint-Exupéry, in his mind, revisited strange depths of his childhood; and meditated upon death, defeat, victory, treachery...
...Saint-Exupéry brought plane and crew safely back. His gas and oil tanks were pierced, but the rubber lining sealed them. He also brought back a personal proof of the profoundest of Christian texts: Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit...
...Saint-Exupéry's work seems to come from the center of great and steely pressures, at the intersection of scientific and poetic knowledge. Sometimes the pressure is too intense, producing mere conceits or wild generalizations. But usually he holds his stratospheric insights under complete and Gallic intellectual control. His perceptions are so sharp and deep, his language so pure, that most of Flight to Arras radiates poetry and a renewal of truth...