SAINT EXUPÉRY, Antoine de

Lot 473
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Estimation :
2000 - 3000 EUR
SAINT EXUPÉRY, Antoine de
Autograph manuscripts of scientific texts and mathematical calculations. [Morocco, ca. 1921]. 15 p. on 12 ff. in-4 and in-8 (various dimensions). These documents probably date from the months that Saint-Exupéry spent in Morocco during his military service, before obtaining his civil pilot's licence on June 17, 1922. Apart from his stopovers in Casablanca during his Alicante-Casablanca-Dakar flights for the airmail, Saint-Exupéry did not return to Morocco to fly again until 1931-1932. These notes, problems and solutions of algebra, are written in the form of drafts or put in the proper form, series of figures, additions. A few pages also carry fragments of texts, including a draft letter: "Dear friend, I am very sorry I could not come to Rabat. I had to run off to Marrakesh, from where I returned to find a telegram calling me urgently to Algiers. "(Verso of folio 8.) The front of folio 11 bears, in the middle of mathematical figures, twelve Alexandrians for a love poem, bearing numerous crosses and difficult to decipher: 'Towards evening when the moon has turned the countryside blue/ [...] sending a love/ hugging the light arm of a chaste companion [...]. "These verses are most likely addressed to Louise de Vilmorin, with whom Saint-Exupéry was deeply in love, and to whom he was engaged from 1922 to 1924. Enclosed is an autograph letter signed by the mathematics professor Daniel Dugué, relating to Fermat's equation "which has not been reconstructed for three centuries". Algiers, 29 March 1944. 2 pages in-8. Stains, holes, traces of folding, small marginal tears.
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