SAINT-EXUPÉRY (Antoine de) - Lot 428

Lot 428
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Estimation :
3000 - 4000 EUR
SAINT-EXUPÉRY (Antoine de) - Lot 428
SAINT-EXUPÉRY (Antoine de) Signed autograph letter. [Circa 1941]. 5 p. in-4 (27,9 x 21,6 cm) of American "Gilbert Dispatch Bond" wove paper, dark blue ink and black pencil, autograph foliotation (1- 5) and later foliotation in red pencil (0666-0670). Important draft of a letter from Saint Exupéry to his friend the engineer Roger Beaucaire, who in the early 1930s was in charge of public relations for Aéropostale. Fascinated by problems of physics, Saint-Exupéry exchanged extensive scientific correspondence with his friend, of which the letter of 15 November 1941 elucidating the problem of a barrel "immersed in a fluid" is a fine example (OEuvres complètes, II, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2009, p. 1025-1027). "But you have once again made me quite angry with your habit of lending your opponent the steps of a five-year-old child's mind, and without having deigned to grasp his presentation, of throwing at him in a very doctoral tone that is rather hurtful (much more than my own words): "I do not understand, dear friend, that you make such naive errors of logic...". The structure of my reasoning (this is the pattern you mocked) is a classic structure of implicit reasoning. Here is my schema first, and I'll develop it later [...]. You are a guy I love very much, but you exasperate me when you consider that the opponent is necessarily ignorant and that it is useless to make the effort to follow carefully what he is talking about. [...].» And Saint-Exupéry then goes into detail on each of these points (I to IV), with unusual conviction. The aviator is wounded by the attitude of his correspondent: You marvel gently when I use the expression "il faut, il suffit..." but it's too nice. I think I was the best student of all, in St Louis, during my two years of specials, and since then I've read a lot about mathematics. After 23 years, I still accept a concrete match with you, without [...], on the solution of some differential equations. In any case, if I affirm you th
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