Lot n° 126
Estimation :
2000 - 2500
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 1 845EUR
SAINT-EXUPÉRY Antoine de (1900-1944) aviateur et ecrivain. - Lot 126
SAINT-EXUPÉRY Antoine de (1900-1944) aviateur et ecrivain.
AUTOGRAPHIC MANUSCRIT, [On the Leader in Society, ca. 1940]; 4 leaves in-4 written on the front on American Esquire Onion Skin watermarked paper, with later foliotation in purple pencil 0424-0427 (small traces of rust).
Reflection on the concept of a leader.
The author develops the same concept of the leader as in La Morale de la pente (Pléiade, II, pp. 29-30), but with a very different development. Here, it is a text in the form of a response on the place and the role of the leader in the military hierarchy and by extension in the human and social society. As in The Moral of the Slope, the author begins by defining what a leader should be. He denounces the stereotypical, agreed-upon image of these men in charge, ministers, managers, etc., smoking large cigars. Once the definition of a leader is established, Saint-Exupéry wonders if it is not a myth. "Is it desirable that there are some and that they can act? For him, the absolute level of the leader, if it exists, is linked to History, whether it is Buddha, Christ or Marx, who by their creative ideas saved Man. The last page is the poetic meditation of a man far from his country, his home, his loves... First of all, we must agree on the definition. A democracy does not need a specific leader. The leader is something other than a manager because, as far as I know, your architect is as rigid as any other. Your chairman of the board decides. Your head of the customs office, your president, your train conductor, your restaurant manager... I only see leaders. So you don't call those leaders. [...] You play with words when you call those who smoke cigars "chefs". Always the drama of words. In the name of a word you don't like, you refuse "everything I want to say", just as in the name of a word you liked (democracy) you also refused what I wanted to say. I don't want your WORDS anymore. Let's talk about concepts first. I don't know who you are talking about, because those who can possibly make us indignant by smoking big cigars are, obviously, managers. Office managers, bank managers, ministers, who perhaps play their role badly and should play it well but whose role is taken for granted. It is quite obvious that your remark does not apply to Bonaparte, Mohammed, [...] Charlemagne, Christopher Columbus on his ship, even Hitler"...
II. When we speak of the leader, we are generally talking about "the good manager who exalts the esprit de corps or loyalty around the managed object. He does not change anything. He amplifies"... III. Those whom Saint-Exupéry calls leaders "are those who have the power to change men. [...] He is a Christian man, a Buddhist man, an Islamic man, a Nazi. He is a Dominican mentality, a Marxist mentality, a Socratic mentality [...] He was an "aeropostal spirit", [...] and to find business houses where "the spirit of the house" reigns... Around a simple great surgeon is created a "spirit" among the interns. A real little civilization. Such a man can exist. [...] Some chiefs can act through the gendarme as others through eloquence. But neither the gendarme nor the eloquence are enough to justify the name of leader, [...] Buddha, Christ, Marx, all those who saved man by their statement"... The text ends with a mediation on the love of the fatherland: "The love of my country keeps a sense at all levels. It becomes love of the house. It is kneaded of the love of the houses and it illuminates the love of the houses of my love. I love my house in my country and the country of my house. My house receives its light from being of France. It is not a house from anywhere. And France receives its light from my home. It is the country of my house. The love of my country becomes love of the people of my country. And there is a still higher floor where it becomes love of men. But this love of men bases its unity on the diversity of materials, from cascade to cascade.
Provenance : Artcurial sale, May 16, 2012 (n° 394).
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