Saint-Exupéry… 100 years later – Dompierre-sur-Besbre (03290)

Dompierre-sur-Besbre. Saint-Exupéry… 100 years later. This Saturday, October 5, Pierre Bordes and Jean-Emmanuel Stamm came to the René-Fallet cinema to present a conference on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Why this choice of Dompierre? Because, in one of his writings, “Letters from Youth”, Saint-Exupéry evokes his time in the town on the banks of Besbre.

It was first of all Pierre Bordes who spoke of the life and work of the famous writer-aviator, from his childhood marked by the death of his father when he was only 4 years old, to his baptism of the air at 12 years old for this young boy already very attracted to aviation. It was as a representative of Saurer trucks, whose agency was based in Montluçon, that he found himself one day in Dompierre-sur-Besbre. That day he will attend a performance of Les Enfants de la Besbre in the room which is today the René Fallet cinema… It was in 1924, so 100 years ago! A plaque also mentions his arrival in the cinema lobby.

However, aviation became his passion. He thus worked for Latécoère in Toulouse, established connections with Spain, Morocco became responsible for airmail in Argentina. For him, the plane is a bond of fraternity that connects people from different continents.

He disappeared in the Mediterranean on July 7, 1944… A fisherman from Marseille found in 1998 a bracelet engraved with the first name of his wife, Consuelo.

This aviator is of course also a writer recognized throughout the world. Author of Courrier Sud, Night flight , Land of men, war pilot, Letter to a hostage but above all the essential The Little Prince it rocked the youth of many readers.

It is also with large extracts from this masterpiece of literature that Jean-Emmanuel Stamm, who describes himself as a translator of texts, concluded this conference by reading.