Wind, Sand and Stars

«وقتی مرغابیان وحشی در موسم مهاجرت به پرواز در می آیند، در سرزمین هایی که زیر بالهاشان گسترده می شود ، آشوبی عجیب پدید می‌آورند.مرغابیانِ اهلی،گویی به سمت صفِ شکسته ی پروازِ آنها کشیده می شوند و ناشیانه جَستنی می کنند، خیزی در آرزوی پروازی....
آوای طبیعتِ وحشی، بقایای مرموزی را از دوران وحش، در آنها بیدار کرده و مرغابیانِ کنج روستا را لحظه ای به مرغان مهاجر مبدل ساخته است. و ببین که در این مغز کوچک خشک، که جز نقش های حقیرِ برکه و کِرم و مرغدانی نقشی در آن نبود، پهنه های قاره، ساحَت و گستره ی اقیانوس ها و طعم بادهای فراخنای دریا پدید آمده است...حیوان نمی دانست که مغزش گنجایش چنین شگفتی هایی داشته است و ببین که بال می زندو دانه و کرم را خوار می دارد و سرِ آن دارد که مرغابی وحشی گردد....»
اگزوپری خود مرغ مهاجریست که از ما ��یخواهد چون مرغابیانِ کنج روستا نباشیم و بال بزنیم و خود را از کنج مرغدانیِ حقیرمان برهانیم ...
او که سال‌ها در خطوط هوایی پُست فعالیت کرده بود، به شغلش نگاهی بسیار مسئولانه و انسانی داشت و به آسمان و هواپیما عشق می‌ورزید. هوانوردی‌های طولانی و حوادث مختلفی که او در شغلش از سر گذراند، پایه‌ی نوشته‌های بسیار زیبای اوست.اگزوپری در این کتاب از جهان بینی خود پرده برمی دارد و نشان می دهد که در نظرش، چه چیزی باعث ارزشمند شدن زندگی می گردد....
«اگر حقیقت غزالان،چشیدن شرنگ ترس باشد که آنها را با تلاشی مافوق توانشان وادارَد و قدرت بلندترین جستنها را به آنها ببخشد، خطر شغالان کجا به حساب می آید ؟»
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ترجمه بسیار زیبا و وفادارانه جناب سروش حبیبی ، لذت خواندن این کتاب را صدچندان کرده.
«زمین انسان ها »را باید خواند...

książka, która skłoniła mnie do utworzenia półki "przeczytam ponownie"

“Never shall I forget that, lying buried to the chin in sand, strangled slowly to death by thirst, my heart was infinitely warm beneath the desert stars.”

Published in 1939, this is the author’s memoir about his love for aviation during a time he spent flying over the deserts of northern Africa. It is structured in a series of essays, but the term “essay” hardly does it justice. He conveys the profound sense of freedom he experienced while flying. He discusses the camaraderie among pilots, the risks these early aviators faced, and how they handled the loss of their friends. At one point in 1935, he crash-landed in the Libyan desert with his navigator. They had little food or water and were in extreme peril. Their story of survival is amazing. It is eloquently written and contains many quotable philosophical musings about life. It will appeal to many types of readers – those interested in aviation, deserts, survival stories, and musings on the nature of existence.

“For three days I have tramped the desert, have known the pangs of thirst, have followed false scents in the sand, have pinned my faith on the dew. I have struggled to rejoin my kind, whose very existence on earth I had forgotten.”

La magia del mestiere mi apre un mondo in cui, entro due ore, affronterò i draghi neri e le cime coronate da una chioma di lampi blu, un mondo in cui, libero quando calerà la notte, leggerò negli astri il mio cammino.

I voli avventurosi negli anni Venti e Trenta del pilota Saint-Exupery e dei suoi colleghi pionieri sopra il Sahara e sopra il continente sudamericano.

In aeroplano, quando la notte è davvero bella, ci si lascia andare, non si pilota più molto e, a poco a poco, l'apparecchio si inclina sulla sinistra. Si crede che sia ancora orizzontale finché si scopre sotto l'ala destra un villaggio. Ma nel deserto non ci sono villaggi. Allora è una flottiglia da pesca in mare. Ma al largo del Sahara non ci sono flottiglie da pesca. E allora? Allora si sorride per l'errore. Lentamente, si raddrizza l'aeroplano. E il villaggio ritorna al suo posto. Si riappende a quel vasto assortimento la costellazione lasciata cadere. Villaggio? Sì. Villaggio di stelle.

در روزی که هواپیمای تهران-یاسوج سقوط کرد، خوندمش. بیشتر بر حسب تصادف بود این همزمانی اما با خوندنش هر لحظه میشد تصور کرد که 66 جان چطور از ما پر کشیدند. اگر چه شباهت چندانی نیست بین این داستان و سقوط پرواز هواپیمایی آسمان...

I know nothing, nothing in the world, equal to the wonder of nightfall in the air. [...] Mermoz said once, “It’s worth it, it’s worth the final smash-up.”

Flying in 2015 has become about as commonplace and unexciting as taking the subway to work or the train to the weekend lodge. It is safer than driving a car and most of the work, beside take-offs and landings, is done by sophisticated instruments. What we have gained in safety and comfort. We may have lost in our sense of wonder and our perspective. Antoine de Saint-Exupery, poet and pioneer aviator, is probably our best guide back to the miracle of flight, and this present autobiographical novel is I believe the best example of his profound humanism and lyrical prose. Considering some common details about a plane crash in the desert, the eagle-eye view of humans struggling to fill in huge empty spaces on a planet hurtling through a vast emptiness, the common themes of friendship, love, death, peace, Terre des Hommes is closely related to Le Petit Prince, the more famous novella about the boy who looks at earth with innocent and hopeful eyes.

In structure, the novel pays homage to the early days of the Aeropostale, the first French company who opened up new routes of travel from Europe to Sahara, over the Andes in South America, to the Far East and beyond. It shows us the people for whom courage was only a short step away from suicidal madness, throwing themselves with reckless abandon in the middle of the storm without navigation instruments and with weak radio stations to guide them back to ground. I could quote whole pages, but I tried to restrain myself to a couple of the best examples:

Thus, when Mermoz first crossed the South Atlantic in a hydroplane, as day was dying he ran foul of the Black Hole region, off Africa. Straight ahead of him were the tails of tornadoes rising minute by minute gradually higher, rising as a wall is built; and then the night came down upon these preliminaries and swallowed them up; and when, an hour later, he slipped under the clouds, he came out into a fantastic kingdom.
Great black waterspouts had reared themselves seemingly in the immobility of temple pillars. Swollen at their tops, they supported the squat and lowering arch of the tempest, but through the rifts in the arch there fell slabs of light and the full moon sent her radiant beams between the pillars down upon the frozen tiles of the sea. Through these uninhabited ruins Mermoz made his way, gliding slantwise from one channel of light to the next, circling round those giant pillars in which there must have rumbled the upsurge of the sea, flying for four hours through these corridors of moonlight towards the exit from the temple. And this spectacle was so overwhelming that only after he had got through the Black Hole did Mermoz awaken to the fact that he had not been afraid.
---
Mermoz and his mechanic had been forced down at an altitude of twelve thousand feet on a table-land at whose edges the mountains dropped sheer on all sides. For two mortal days they hunted a way off this plateau. But they were trapped. Everywhere the same sheer drop. And so they played their last card.
Themselves still in it, they sent the plane rolling and bouncing down an incline over the rocky ground until it reached the precipice, went off into air, and dropped. In falling, the plane picked up enough speed to respond to the controls. Mermoz was able to tilt its nose in the direction of a peak, sweep over the peak and, while the water spurted through all the pipes burst by the night frost, the ship already disabled after only seven minutes of flight, he saw beneath him like a promised land the Chilean plain.
And the next day he was at it again.


When I think of Guillaumet, Mermoz, Saint-Exupery and of their colleagues in the Aeropostale , I have this image of one of our Romanian monuments to the early aviators: their arms spread out and covered with feathers, they went to the sky as naturally as we walk, they fought singlehanded against wind, darkness, cold and tiredness, and they paid dearly for their daring, falling back to ground in flames, like Icarus. In their own words: It was worth it!



Even as the peasant strolling about his domain is able to foresee in a thousand signs the coming of the spring, the threat of frost, a promise of rain, so all that happens in the sky signals to the pilot the oncoming snow, the expectancy of fog, or the peace of a blessed night. The machine which at first blush seems a means of isolating man from the great problems of nature, actually plunges him more deeply into them. As for the peasant so for the pilot, dawn and twilight become events of consequence. His essential problems are set to him by the mountain, the sea, the wind. Alone before the vast tribunal of the tempestuous sky, the pilot defends his mails and debates on terms of equality with those three elemental divinities.

An interesting chapter describes the flying machines they used on their missions, and Saint-Exupery uses the occasion to lash out at those who complain about the modern man’s dependence on technology. It is not the tool itself that drives us away from nature, but the way we use it. Like the ever-present so-called ‘smart’ phones, they are not making us lonely by breaking up our direct contact with our fellow men, their role is actually to make it easier to communicate and get in touch. Airplanes also bring us closer together by reducing the travel times and thus the distances that separate us.

Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of the flickering pictures – in this century as in others our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together. Do our dreamers hold that the invention of writing, of printing, of the sailing ship, degraded the human spirit?

While acknowledging the dangers of man being made to serve the machine (industry), the poet sees further and deeper, and argues for the spiritual liberation that the conquest of the air brings us:

A man cannot live a decent life in cities, and I need to feel myself live. I am not thinking of aviation. The airplane is a means, not an end. One doesn’t risk one’s life for a plane any more than a farmer ploughs for the sake of the plough. But the airplane is a means of getting away from towns and their bookkeeping and coming to grips to reality.
Flying is a man’s job and its worries are a man’s worries. A pilot’s business is with the wind, with the stars, with night, with sand, with the sea. He strives to outwit the forces of nature. He stares in expectancy for the coming of dawn the way a gardener awaits the coming of spring. He looks forward to port as to a promised land, and truth for him is what lives in the stars.

The winds, sand and stars of the title are revealed here as the keepers of the ultimate truth about life and about our place in the universe. An eagle-eye look at our planet from several thousand feet up in the air helps to put life in perspective, showing how insignificant some of our daily worries are, how feeble is our grip on the earth’s crust, how much a simple drink of water may mean to a man dying of thirst, and how the most important thing we can do is to share the burden with another human being. The main event in the novel is a plane crash in Sahara. The desert, like it did with countless prophets, is one of the best places in the world to bare a soul naked and bring it closer to divinity. It is not surprising that such a powerful revelation will mark the author’s writing both here and in Le Petit Prince:

When I opened my eyes I saw nothing but the pool of nocturnal sky, for I was lying on my back with outstretched arms, face to face with that hatchery of stars. Only half awake, still unaware that those depths were sky, having no roof between those depths and me, no branches to screen them, no root to cling to, I was seized with vertigo and felt myself flung forth and plunging downward like a diver.
But I did not fall. From nape to heel I discovered myself bound to earth. I felt a sort of appeasement in surrendering to it my weight. Gravitation had become as sovereign as love. The earth, I felt, was supporting my back, sustaining me, lifting me up, transporting me through the immense void of night. I was glued to our planet by a pressure like that which one is glued to the side of the car on a curve. I leaned with joy against this admirable breast-work, this solidity, this security, feeling against my body this curving bridge of my ship.

From the austere purity of the desert, the poet turns reporter and takes us on a trip to Spain during the civil war, trying to understand the impulses and the failures that drive brother against brother:

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking together in the same direction. There is no comradeship except through union in the same high effort. Even in our age of material well-being this must be so, else how should we explain the happiness we feel in sharing our last crust with others in the desert? [...] What sets us against one another is not our aims – they all come to the same thing – but our methods, which are the fruit of our varied reasoning.

With this last quote I move from the English title to the original French one: Terre des hommes. For Saint-Exupery we are all one nation, one people, rich in diversity, but united in spirit, divided by language, religion or politics but brothers in arms before the court of desert and stars. Flight is a tool, not a destination, and the best use we can put it to is to open us up to the beauty of companionship. From his whole career as a pilot, the poet values most the times he shared his passion and his experiences with his comrades, a beautiful word that should not be held hostage to political propaganda:

We told stories, we joked, we sang songs. In the air there was that slight fever that reigns over a gaily prepared feast. And yet we were infinitely poor. Wind, sand, and stars. The austerity of Trappists. But on this badly lighted cloth, a handful of men who possessed nothing in the world but their memories were sharing invisible riches.
We had met at last. Men travel side by side for years, each locked up in his own silence or exchanging those words which carry no freight – till danger comes. Then they stand shoulder to shoulder. They discover that they belong to the same family. They wax and bloom in the recognition of fellow beings. They look at one another and smile. They are like the prisoner set free who marvels at the immensity of the sea.
Happiness! It is useless to seek it elsewhere than in this warmth of human relations. Our sordid interests imprison us within their walls. Only a comrade can grasp us by the hand and haul us free.

Saint-Exupery died, like many of his comrades he shared a meal with in the desert, doing what he loved best in the world – flying. Or maybe like his Prince he visited us for a while and then went back to his tiny planet to tend his volcano and his flower. He left behind a message of hope for the future and of trust in our ability to gather together when danger threatens us. I tried here to explain why he is more than a favourite author, he is an old friend that walked beside me and pointed out the beauty of a sunset or of a child’s smile, the necessity of sharing:

Old friends cannot be created out of hand. Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of trials endured together, of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions. It is idle, having planted an acorn in the morning, to expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of the oak.
So life goes on. For years we plant the seed, we feel ourselves rich; and then come other years when time does its work and our plantation is made sparse and thin. One by one, our comrades slip away, deprive us of their shade.

أرض البشر
عنوان كبير لا يفصح عما بداخل الكتاب فكما ورد في العرض المدون على النسخة التي قامت بنشرها الهيئة المصرية للكتاب ان الكتاب يدور في الحد الفاصل بين الرواية والسيرة الذاتية
فالكتاب لا يوجد تشابه بينه وبين الرواية انما هو سيرة ذاتية لجزء او فترة من حياة طيار فرنسي عاش في أوائل القرن العشرين.
أحيانا تشعر بان الكتاب لا قيمة له وترغب في الكف عن قراءته واحيانا تشعر انه كتاب جيد فالمؤلف قام بكتابة هذا الجزء من حياته بطريقة أدبية ممتازة اما حينما تشعر بعدم الرغبة في اكمال الكتاب تشعر ان العيب ليس من الكاتب وانما من المؤلف السيد جوزيف صايغ فأسلوبه في الترجمة غريب فانه يترجم الكلمات الفرنسية ولا اعلم ان كان قد قام بالترجمة من الأصل ام من ترجمة انجليزية فعندما يترجم الكلمات يكتب كلمات عربية تحتاج الى ترجمة فعندما تقرأ لا تفهم معنى الكلمة

Kitap okuyorsam, beş bin yılın hikayesini; bir ömürde dinlemek, anlamak içindir.

Öyleyse şimdi sıra geldi "Yel, Kum ve Yıldızlar" kitabına. 2013 yılında ben de; hemen herkes gibi, Küçük Prens kitabıyla tanıştığım Antoine de Saint-Exupery'nin trajik yaşam öyküsünü de bilahare okuduktan sonra bu kitabı da okumaya karar kılmıştım.

Kitabın beni oldukça etkilediğini söyleyebilirim. Jack London'ın Yabanın Çağrısı'nda bahsettiği "Çağrı"yı yüreğinden işitip (yazar kitabında buna iççağrı demiş) kendini çöle, kuma ve uçsuz bucaksız yıldızlara atan yazarın; seyredip hissettiklerini okuyoruz bu kitapta.

"Sahra'm, Sahra'm benim, işte yün eğiren bir kadın, bir baştan bir başa büyüleyivermiş seni!" (s.58)

Çölde, kumda ve yıldızlarda; bir Fransız'ı Fransızlıktan, bir Bedeviyi Bedevilikten, Mağribiyi Mağripten; Meşrıkıyı Meşrıktan ayıran ve insanı yalnızca insan haline getiren şeyleri görmüş, anlamış ve anlatmış yazar. Susuzlukta, yalnızlıkta, açlıkta, merakta ve hürriyette bir olan şeyi; insançocuğunun ortak yazgısını.

Ve düş kurmayı da;
"Düşlerim bu kumullardan, bu aydan, bu varlıklardan daha gerçek." (s.57)

Mesleği pilotluk olan yazarımız için, dünya bir bahçedir aynı zamanda; çocukluğunda dizini kanattığı bahçenin belki biraz daha büyükçesi!

"Bahçenin öbür ucundan değil, dünyanın öbür ucundan dönüyordum, yalnızlıkların yakıcı kokusunu, kum yellerinin anaforunu, tropiklerin göz kamaştıran aylarını da kendimle birlikte getiriyordum!" (s.57)

Mağribinin fukaralığındaki sadelik ve estetikte olduğu kadar (aklıma Marakeş'te Sesler kitabını getirir bu noktada); çölün, kumun ve yıldızların manzarası da pek müthiştir.

"Ama en güzeli, burada gezegenin yuvarlak sırtı üzerinde, bu mıknatıslı örtüyle bu yıldızlar arasında, bu yağmuru bir ayna gibi yansıtabilecek bir insan bilincinin durmasıydı. Bir maden kitlesi üzerinde bir düş mucizesidir. Benim anımsadığım bir düş..." (s.54)

Yıldızların arasında uçan bir gemide, yazar yerkürenin o sonsuz küçüklüğündeki güzelliği de görmektedir kitabında; hani Nazım da şöyle anlatmıştı:

yıldızların arasında bir yıldız,
hem de en ufacıklarından,
mavi kadifede bir yaldız zerresi yani,
yani bu koskocaman dünyamız. (Nazım Hikmet Ran, Yaşamaya Dair)

Bu manzarayı, bu büyülü güzelliği göremeyen, göremeyecek hale gelmiş; artık kabuk bağlamış ruhlara da sitem etmeyi unutmaz:

"Sen, emektar memur, yanı başımdaki arkadaşım, hiçbir şey bu hapishaneden firar etmeni sağlamadı, ve bu durumdan sen sorumlu değilsin. Tıpkı termitler gibi, ışığa açılan her deliği betonla kapatarak kurdun rahatlığını. Burjuva güvenliğinin, gündelik işlerinin, taşra yaşayışının kuralları içinde bir bilye gibi yuvarlandın, yeller, gelgitler, yıldızlar karşısında bu alçakgönüllü suru yükselttin. [...] Başıboş bir gezegenin yerlisi değilsin sen, yanıtı olmayan sorular sormazsın hiç kendi kendine: [...] İş işten geçmeden önce seni omuzlarından kavrayacak hiç kimse çıkmadı. Şimdi, seni oluşturan balçık kuruyup sertleşti, benliğinde uyuyan müzisyeni ya da ozanı, ya da belki bir zamanlar benliğinde yaşamış olan gökbilimciyi kimse uyandıramaz artık. " (s.18)

Savaşı, kanı ve gözyaşını görmüş yazarı; bütün bunca ölüm arasında en çok üzen şeyin insanda yok olan Pascal'ı, Voltaire'i, Mozart'ı, Beethoven'ı görüşü, seyredişi olduğunu anladım. Bence yazar, kitabın insançocuğuna tavsiyeler niteliğindeki son bölümünde bu üzüntüsünü dile getirmiş;

Burada durmamacasına yeniden açılan yara olarak bahsettiği, Prometheus'un da hikayesinde özetlenen; insançocuğunun ekin başakları gibi hep yükselip hep çöken başı; trajedisidir. Belki de Prometheus'un hikayesinde de özetlenen buydu.
Ve dahi, yazarın uğruna döktüğü gözyaşı, tıpkı; kitabı okuyanlar bilir, çöldeki sahnede "kendime mi ağlıyorum sanıyorsun?" sorusunda olduğu gibi; insançocuğunun hikayesinedir belki.

Bu, varlık içindeki yoksunluk.

"İyi hazırlanmış bir şenlik ortasında duyulan coşkuyu tadıyorduk. Oysa alabildiğine yoksulduk. Yel, kum, bir de yıldızlar." (s.32)

https://agacingovdesi.com/2021/04/01/...