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VERKAUFT

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Antoine de SAINT-EXUPERY

Dessin original à Nelly de Vogüé

New York , 30 avril 1938, 16,2x21,5cm, une feuille.

Original drawing for Nelly de Vogüé
Original ink drawing by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry on the back of a telegram from his mistress, Nelly de Vogüé, dated 30 April 1938. This touching drawing, based on a play on words in English and French, dates from his stay in New York, where he received this telegram.
The drawing, showing a beehive and bees, makes several allusions to his love of flying and his imminent return from New York to France and Nelly. Saint-Exupéry plays on the two senses of the word "honey ". The nickname Honey, no doubt one he used for Nelly de Vogüé, sheds light on the few words he has written in ink in the middle of the drawing: honey en combi. This "honey in a suit" - a pilot's suit - refers to New York and a flying accident that had happened a few months previously. Saint-Exupéry here defines himself as an aviator and pilot, the same Saint-Exupéry who said: "for me, flying and writing are all one." Although, it may also be possible that this is a subtle reference to a lady's negligée and Nelly de Vogüé's state of undress as she awaits him in Paris. Saint-Exupéry was meant to go back to France in the following days, Nelly referring to his return in the telegram when she asked if he was coming back from New York alone, without his wife Consuelo. ("ES TU SUR REVENIR SEUL [Are you sure you're coming alone]). The bees sketched on the reverse of the telegram, flying towards a hive, could signify Saint-Exupéry's flight across the Altantic towards France and Nelly de Vogüé.
Nelly, or the image of the treasured and desired woman, is to be found in the drawing of the flower. With a few strokes of his pen, Saint-Exupéry sums up the symbiosis that exists between the bee and the flower, or man and woman. In The Little Prince , written a few years later, it's his wife Consuelo who would be represented by a flower, a magnificent and vain being, a source of passion and torment for the Little Prince. " The picture of a rose that shines in him like the flame of a lamp, even when he sleeps..." (chapter XXIV).
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is one of those writers who never stopped sketching little drawings, mostly in ink, "on loose leaves, napkins in restaurants, old bills" (Delphine Lacroix, Dessins de Saint-Exupéry). When Nelly de Vogüé sent him this telegram, which then became the background for this touching drawing, Saint-Exupéry was recovering in New York from his terrible flying accident in Guatemala in January 1938, during a raid to Terra del Fuego. Benefitting from his renown since the publication of his books in the US (Night Flight and Southern Mail), he signed a publishing contract with Eugene Reynal and Curtice Hitchcock, who would go on to publish The Little Prince.
This rare drawing by Saint-Exupéry during his first stay in New York is passionate testimony of his attachment to Nelly and a fore-runner of his famous illustrations for The Little Prince, which would first be published in the same city in 1943.
 

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