“More than a means of locomotion”: ethics and aesthetics of aviation in modern literature
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Abstract
Since 1909, when the French aviator Blériot succeeded in crossing the English Channel, the airplane has not ceased to fascinate writers. Two aspects of the newly invented vehicle invited particular interest in the literary history of aviation. If for several modern poets and novelists the plane is “more than a means of locomotion”, as the pilot and poet Saint-Exupéry has put it, this is true for ethical as well as aesthetical reasons. On the one hand, the airplane is celebrated as a means of action that makes it possible to transgress the limits of the world and of oneself; on the other, it is presented as a means of perception that makes it possible to see the earth and the sky in a different way. This article attempts to clarify these two links between aviation and literature through some texts published before and after the bombings of the Second World War, in particular La vuelta a Europa en avión (1929) by Manuel Chaves Nogales, Terre des hommes (1939) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Estrella distante (1996) by Roberto Bolaño and Le Jardin des Plantes (1998) by Claude Simon.
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