đ€Ž Le Petit Prince đ€Žđ»
The Little Prince French: Le Petit Prince; first published in
1943, is a novella
and the most famous work of the French aristocrat, writer, poet and pioneering
aviator Antoine de Saint-ExupĂ©ry (1900–1944).
The novella is both the most-read and most-translated book
in the French language, and was voted the best book of the 20th century in France.
Translated into more than 250 languages and dialects (as well as braille), selling nearly two million copies annually with sales totalling over 140
million copies worldwide, it has become one of the best-selling books ever
published.
After the outbreak of the Second
World War Saint-Exupéry became exiled in North America.
In the midst of personal upheavals and failing health, he produced almost half
of the writings for which he would be remembered, including a tender tale of
loneliness, friendship, love and loss, in the form of a young prince fallen to
Earth. An earlier memoir by the author had recounted his aviation experiences
in the Sahara Desert,
and he is thought to have drawn on those same experiences in The Little
Prince.
Since its first publication in the United States, the
novella has been adapted to numerous art forms and media, including audio
recordings, radio plays, live stage, film
screen, television,
ballet, and operatic works.
Overview
The Little Prince is a poetic tale, with watercolor
illustrations by the author, in which a pilot stranded in the desert meets a
young prince fallen to Earth from a tiny asteroid. The
story is philosophical and includes social criticism, remarking on the
strangeness of the adult world. It was written during a period when Saint-Exupéry fled to North America
subsequent to the Fall of France during the Second
World War, witnessed first hand by the author and captured in his memoir Flight
to Arras. The adult fable, according to one review, is actually "...an allegory of
Saint-Exupéry's own life - his search for childhood certainties and interior
peace, his mysticism, his belief in human courage and brotherhood.... but also
an allusion to the tortured nature of their relationship."
Though ostensibly styled as a children's book, The Little Prince
makes several observations about life and human nature.
For example, Saint-Exupéry tells
of a fox meeting the
young prince during his travels on Earth. The story's essence is contained in
the lines uttered by the fox to the little prince:
On ne voit bien qu'avec
le cĆur.
L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.
"One sees clearly
only with the heart.
What is essential is invisible to the eye."
Other key thematic messages are
articulated by the fox, such as: Tu deviens responsable pour toujours de ce
que tu as apprivoisé. ("You become responsible, forever, for what you
have tamed.") and C'est le temps que tu as perdu pour ta rose qui fait
ta rose si importante. ("It is the time you have lost for your rose
that makes your rose so important.") The fox's messages are arguably the
book's most famous quotations because they deal with human relationships.
Plot
A live stage musical adaptation of The Little
Prince at the trilingual Lycée Antoine de
Saint-Exupéry in Santiago, Chile (2011).
The narrator explains that, as a young boy, he once drew a
picture of a boa constrictor with an elephant
digesting in its stomach; however, every adult who saw the picture would
mistakenly interpret it as a drawing of a hat. Whenever the narrator would try
to correct this confusion, he was ultimately advised to set aside drawing and
take up a more practical or mature hobby. The narrator laments the lack of
creative understanding displayed by adults.
Now an adult himself, the narrator has become a pilot, and,
one day, his plane crashes in the Sahara desert, far from civilization. Here, the narrator is
suddenly greeted by a young boy or small man whom he refers to as "the little
prince". The little prince asks the narrator to draw a sheep. The narrator
first shows him his old picture of the elephant inside the snake, which, to the
narrator's surprise, the prince interprets correctly. After a few failed
attempts at drawing a good-looking sheep, the narrator simply draws a box in
his frustration, claiming that the box holds a sheep inside. Again, to the
narrator's surprise, the prince exclaims that this is exactly the picture he
wanted. The narrator says that the prince has a strange habit of avoiding
directly answering any of the narrator's questions. The prince is described as
having golden hair, a scarf, and a lovable laugh.
Over the course of eight days stranded in the desert, as the
narrator attempts to repair his plane, the little prince recounts the story of
his life. The prince begins by describing life on his tiny home planet: in
effect, an asteroid
the size of a house (which the narrator believes to be the one known as B-612).
The asteroid's most prominent features are three minuscule volcanoes (two
active, and one dormant or extinct) as well as a variety of plants. The
prince describes spending his earlier days cleaning the volcanoes and weeding
out certain unwanted seeds and sprigs that infest his planet's soil; in
particular, pulling out baobab trees that are constantly trying to grow and overrun
the surface. The prince appears to want a sheep to eat such undesirable plants,
until the narrator informs him that a sheep will even eat roses with thorns.
Upon hearing this, the prince tells of his love for a mysterious rose that
suddenly began growing on the asteroid's surface some time ago. The prince says
he nourished the rose and listened to her when she told him to make a screen or
glass globe to protect her from the cold wind. Although the prince fell in love
with the rose, he also began to feel that she was taking advantage of him, and
he resolved to leave the planet to explore the rest of the universe. Although
the rose finally apologized for her vanity, and the two
reconciled, she encouraged him to go ahead with his journey and so he traveled
onward.
The prince has since visited six other asteroids, each of
which was inhabited by a foolish, narrow-minded adult, including: a king with
no subjects; a conceited man, who believed himself the most admirable person on
his otherwise uninhabited planet; a drunkard who drank to forget the shame of
being a drunkard; a businessman who endlessly counted the stars and absurdly
claimed to own them all; a lamplighter who mindlessly extinguished and
relighted a lamp every single minute; and an elderly geographer,
so wrapped up in theory that he never actually explored the world that he
claimed to be mapping. When the geographer asked the prince to describe his
home, the prince mentioned the rose, and the geographer explained that he does
not record "ephemeral" things, such as roses. The prince was
shocked and hurt by this revelation, since the rose was of great importance to
him on a personal level. The geographer recommended that the prince next visit
the planet
One of numerous stage adaptations of
Saint-Exupéry's child and adult fable, this one at the University of Minnesota's Rarig Center
Proscenium (2010).
On Earth, the prince landed in the desert, leading him to
believe that Earth was uninhabited. He then met a yellow snake that claimed to
have the power to return him to his home, if he ever wished to return. The
prince next met a desert flower, who told him that she had only seen a handful
of men in this part of the world and that they had no roots, letting the wind
blow them around and living hard lives. After climbing the highest mountain he
had ever seen, the prince hoped to see the whole of Earth, thus finding the
people; however, he saw only the enormous, desolate landscape. When the prince
called out, his echo answered him, which he interpreted as the mocking voices
of others. Eventually, the prince encountered a whole row of rosebushes,
becoming downcast at having once thought that his own rose was unique. He began
to feel that he was not a great prince at all, as his planet contained only
three tiny volcanoes and a flower that he now thought of as common. He lay down
in the grass and wept, until a fox came along. The fox desired to be tamed and
explained to the prince that his rose really was indeed unique and special, because
she was the object of the prince's love. The fox also explained that, in a way,
the prince had tamed the rose, and that this is why the prince was now feeling
so responsible for her. The prince then took time to tame the fox, though the
two ultimately parted ways, teary-eyed. The prince next came across a railway
switchman, who told him how passengers constantly rushed from one place to
another aboard trains, never satisfied with where they were and not knowing
what they were after; only the children among them ever bothered to look out
the windows. A merchant then talked to the prince about his product, a pill
that eliminated thirst, which was very popular, saving people fifty-three
minutes a week. The prince replied that he would instead gladly use that extra
time to go around finding fresh water.
Back in the present moment, it is the eighth day after the
narrator's plane-crash and the narrator is dying of thirst; fortunately, he and
the prince together find a well. The narrator later finds the prince talking to
the snake, discussing his return home and eager to see his rose again, who he
worries has been left to fend for herself. The prince bids an emotional
farewell to the narrator and states that if it looks as though he has died, it
is only because his body was too heavy to take with him to his planet. The
prince warns the narrator not to watch him leave, as it will make him upset.
The narrator, realizing what will happen, refuses to leave the prince's side;
the prince consoles the narrator by saying that he only need look at the stars
to think of the prince's lovable laughter, and that it will seem as if all the
stars are laughing. The prince then walks away from the narrator and allows the
snake to bite him, falling without making a sound.
The next morning, the narrator tries to look for the prince,
but is unable to find his body. The story ends with the narrator's drawing of
the landscape where the prince and the narrator met and where the snake took
the prince's life. The narrator requests that anyone in that area encountering
a small man who refuses to answer questions should contact the narrator
immediately.
Tone and writing style
The story of The Little Prince is recalled in a
sombre, measured tone by the pilot-narrator, in memory of his small friend,
"a memorial to the prince—not just to the prince, but also to the time the
prince and the narrator had together".
The Little Prince was
created when Saint-Exupéry was "...an expatriate
and distraught about what was going on in his country and in the world."
It was written during his 27 month sojourn in North
America, almost as a sort of credo,
"carefully employing the expressions of despair, loneliness, and triumph
throughout its plot-line."
According to one analysis, "the story of the Little
Prince features a lot of fantastical, unrealistic elements... You can't ride a
flock of birds to another planet... The fantasy of the Little Prince works
because the logic of the story is based on the imagination of children, rather
than the strict realism of adults."
An exquisite literary perfectionist akin to the 19th century
French poet Stéphane Mallarmé,
Saint-Exupéry produced draft pages
"covered with fine lines of handwriting, much of it painstakingly crossed
out, with one word left standing where there were a hundred words, one sentence
substitut[ing] for a page...."
He worked "long hours with
great concentration". According to the author himself it was extremely
difficult to start his creative writing processes.
Biographer Paul Webster wrote of
the aviator-author's style "Behind Saint-Exupéry's quest for perfection
was a laborious process of editing and rewriting which reduced original drafts
by as much as two-thirds of their length."
The French author frequently wrote
at night, usually starting about 11 p.m. accompanied by a tray of strong black
coffee. In 1942 Saint-Exupéry related to his American English teacher, AdÚle
Breaux, that at such a time of night he felt "free" and able to
concentrate, "writing for hours without feeling tired or sleepy"
until he instantaneously dozed off.
He would wake up later, in
daylight, still at his desk with his head on his arms. Saint-Exupéry stated it
was the only way he could work, as once he started a writing project it became
an obsession.
Though the story is more or less understandable, the narrator made
almost no connection from when the little prince travelled between
planets. He purposely did that so that the book felt like it was told
from a secretive little boy.
Although Saint-Exupéry was a master of the French language, he
was never able to achieve anything more than haltingly poor English.
AdĂšle Breaux, his young Northport
English tutor to whom he later dedicated a writing ("For Miss AdĂšle
Breaux, who so gently guided me in the mysteries of the English
language") related her experiences with her famous student as Saint-ExupĂ©ry in America, 1942–1943: A Memoir, published in 1971.
"Saint-Exupéry's prodigious writings and studies of literature
sometimes gripped him, and on occasion he continued his readings of
literary works until moments before take-off on solitary military
reconnaissance flights, as he was adept at both reading and writing
while flying. Taking off with an open book balanced on his leg, his ground crew
would fear his mission would quickly end after contacting something
'very hard'. On one flight, to the chagrin of colleagues awaiting his
arrival, he circled the Tunis airport for an hour so that he could
finish reading a novel. Saint-Exupéry frequently flew with a lined carnet
(notebook) during his long, solo flights, and some of his philosophical
writings were created during such periods when he could reflect on the
world below him, becoming 'enmeshed in a search for ideals which he
translated into fable and parable'."
Inspirations
Events and characters
Saint-Exupéry next to his crashed Simoun (lacking an
all-critical radio) after impacting the Sahara Desert about
3 am during an air race to Saigon,
Vietnam. His
survival ordeal was about to begin (Egypt, 1935).
In The Little Prince, its narrator, the pilot, talks
of being stranded in the desert beside his crashed aircraft. This account
clearly drew on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's own experience
in the Sahara,
an ordeal described in detail in his 1939 memoir Wind, Sand and Stars (original French: Terre
des hommes).
On December 30, 1935, at 02:45 am, after 19 hours and
44 minutes in the air, Saint-Exupéry, along with his copilot-navigator André
Prévot, crashed in the Sahara desert.
They were attempting to break the
speed record for a Paris-to-Saigon
flight in a then-popular type of air race, called a raid, and win a
prize of 150,000 francs.
Their plane was a Caudron C-630
Simoun, and the crash site is thought to have been
near to the Wadi Natrun valley, close to the Nile Delta.
Both miraculously survived the crash, only to face rapid
dehydration in the intense desert heat. Their maps were primitive and
ambiguous. Lost among the sand dunes with a few grapes, a thermos of coffee, a
single orange, and some wine, the pair had only one day's worth of liquid. They
both began to see mirages,
which were quickly followed by more vivid hallucinations.
By the second and third days, they were so dehydrated that they stopped
sweating altogether. Finally, on the fourth day, a Bedouin on a
camel discovered them and administered a native rehydration treatment that
saved Saint-Exupéry and Prévot's lives.
The prince's home, "Asteroid B-612", was likely
derived as a progression of one of the planes Saint-Exupéry flew as an airmail pilot, which
bore the serial number "A-612". During his service as a mail pilot in
the North African Sahara desert, Saint-Exupéry had viewed a fennec
(desert sand fox), which most likely inspired him to create the fox character
in the book. In a letter written to his sister Didi from the Western Sahara's Cape Juby,
where he was the manager of an airmail stopover station in 1928, he tells of
raising a fennec which he adored.
In the novella the Wise Fox, believed to be modelled after
the author's intimate New York City
friend Silvia Hamilton Reinhardt, tells the prince that his rose is unique and
special, because she is the one that he loves.
The novella's iconic phrase,
"One sees clearly only with the heart", is believed to have been
suggested by Silvia Hamilton.
The fearsome, grasping baobab trees,
researchers have contended, were meant to represent Nazism attempting
to destroy the planet.
The little prince's reassurance to
the pilot that his dying body is only an empty shell resembles the last words
of Antoine's dying younger brother François, who told the author, from his
deathbed: "Don't worry. I'm all right. I can't help it. It's my
body".
The literary device of presenting philosophical and social
commentaries in the form of the impressions gained by a fictional
extraterrestrial visitor to Earth had already been used by the philosopher and
satirist Voltaire
in his story MicromĂ©gas of 1752 — a classic work of French
literature with which Saint-Exupéry was likely familiar.
The Rose đč
The Rose in The Little Prince was likely inspired by
Saint-Exupéry's Salvadoran wife, Consuelo (Montreal, 1942).
Many researchers believe that the prince's petulant, vain
rose was inspired by Saint-Exupéry's Salvadoran
wife Consuelo,
with the small home planet being inspired by her small home country El Salvador,
also known as "The Land of Volcanoes".
Despite a raucous marriage,
Saint-Exupéry kept Consuelo close to his heart and portrayed her as the
prince's Rose whom he tenderly protects with a wind screen and under a glass
dome on his tiny planet. Saint-Exupéry's infidelity and the doubts of his
marriage are symbolized by the vast field of roses the prince encounters during
his visit to Earth.
This view of Consuelo was described by biographer Paul
Webster who stated she was "the muse to whom Saint-Exupéry poured out his
soul in copious letters... Consuelo was the rose in The Little Prince.
"I should have judged her by her acts and not by her words," says the
prince. "She wrapped herself around me and enlightened me. I should never
have fled. I should have guessed at the tenderness behind her poor ruses."
The Prince đ€Ž
Saint-Exupéry may have drawn inspiration
for the prince's character and appearance from his own self as a youth, as
during his early years friends and family called him le Roi-Soleil (the
Sun King) due to his golden curly hair. The author had also met a precocious
eight-year-old with curly blond hair while residing with a family in Quebec City, Canada in 1942, Thomas De Koninck, the son of philosopher Charles De Koninck. Another possible inspiration for the little
prince has been suggested as Land Morrow Lindbergh, the young, golden-haired
son of the pioneering American aviator Charles
Lindbergh and his wife Anne Morrow all of whom met him during an
overnight stay at their Long Island home in 1939.
Some have seen the prince as a Christ figure, as the child
is sin-free and "believes in a life after death", subsequently
returning to his personal heaven.
Life
photojournalist John Phillips provided a direct answer
to the question of the character's origin when he questioned the author-aviator
on his inspiration for the child character. After Phillips posed the question,
Saint-Exupéry replied that "...one day he looked down on what he thought
was a blank sheet and saw a small childlike figure." When Phillips asked
who the figure was, the author replied "I'm the Little Prince".
One of Saint-Exupéry's earliest literary references to a
small prince is to be found in his second news dispatch from Moscow, dated May
14, 1935. In his writings as a special correspondent for Paris-Soir
the author described his transit from France to the U.S.S.R. by train.
Late at night during the train trip he ventured from his first class
accommodation into the third class carriages, where he came upon large groups
of Polish families huddled together, returning to their homeland. His
commentary not only described a diminutive prince, but also touched on several other
themes Saint-Exupéry incorporated into various philosophical writings:
I sat down [facing a sleeping] couple. Between the man and the woman a child had hollowed himself out a place and fallen asleep. He turned in his slumber, and in the dim lamplight I saw his face. What an adorable face! A golden fruit had been born of these two peasants..... This is a musician's face, I told myself. This is the child Mozart. This is a life full of beautiful promise. Little princes in legends are not different from this. Protected, sheltered, cultivated, what could not this child become? When by mutation a new rose is born in a garden, all gardeners rejoice. They isolate the rose, tend it, foster it. But there is no gardener for men. This little Mozart will be shaped like the rest by the common stamping machine.... This little Mozart is condemned.
—A Sense of Life: En Route to the U.S.S.R.
—A Sense of Life: En Route to the U.S.S.R.
Background
The writer-aviator on Lac
Saint-Louis during a speaking tour in support of France after its armistice with Germany.
He started his work on the novella shortly after returning to the United States (Quebec,1942).
Upon the outbreak of the Second
World War, Saint-Exupéry, a laureate of several of
France's highest literary awards and a successful pioneering aviator prior to
the war, initially flew with a reconnaissance squadron as a reserve military
pilot in the Armée de l'Air (French Air Force).
After France's defeat in
1940 and its armistice with Germany, he
and his wife Consuelo fled occupied France and sojourned in North
America, with Saint-Exupéry first arriving by himself at the very
end of December 1940. His intention for the visit was to convince the United States
to quickly enter the war against Nazi
Germany and the Axis forces, and he soon became one of the expatriate
voices of the French Resistance. In the midst of personal
upheavals and failing health he produced almost half of the writings he would
be remembered for, including a tender tale of loneliness, friendship, love and
loss, in the form of a young prince fallen to Earth.
An earlier memoir by the author
recounted his aviation experiences in the Sahara and he is
thought to have drawn on those same experiences for use as plot elements in The
Little Prince.
Saint-Exupéry wrote and illustrated the manuscript during
the summer and fall of 1942. Although greeted warmly by French-speaking
Americans and by fellow expatriates who had preceded him to New York, his 27 month stay would be marred
by health problems and racked with periods of severe stress, martial and
marital strife. These included partisan attacks on the author's neutral stance
towards ardent French
Gaullist and collaborationist Vichy supporters. According to Saint-Exupéry's American
translator (the author was unable to become proficient in English), "[h]e
was restless and unhappy in exile, seeing no way to fight again for his country
and refusing to take part in the political quarrels that set Frenchman against
Frenchman".
However the period was to be both
a "dark but productive time" during which he created three important
works.
Between January 1941 and April 1943 the Saint-Exupérys lived
in two penthouse apartments on Central Park South,
then the Bevin House mansion in Asharoken, Long Island, N.Y., and still later
at a rented house on Beekman Place in New York City. The couple also stayed in Quebec, Canada, for five
weeks during the late spring of 1942, where they met a precocious
eight-year-old boy with blond curly hair, Thomas, the son of philosopher Charles De Koninck with whom the Saint-Exupéry's
resided. During an earlier
visit to Long Island in August 1939,
Saint-Exupéry had also met Land Morrow Lindbergh, the young, golden-haired son
of the pioneering American aviator Charles
Lindbergh and his wife Anne Morrow.
After returning to the United
States from his Quebec
speaking tour, Saint-Exupéry was pressed to work on a children's book by
Elizabeth Reynal, one of the wives of his U.S. publisher, Reynal & Hitchcock. The French wife of
Eugene Reynal had closely observed Saint-Exupéry for several months, and noting
his ill health and high stress levels, suggested to him that working on a
children's story would help. The author wrote and illustrated The Little
Prince at various locations in New York City,
but principally in the Long Island north-shore
community of Asharoken in mid-to-late 1942, with the
manuscript being completed in October.
The Bevin House on Long
Island, N.Y., one of the locations where The Little Prince was
written during the summer and fall of 1942.
Although the book was started in his Central Park South penthouse, Saint-Exupéry
soon found New York City's
noise and sweltering summer heat too uncomfortable to work in, so Consuelo was
dispatched to find improved accommodations. After spending some time at an
unsuitable clapboard country house in Westport, Connecticut,
the newer result was to be the Bevin House,
a 22 room mansion in Asharoken overlooking Long
Island Sound. The author-aviator initially complained, "I wanted a hut
[but it's] the Palace of Versailles"; but as the weeks
wore on and the author became invested in his project, the home would become
"....a haven for writing, the best place I have ever had anywhere in my
life". He devoted himself to the book on mostly midnight shifts,
usually starting at about 11 p.m.,
fueled by helpings of scrambled eggs on English muffins, gin and tonics,
Coca-Colas, cigarettes and numerous reviews by friends and expatriates who
dropped in to see their famous countryman. Included among the reviewers was
Consuelo's Swiss writer paramour Denis de Rougemont, who also modeled for a
painting of the Little Prince lying on his stomach, feet and arms extended up
in the air. De Rougemont
would later help Consuelo write her autobiography, The Tale of the Rose,
as well as write his own biography of Saint-Exupéry.
While the author's personal life was frequently chaotic, his
creative process while writing was disciplined. Christine Nelson, curator of
literary and historical manuscripts at the Morgan Library and Museum which had
obtained Saint-Exupéry's original manuscript in 1968 stated: "On the one
hand, he had a clear vision for the shape, tone, and message of the story. On
the other hand, he was ruthless about chopping out entire passages that just
weren't quite right", eventually distilling the 30,000 word manuscript,
accompanied by small illustrations and sketches, to approximately half its
original length.
The story, the curator added, was created when he was "...an ex-patriot
and distraught about what was going on in his country and in the world."
The large white Second French Empire style mansion, hidden
behind tall trees, afforded the writer a multitude of work environments
although he usually wrote at a large dining table.
It also allowed him to alternately work on his writings, and then on his
sketches and watercolours for hours at a time, moving his armchair and paint
easel from the library towards the parlor one room at a time in order to follow
the sun's light. His meditative view of the sunsets at the Bevin House
eventually became part of the gist of The Little Prince, in which 43
daily sunsets would be discussed. "On your planet..." the story told,
"...all you need do is move your chair a few steps."
Manuscript
The original 140-page autograph
manuscript of The Little Prince, along with various drafts and trial
drawings, were acquired from the author's close friend Silvia Hamilton in 1968
by curator Herbert Cahoon of the Pierpont Morgan Library (now The Morgan Library & Museum) in
Manhattan,
New York City.
It is the only known surviving handwritten draft of the complete work.
The manuscript's pages include large amounts of the author's prose that was struck-through
and therefore not published as part of the first edition. In addition to the
manuscript, several watercolour illustrations by the author are
also held by the museum. They were not part of the first edition. The
institution has marked both the 50th and 70th anniversaries of the novella's
publication, along with the a centenary celebration of the author's birth, with
major exhibitions of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's literary works.
Physically, the manuscript's onion skin media has become brittle and subject to damage.
Saint-Exupéry's handwriting is described as being doctor-like, verging on
indecipherable.
The story's keynote aphorism, On
ne voit bien qu'avec le cĆur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux
("One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to
the eye") was reworded and rewritten some 15 times before achieving its
final phrasing. Saint-Exupéry also used his newly purchased $700 Dictaphone
recorder to produce oral drafts for his typist.
His initial 30,000 word working manuscript was distilled to less than half its
original size through laborious editing sessions. Multiple versions of its many
pages were created and its prose then polished over several drafts, with the
author occasionally telephoning friends at 2:00 a.m. to solicit opinions
on his newly written passages.
Many pages and illustrations were cut from the finished work
as he sought to maintain a sense of ambiguity to the story's theme and
messages. Included among the deletions in its 17th chapter were references to
locales in New York, such as the Rockefeller Center and Long Island.
Other deleted pages described the prince's vegetarian diet and the garden on
his home asteroid that included beans, radishes, potatoes and tomatoes, but
which lacked fruit trees that might have overwhelmed the prince's planetoid.
Deleted chapters discussed visits to other asteroids occupied by a retailer
brimming with marketing phrases, and an inventor whose creation could produce
any object desired at a touch of its controls. Likely the result of the ongoing
war in Europe weighing on Saint-Exupéry's shoulders, the author produced a
sombre three page epilogue lamenting "On one star someone has lost a
friend, on another someone is ill, on another someone is at war...", with
the story's pilot-narrator noting of The Prince: "he sees all that. . . .
For him, the night is hopeless. And for me, his friend, the night is also hopeless."
The draft epilogue was also omitted from the novella's printing.
In April 2012 a Parisian auction house announced the
discovery of two previously unknown draft manuscript pages that had been found
and that included new text.
In the newly discovered material the Prince meets his first Earthling after his
arrival. The person he meets is an "ambassador of the human spirit".
The ambassador is too busy to talk, saying he is searching for a missing six
letter word: "I am looking for a six-letter word that starts with G that
means 'gargling'," he says. Saint-Exupéry's text does not say what the
word is, but experts believe it could be "guerre" (or
"war"). The novella thus takes a more politicized tack with an
anti-war sentiment, as 'to gargle' in French is an informal reference to
'honour', which the author may have viewed as a key factor in military
confrontations between nations.
Further information: Morgan exhibitions
Dedication
Saint-Exupéry met Léon
Werth (1878–1955), a writer and art critic, in 1931. Werth soon became
Saint-Exupery's closest friend outside of his Aeropostale associates. Werth was an anarchist, a
leftist Bolshevik
supporter and of Jewish
descent, twenty-two years older than Saint-Exupéry. Werth was
Saint-Exupéry's very opposite.
Saint-Exupéry dedicated two books to him, Lettre à un otage (Letter to a Hostage)
and Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince), and referred to Werth in
three more of his works. At the beginning of the Second World War while writing
The Little Prince, Saint-Exupéry lived in his downtown New York City apartment, thinking of his
native France and his friends. Werth spent the war unobtrusively in Saint-Amour,
his village in the Jura, a mountainous region near Switzerland
where he was "alone, cold and hungry", a place that had few polite
words for French refugees. Werth appears in the preamble to the novella, where
Saint-Exupéry dedicates the book to him.
It reads:
To Leon Werth
I ask children to forgive me for dedicating this book to a grown-up. I have a serious excuse: this grown-up is the best friend I have in the world. I have another excuse: this grown-up can understand everything, even books for children. I have a third excuse: he lives in France where he is hungry and cold. He needs to be comforted. If all these excuses are not enough then I want to dedicate this book to the child whom this grown-up once was. All grown-ups were children first. (But few of them remember it.) So I correct my dedication:
To Leon Werth,
I ask children to forgive me for dedicating this book to a grown-up. I have a serious excuse: this grown-up is the best friend I have in the world. I have another excuse: this grown-up can understand everything, even books for children. I have a third excuse: he lives in France where he is hungry and cold. He needs to be comforted. If all these excuses are not enough then I want to dedicate this book to the child whom this grown-up once was. All grown-ups were children first. (But few of them remember it.) So I correct my dedication:
To Leon Werth,
Le Petit Prince est une Ćuvre de langue française, la plus connue d'Antoine de Saint-ExupĂ©ry. PubliĂ© en 1943 Ă New York simultanĂ©ment Ă sa traduction anglaise, c'est une Ćuvre poĂ©tique et philosophique sous l'apparence d'un conte pour enfants.
Traduit en cinq cent trente-cinq langues et dialectes différents2, Le Petit Prince est l'ouvrage le plus traduit au monde aprÚs la Bible3.
Le langage, simple et dĂ©pouillĂ©, parce qu'il est destinĂ© Ă ĂȘtre compris par des enfants, est en rĂ©alitĂ© pour le narrateur le vĂ©hicule privilĂ©giĂ© d'une conception symbolique de la vie. Chaque chapitre relate une rencontre du petit prince qui laisse celui-ci perplexe, par rapport aux comportements absurdes des « grandes personnes ». Ces diffĂ©rentes rencontres peuvent ĂȘtre lues comme une allĂ©gorie.
Les aquarelles font partie du texte4 et participent Ă cette puretĂ© du langage : dĂ©pouillement et profondeur sont les qualitĂ©s maĂźtresses de l'Ćuvre.
On peut y lire une invitation de l'auteur Ă retrouver l'enfant en soi, car « toutes les grandes personnes ont d'abord Ă©tĂ© des enfants. (Mais peu d'entre elles s'en souviennent.) ». L'ouvrage est dĂ©diĂ© Ă LĂ©on Werth, mais « quand il Ă©tait petit garçon ».
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Petit_Prince*************************
When he was a little boy
Saint-Exupéry's aircraft disappeared over the Mediterranean in July 1944. The following month, Werth learned of his friend's disappearance from a radio broadcast. Without having yet heard of The Little Prince, in November, Werth discovered that Saint-Exupéry had published a fable the previous year in the U.S., which he had illustrated himself, and that it was dedicated to him. At the end of the Second World War, which Antoine de Saint-Exupéry didn't live to see, Werth said: "Peace, without Tonio (Saint-Exupéry) isn't entirely peace." Werth did not see the text for which he was so responsible until five months after his friend's death, when Saint-Exupéry's French publisher, Gallimard, sent him a special edition. Werth died in Paris in 1955.
Saint-Exupéry's aircraft disappeared over the Mediterranean in July 1944. The following month, Werth learned of his friend's disappearance from a radio broadcast. Without having yet heard of The Little Prince, in November, Werth discovered that Saint-Exupéry had published a fable the previous year in the U.S., which he had illustrated himself, and that it was dedicated to him. At the end of the Second World War, which Antoine de Saint-Exupéry didn't live to see, Werth said: "Peace, without Tonio (Saint-Exupéry) isn't entirely peace." Werth did not see the text for which he was so responsible until five months after his friend's death, when Saint-Exupéry's French publisher, Gallimard, sent him a special edition. Werth died in Paris in 1955.
Illustrations
All of the novella's simple but elegant watercolour illustrations, which were integral to the story, were painted by Saint-ExupĂ©ry. He had studied architecture as a young adult but nevertheless could not be considered an artist — which he self-mockingly alluded to in the novella's introduction. Several of his illustrations were painted on the wrong side of the delicate onion skin paper that he used, his medium of choice. As with some of his draft manuscripts, he occasionally gave away preliminary sketches to close friends and colleagues; others were even recovered as crumpled balls from the floors in the cockpits he flew. Two or three original Little Prince drawings were reported in the collections of New York artist, sculptor and experimental filmmaker Joseph Cornell. One rare original Little Prince watercolour would be mysteriously sold at a second-hand book fair in Japan in 1994, and subsequently authenticated in 2007.
An unrepentant lifelong doodler and sketcher, Saint-Exupéry had for many years sketched little people on his napkins, tablecloths, letters
to paramours and friends, lined notebooks and other scraps of paper. Early figures took on a multitude of appearances, engaged in a variety of tasks. Some appeared as doll-like figures, baby puffins, angels with wings, and even a figure similar to that in Robert Crumb's later famous Keep On Truckin' of 1968. In a 1940 letter to a friend he sketched a character with his own thinning hair, sporting a bow tie, viewed as a boyish alter-ego, and he later gave a similar doodle to Elizabeth Reynal at his New York publisher's office. Most often the diminutive figure was expressed as "...a slip of a boy with a turned up nose, lots of hair, long baggy pants that were too short for him and with a long scarf that whipped in the wind. Usually the boy had a puzzled expression... [T]his boy Saint-Exupéry came to think of as "the little prince," and he was usually found standing on top of a tiny planet. Most of the time he was alone, sometimes walking up a path. Sometimes there was a single flower on the planet." His characters were frequently seen chasing butterflies; when asked why they did so, Saint-Exupéry, who thought of the figures as his alter-egos, replied that they were actually pursuing a "realistic ideal". Saint-Exupéry eventually settled on the image of the young, precocious child with curly blond hair, an image which would become the subject of speculations as to its source. One "most striking" illustration depicted the pilot-narrator asleep beside his stranded plane prior to the prince's arrival. Although images of the narrator were created for the story, none survived Saint-Exupéry's editing process.
To mark both the 50th and 70th anniversaries of The Little Prince's publication, the Morgan Library and Museum mounted major exhibitions of Saint-Exupéry's draft manuscript, preparatory drawings, and similar materials that it had obtained earlier from a variety of sources. One major source was an intimate friend of his in New York City, Silvia Hamilton (later, Reinhardt), to whom the author gave his working manuscript just prior to returning to Algiers to resume his work as a Free French Air Force pilot.
Hamilton's black poodle,
Mocha, is believed to have been the model for the Little Prince's sheep, with a Raggedy Ann type doll helping as a stand-in for the prince.
Additionally, a pet boxer, Hannibal, that Hamilton gave to him as a gift may have been the model for the story's desert fox and its tiger. A museum representative stated that the novella's final drawings were lost.
Seven unpublished drawings for the book were also displayed at the museum's exhibit, including fearsome looking baobab trees ready to
destroy the prince's home asteroid, as well as a picture of the story's narrator, the forlorn pilot, sleeping next to his aircraft. That image was likely omitted to avoid giving the story a 'literalness' that would distract its readers, according to one of the Morgan Library's staff. According to Christine Nelson, curator of literary and historical manuscripts
at the Morgan, "[t]he image evokes Saint-ExupĂ©ry's own experience of awakening in an isolated, mysterious place. You can almost imagine him wandering without much food and water and conjuring up the character of the Little Prince." Another reviewer noted that the author "...chose the best illustrations... to maintain the ethereal tone he wanted his story to exude. Choosing between ambiguity and literal text and illustrations, Saint-ExupĂ©ry chose in every case to obfuscate." Not a single drawing of the story's narrator–pilot survived the author's editing process; "...he was very good at excising what was not essential to his story".
In 2001 Japanese researcher Yoshitsugu Kunugiyama surmised that the cover illustration Saint-Exupéry painted for Le Petit Prince deliberately depicted a stellar arrangement created to celebrate the author's own centennial of birth. According to Kunugiyama, the cover art chosen from one of Saint-Exupéry's watercolour illustrations contained the planets Saturn and Jupiter, plus the
star Aldebaran,
arranged as an isosceles triangle, a celestial configuration which occurred in the early 1940s, and which he likely knew would next reoccur in the year 2000. Saint-Exupéry possessed superior mathematical skills and was a master celestial navigator, a vocation he had studied at Salon-de-Provence with the Armée de l'Air (French Air Force).
Post-publication
Stacy Schiff, one of Saint-Exupéry's principal biographers, wrote of him and his most famous work, "rarely have an author and a character been so intimately bound together as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and his Little Prince", and remarking of their dual fates, "...the two remain tangled together, twin innocents who fell from the sky". Another noted that the novella's mystique was "...enhanced by the parallel between author and subject: imperious innocents whose lives consist of equal parts flight and failed love, who fall to earth, are little impressed with what they find here and ultimately disappear without a trace."
Only weeks after his novella was first published in April 1943, despite his wife's pleadings and before Saint-Exupéry had received any of
its royalties (he never would), the author-aviator joined the Free French Forces. He would remain immensely proud of The Little Prince, and almost always kept a personal copy with him which he often read to others during the war.
As part of a 32 ship military convoy he voyaged to North Africa where he rejoined his old squadron to fight with the Allies, resuming his work as a reconnaissance pilot despite the best efforts of his
friends, colleagues and fellow airmen who could not prevent him from flying. He had previously escaped death by the barest of margins a number of times, but was then lost in action during a July 1944 spy
mission from the moonscapes of Corsica to the continent in preparation for the Allied
invasion of occupied France, only three weeks before the Liberation of Paris.
Many of the book's initial reviewers were flummoxed by the fable's multi-layered story line and its morals, perhaps expecting a significantly more conventional story from one of France's leading writers. Its publisher had anticipated such reactions to a work that fell neither exclusively into a children's or adult's literature classification. The New York Times wrote shortly before its
release "What makes a good children's book?.... ...The Little Prince, which is a fascinating fable for grown-ups [is] of conjectural value for boys and girls of 6, 8 and 10. [It] may very well be a book on the order of Gulliver's Travels, something that exists on two levels"; "Can you clutter up a narrative with paradox and irony and still hold the interest of 8 and 10 year olds?" Notwithstanding the
story's duality, the review added that major portions of the story would probably still "capture the imagination of any child."
Addressing whether it was written for children or adults, Reynal & Hitchcock promoted it ambiguously, saying that as far as they were concerned "it's the new book by Saint-Exupéry", adding to its dustcover "There are few stories which in some way, in some degree, change the world forever for their readers. This is one."
Others were not shy in offering their praise. Austin
Stevens, also of The New York Times, stated that the story
possessed "...large portions of the Saint-Exupéry philosophy and poetic
spirit. In a way it's a sort of credo." P.L.
Travers, author of the Mary Poppins series of children books, wrote in a Herald Tribune review: "...The Little Prince will shine upon children with a sidewise gleam. It will strike them in some place that is not the mind and glow there until the time comes for them to comprehend it."
British journalist Neil Clark, in The American Conservative, much later offered an expansive view of Saint-ExupĂ©ry's overall work by commenting that it provides a "…bird's eye view of humanity [and] contains some of the most profound observations on the human condition ever written", and that the author's novella "…doesn't merely express his contempt for selfishness and materialism [but] shows how life should be lived."
The book enjoyed only modest initial success, residing on
the The New York Times Best Seller list for only two weeks, as opposed to his earlier 1939 English translation, Wind, Sand and Stars which remained on the same list for nearly five months. As a cultural icon, the novella regularly draws new readers and reviewers, selling almost two million copies annually and also spawning numerous adaptations. Modern-day references to The Little Prince include one from The New York Times that describes it as "abstract" and fabulistic".
As science fiction
Saint-Exupéry made no attempt at scientific accuracy, and the asteroid on which the Little Prince lives bears little resemblance to an actual asteroid belt. Nevertheless, in retrospect, his book could be considered a pioneering work in depicting humans living on asteroids, a theme which would become a staple of many later works of science fiction (see Asteroids in fiction).
Literary translations and printed editions
Two editions of The Little Prince (lower left in French and upper right in English, artwork not shown) in the Saint-Exupéry
permanent exhibit at the French Air and Space Museum, Le Bourget,
Paris (2008).
Some of the more than 250 translations of The Little Prince, these editions displayed at the National Museum of Ethnology,
Osaka, Japan (2013).
Katherine Woods (1886–1968)
produced the classic English translation of 1943 which was later joined by several other English translations. Her original version contained some errors. Mistranslations aside, one reviewer noted that Wood's almost "poetic" English translation has long been admired by many Little Prince lovers who have spanned generations (it stayed in print until 2001), as her work maintains Saint-Exupéry's story-telling spirit and charm, if not its literal accuracy. As of 2014 at least six additional English translations have been published:
T.V.F. Cuffe, (ISBN
0-14-118562-7, 1st ed. 1995)
Irene Testot-Ferry, (ISBN
0-7567-5189-6, 1st ed. 1995)
Alan Wakeman, (ISBN
1-86205-066-X, 1st ed. 1995)
Richard Howard, (ISBN
0-15-204804-9, 1st ed. 2000)
Ros and Chloe Schwartz, (ISBN
9781907360015, 1st ed. 2010)
David Wilkinson, (bilingual English-French student edition, ISBN
0-9567215-9-1, 1st ed. 2011)
Each of these translators approaches the essence of the
original with his or her own style and focus.
Le Petit Prince is often used as a beginner's book
for French language students, and several bilingual and
trilingual translations have been published. As of 2014 it has been translated
into more than 250 languages and dialects, including Sardinian, the constructed international language of Esperanto,
and the Congolese language Alur, as well as being printed in braille for visually impaired
readers. It is one of the few modern books to have been translated into Latin, as Regulus
vel Pueri Soli Sapiunt. In 2005, the book was also translated into Toba,
an indigenous language of northern Argentina, as
So Shiyaxauolec Nta'a. It was the first book translated into this
language since the New Testament of the Bible. Anthropologist Florence
Tola, commenting on the suitability of the work for Toban translation, said
there is "nothing strange [when] the Little Prince speaks with a snake or
a fox and travels among the stars, it fits perfectly into the Toba
mythology."
Linguists have compared the many translations and even
editions of the same translation for style, composition, titles, wordings and
genealogy. As an example: as of 2011 there are approximately 47 translated
editions of The Little Prince in Korean, and there are also about 50 different
translated editions in Chinese (produced in both mainland China and Taiwan). Many of them are titled Prince
From a Star, while others carry the book title that is a direct translation
of The Little Prince.
By studying the use of word
phrasings, nouns, mistranslations and other content in newer editions,
linguists can identify the source material for each version: whether it was
derived from the original French typescript, or from its first translation into
English by Katherine Woods, or from a number of adapted sources.
The first edition to be published in France, Saint-Exupéry's
birthplace, would not be printed by his regular publisher in that country, Gallimard, until after the Second
World War,
as the author's blunt views within
his eloquent writings were soon banned by the German's Nazi appeasers in Vichy
France. Prior to France's liberation
new printings of Saint-Exupéry's works were made available only by means of
secret print runs, such as
that of February 1943 when 1,000 copies of an underground version of his best seller
Pilote de guerre, describing the German invasion of France, were
covertly printed in Lyon.
Commemorating the novella's 70th anniversary of publication,
in conjunction with the 2014 Morgan Exhibition, Ăditions Gallimard released a complete facsimile
edition of Saint-Exupéry's original handwritten manuscript entitled Le
Manuscrit du Petit Prince d'Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Facsimilé et
Transcription, edited by Alban Cerisier and Delphine Lacroix. The book in
its final form has also been republished in 70th anniversary editions by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (in English)
and by Gallimard (in French).
Spanish editions
After being translated by Bonifacio del Carril, The Little Prince
was first published in Spanish as El
principito in September 1951 by the Argentine
publisher Emecé Editores. Other Spanish editions have also been created;
in 1956 the Mexican
publisher Diana released its first edition of the book, El pequeño prĂncipe,
a Spanish translation by JosĂ© MarĂa FrancĂ©s.
Another edition of the work was
produced in 1964, and four years later, in 1968. Editions were also produced in
Colombia and
Cuba, the latter
translation by Luis FernĂĄndez in 1961. Chile had its first
translation in 1981; Peru
in February 1985; Venezuela in 1986, and Uruguay in 1990.
Extension of copyrights in France
Due to Saint-Exupéry's wartime death, his estate received
the civil code designation Mort pour la France (English: Died for
France), which was applied by the French Government in 1948. Amongst the
law's provisions is an increase of 30 years in the duration of copyright;
thus most of Saint-Exupéry's
creative works will not fall out of copyright status in France for an extra 30
years.
Adaptations and sequels
A short 45 RPM demo recording by Richard Burton narrating The Little Prince with music by Mort Garson, excerpted from a longer 33⅓ RPM vinyl record album. Burton won the Best Children's Album Grammy Award for his narration (1975).
The wide appeal of Saint-Exupéry's novella has led to it
being adapted into numerous forms over the decades. Additionally, the little
prince character himself has been adapted to a number of promotional roles,
including as a symbol of environmental protection, by the Toshiba
Group.
He has also been portrayed as a "virtual ambassador" in a campaign against smoking, employed by the Veolia Energy Services Group,
and his name was used as an episode title in the TV series Lost.
The multi-layered fable, styled as a children's story with
its philosophical elements of irony and paradox directed towards adults,
allowed The Little Prince to be transferred into various other art forms and media,
including:
đ
Vinyl record, cassette
and CD:
as early as 1954 several audio editions in multiple languages were created on
vinyl record, cassette tape and much latter as a CD, with one English version
narrated by Richard Burton.
đ»
Radio broadcasts: radio plays were produced in
the United States, with Raymond
Burr, in 1956 and by Bonnie Greer on the United Kingdom's BBC in
2000.
đŹ
Film
and TV:
the story has been created as a movie as early as 1966 in a Soviet-Lithuanian production, with its first English movie version in 1974 produced in the United States featuring Bob Fosse, who choreographed his own dance sequence as The Snake, and Gene Wilder as The Fox. A new 3D animated movie of the story was in production as of 2014.
đ
Stage: The Little Prince's popular appeal has lent
itself to widespread dramatic adaptations in live stage productions at both the professional and amateur levels. It has become a staple of numerous stage companies, with dozens of productions created.
đ
Graphic novel: a new printed version of the story in
comic book form, by Joann Sfar in 2008, drew widespread notice.
đ©°
Opera
and ballet:
several operatic and ballet versions of the novella have been produced as early as the Russian Malen′kiy, first performed in 1978 with a symphony score composed in the 1960s.
Other: a number of musical references, game boards and a video game version of the novella have been released.
In 1997, Jean-Pierre Davidts wrote what could be considered a sequel to The Little Prince, entitled Le petit prince retrouvé
(The Little Prince Returns). In this version, the narrator is a shipwrecked man who encounters the little prince on a lone island; the prince has returned to find help against a tiger who threatens his sheep.
Another sequel titled The Return of the Little Prince was written by former actress Ysatis de Saint-Simone, niece of Consuelo de Saint Exupery.
Honours and legacy
Museums and exhibits
Morgan exhibitions
New York City's Morgan Library & Museum mounted three showings of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's original manuscript, with its first showing in 1994 on the occasion of the story's 50th anniversary of publication, followed by one celebrating the author's centennial of birth in 2000, with its last and largest exhibition in 2014 honouring the novella's 70th anniversary.
The 1994 exhibition displayed the original manuscript, translated by the museum's art historian Ruth Kraemer, as well as a number of the story's watercolours drawn from the Morgan's permanent collection. Also included with the exhibits was a 20-minute video it produced, My Grown-Up Friend, Saint-Exupéry, narrated by actor Macaulay Culkin, along with photos of the author, correspondence to his wife Consuelo, a signed first edition of The Little Prince, and several international editions in other languages.
In January 2014 the museum mounted a third, significantly larger exhibition centered on the novella's creative origins and its history. The major showing of The Little Prince: A New York Story celebrated the story's 70th anniversary. It examined both the novella's New York origins and Saint-Exupéry's creative processes, looking at his story and paintings as they evolved from conceptual germ form into progressively more refined versions, and finally into the book's highly polished first edition. "The exhibition allows us to step back to the moment of creation and witness Saint-Exupéry at work..." wrote the museum's director, William Griswold. It was if visitors were able to look over his shoulder as he worked, according to curator Christine Nelson. Funding for the 2014 exhibition was provided by
several benefactors, including The Florence Gould Foundation, The Caroline Macomber Fund, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Air France
and the New York State Council on the Arts.
The new, more comprehensive exhibits included 35 watercolor paintings and 25 of the work's original 140 handwritten manuscript pages, with his almost illegible handwriting penciled onto 'Fidelity' watermarked onion skin paper. The autograph manuscript pages included struck-through content that was not published in the novella's first edition. As well, some 43 preparatory pencil drawings that evolved into the story's illustrations accompanied the manuscript, many of them dampened by moisture that rippled its onion skin media. One painting depicted the prince floating above Earth wearing a yellow scarf was wrinkled, having been crumpled up and thrown away before being retrieved for preservation. Another drawing loaned from Silvia Hamilton's grandson depicted the diminutive prince observing a sunset on his home asteroid; two other versions of the same drawing were also displayed alongside it allowing visitors to observe the drawings progressive refinement. The initial working manuscript and
sketches, displayed side-by-side with pages from the novella's first edition, allowed viewers to observe the evolution of Saint-Exupéry's work.
Shortly before departing the United States to rejoin his reconnaissance squadron in North Africa in its struggle against Nazi Germany, Saint-Exupéry appeared unexpectedly in military uniform at the door of his intimate friend Silvia Hamilton. He presented his working manuscript and its preliminary drawings in a "rumpled paper bag", placed onto her home's entryway table, offering "I'd like to give you something splendid, but this is all I have". Several of the manuscript pages bore accidental coffee stains and cigarette scorch marks. The Morgan later acquired the 30,000 word manuscript from Hamilton in 1968, with its pages becoming the centrepieces of its exhibitions on Saint-Exupéry's work. The 2014 exhibition also borrowed artifacts and the author's personal letters from the Saint Exupéry-d'Gay Estate, as well as materials from other private collections, libraries and museums in the United States and France. Running concurrent with its 2014 exhibition, the Morgan held a series of lectures, concerts and film showings, including talks by Saint-Exupéry biographer Stacy Schiff, writer Adam Gopnik, and author Peter Sis
on his new work The Pilot and The Little Prince: The Life of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,
Additional exhibits included photos of Saint-Exupéry by Life
photojournalist John Phillips, other photos of the author's New York area homes, an Orson Welles screenplay of the novella the filmmaker attempted to produce as a movie in collaboration with Walt Disney, as well as one of the few signed copies extant of The Little Prince, gifted to Hamilton's 12 year old son.
A tribute to The Little Prince atop Asteroid B-612, at the Museum of The Little Prince, Hakone, Japan (2007).
Permanent exhibits
In Le Bourget, Paris,
France, the Air and Space Museum of France
established a special exhibit honoring Saint-Exupéry, and which displays many
of his literary creations. Among them are various early editions of The
Little Prince. Remnants of the Free French Air Force P-38 Lightning in which he disappeared, and
which were recovered from the Mediterranean
in 2004, are also on view.
In Hakone, Japan there is the Museum of The Little Prince featuring outdoor squares and sculptures such as the B-612 Asteroid, the Lamplighter Square, and a sculpture of the Little Prince. The museum grounds additionally feature a Little Prince Park along with the Consuelo Rose Garden; however the main portion of the museum are its indoor exhibits.
In Gyeonggi-do, South Korea,
there is an imitation French village, Petite France, which has adapted the story elements of The Little Prince into its architecture and monuments. There are several sculptures of the story's characters, and the village also offers overnight housing in some of the French-style homes. Featured are the history of The Little Prince, an art gallery, and a small amphitheatre
situated in the middle of the village for musicians and other performances. The enterprise's director stated that in 2009 the village received a half million visitors.
Special exhibitions
In 1996 the Danish sculptor Jens GalschiĂžt unveiled an artistic arrangement consisting of seven blocks of
granite asteroids 'floating' in a circle around a 2-metre tall planet Earth. The artistic universe was populated by bronze sculpture figures that the little prince met on his journeys. As in the book, the prince discovers that "the essential is invisible to the eye, and only by the heart can you really see". The work was completed at the start of 1996 and placed in the central square of Fuglebjerg, Denmark, but was later stolen from an exhibition in Billund in 2011.
During 2009 in São Paulo, Brazil, the giant Oca Art Exhibition Centre presented The Little Prince as part of 'The Year of France and The Little Prince'. The displays covered over 10,000 square metres on four floors, examining Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince and their philosophies, as visitors passed through theme areas of the desert, different worlds, stars and the cosmos. The ground floor of the exhibit area was laid out as a huge map of the routes flown by the author and Aeropostale in South America and around the world. Also included was a full-scale replica of his Caudron Simoun, crashed in a simulated Sahara desert.
In 2012 the Catalan architect Jan Baca unvelied a sculpture in Terrassa, Catalonia
showing the Little Prince image along the sentence "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye"
Numismatics and philatelic
The Little Prince at bottom, and a portrait of his creator
on a French 50-franc banknote (1993).
Before France
adopted the euro as
its currency, Saint-Exupéry and drawings from The Little Prince were on
the 50-franc
banknote; the artwork was by Swiss designer Roger Pfund. Among the anti-counterfeiting measures on the
banknote was micro-printed text from Le Petit Prince, visible with a
strong magnifying glass. Additionally, a 100-franc commemorative coin
was also released in 2000, with Saint-Exupéry's image on its obverse, and that of the Little Prince on its
reverse.In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the writer's
untimely death, Israel
issued a stamp honoring "Saint-Ex" and The Little Prince in
1994.
Philatelic
tributes have been printed in at least 24 other countries as of 2011.
Astronomy
The B612 Foundation is a private foundation created to
track Near-Earth objects that might pose a threat to
Earth, and is dedicated to protecting the planet from asteroid
strikes, similar to the Tunguska
event of 1908. The private foundation was founded by a group of U.S. scientists and astronauts, including Clark Chapman, Piet Hut, Rusty Schweickart and Ed
Lu in October 2002. The non-profit organization is named in honour of the
prince's home asteroid.
An asteroid discovered in 1975, 2578 Saint-Exupéry, was also named after the
author of The Little Prince.
Another asteroid discovered in 1993 was named 46610 BĂ©sixdouze, which is French for "B six
twelve". The asteroid's number, 46610, becomes B612 in hexadecimal notation. B-612 was the name of the prince's
home asteroid.
In 2003 a small asteroid
moon, Petit-Prince, discovered earlier in 1998, was named in part after The Little Prince.
Insignia and awards
The fighter jet insignia of the Escadron de reconnaissance 1/33 Belfort,
bearing an image of the Little Prince at top.
Prior to its decommissioning in 2010, the GR I/33 (later renamed as the 1/33 Belfort Squadron), one of the French Air Force squadrons Saint-Exupéry flew with, adopted the image of the Little Prince as part of the squadron and tail insignia of its Dassault Mirage fighter jets. Some of the fastest jets in the world were flown with The Prince gazing over their pilots' shoulders.
The Little Prince Literary Award for Persian
fiction by writers under the age of 15, commemorating the title of Saint-Exupéry's famous work, was created in Iran by the Cheragh-e Motale'eh Literary Foundation. In 2012, some 250 works by young authors were submitted for first stage review according to the society's secretary Maryam Sistani, with the selection of the best three writers from 30 finalists being conducted in Tehran that September.
Several other Little Prince Awards have also been
established in Europe, meant to promote achievement and excellence in a variety
of fields such as in assistance to autistic children, child literacy, children's literature (by adults), puppetry theatre
and theatre arts.
Schools
L'Ă©cole Le Petit Prince is the public elementary school in the small community of Genech in northern France, dedicated in 1994 upon the merger of two former schools. With nine classrooms and a library, its building overlooks the village's Place Terre des Hommes, a square also named in tribute to
Saint-Exupéry's 1939 philosophical memoir, Terre des hommes.
A K–6 elementary school on Avro Road
in Maple,Ontario, Canada, was also opened in 1994 as L'école élémentaire catholique Le Petit Prince. Its enrollment expanded from 30 students in its first year to some 325 children by 2014. One of Saint-Exupéry's colorful paintings of the prince is found on its website's welcome page.
See also
- Children's literature portal
- List of The Little Prince adaptations, a listing of The Little Prince story adapted into various media.
- The Little Prince (film), a 1974 musical film directed by Stanley Donen
- The Little Prince (play), a theatrical adaptation
- The Little Prince (opera), an opera in two acts by Rachel Portman to an English libretto by Nicholas Wright
- The Adventures of The Little Prince (TV series), an anime series
- The Little Prince and the Aviator, a 1981 musical theatre adaptation
- Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century
Author
|
|
Original title
|
Le Petit Prince (as handwritten)
|
Translator
|
(English editions)
Katherine Woods T.V.F. Cuffe Irene Testot-Ferry Alan Wakeman Richard Howard David Wilkinson |
Illustrator
|
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
|
Cover artist
|
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
|
Country
|
United
States
(English & French) France (French) |
Language
|
English, French and 250+ others
|
Publisher
|
Reynal & Hitchcock (U.S.)
Gallimard (France)
|
Publication date
|
1943 (U.S.:
English & French)
1945 (France: French) |
Preceded by
|
Pilote de guerre (1942)
|
Followed by
|
Lettre Ă un otage (1944)
|
Contents
- 2 Plot
- 3 Tone and writing style
- 4 Inspirations
- 4.1 Events and characters
- 4.2 The Rose
- 4.3 The Prince
- 5 Background
- 5.1 Manuscript
- 5.2 Dedication
- 5.3 Illustrations
- 5.4 Post-publication
- 5.5 Reception
- 5.6 As science fiction
- 6 Literary translations and printed editions
- 6.1 Spanish editions
- 6.2 Extension of copyrights in France
- 7 Adaptations and sequels
- 8 Honours and legacy
- 8.1 Museums and exhibits
- 8.2 Numismatics and philatelic
- 8.3 Astronomy
- 8.4 Insignia and awards
- 8.5 Schools
- 9 See also
- 10 References
- 11 Further reading
- 12 External links
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