A children's book for adults: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's fantastic story has enthralled generations of readers for decades. Our author asks why.
I still remember exactly when my mother appeared in my children's room one evening with “The Little Prince”. “What a great book this must be,” I thought, noticing how carefully and reverently she opened it. The drawings of the little boy with the golden, shaggy hair and the green pants suit picked me up. But the story…it disturbed me! How terrible, such a small planet, it's like a prison! And that weird, spiteful rose – why does he like it so much? And why does he befriend a fox and then leave him again?
As my mother slowly read the short chapters, I couldn't bring myself to say how uncomfortable I found the story. While pop culture celebrated the world's most famous fairy tale hero with numerous merchandise products such as mugs, puzzles, T-shirts and film adaptations, I kept my distance from this strange alien child.
“The Little Prince” : childhood memories
“The Little Prince” is about a boy who lives on a very small planet with a challenging rose, two active volcanoes and one dormant volcano, and baobab seedlings to fight. The flower and he don't get along well, the rose is sullen and engaging. So the little prince decides to go on a journey and explores seven planets. The final stop is on Earth, where he meets a pilot who crash-landed in the desert.
Pilot, author and illustrator: original drawing by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Now, 80 years after it was first published, I wanted to give the modern fairy tale another chance. The 27 short chapters were read quickly and this time they sat: The simple language, the simple pictures – they are deceptive. It's not a children's fairy tale, but rather a reminder of the childlike in us. The booklet deals with the really big questions like love, loneliness and death that adults ask themselves. So it's no wonder that as a child in elementary school I clearly felt that something important was being negotiated here, something that I can't grasp (yet). I was startled by the seriousness of the adults reading.
“The Little Prince” is the last book by the passionate aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and was first published in New York in 1943. When the French edition was published three years later, the now celebrated author did not live to see it. He never returned from a reconnaissance flight over the Mediterranean during the Second World War in 1944.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Commercial pilot who wrote books
Saint-Exupéry, who was born in Lyon in 1900, began his flying career with sightseeing flights over Paris for tourists. In the 1920s he then flew the stages Toulouse – Casablanca – Dakar, became airfield manager in the then Spanish-Morocco colony, where he repeatedly rescued colleagues who had made an emergency landing in the desert. After that, he was drawn to Argentina as a carrier of nightly air mail. Later he kept trying to set course records and survived two crashes: Paris – Saigon and New York – Tierra del Fuego. He was drafted at the beginning of the Second World War and experienced the lightning raids of the German Wehrmacht in north-eastern France. Not only does his life as a pilot read like an adventure story, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote well-regarded novels during some stages of his life. Although he had received literary awards, he saw himself first and foremost as a commercial pilot and secondarily as a hobby writer.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's work is decisively shaped by his experiences as a pilot
“The Little Prince” initially disappointed readers: not an adventure novel, but a bittersweet fairy tale illustrated by Saint-Ex himself, as his friends called him. And yet his life story is also immortalized here: like the narrator in the fairy tale, Saint-Exupéry fell over a desert and had to survive for days without drinking water until a caravan rescued him.
Hardly anyone would have guessed that this little book would not only be his most successful, but also the best-selling book in France. Since then, “The Little Prince” is said to have been sold more than 200 million times, translated into around 340 languages and dialects, including the Inuit, Tuareg and Mayan languages as well as the fantasy language Klingon from the TV series “Star Trek”.
Ode to Fantasy
“Draw me a sheep” is the first thing the little prince says to the crashed pilot. To which he replies: “When something mysterious is particularly impressive, one cannot resist. As absurd as it seemed to me, in mortal danger a thousand miles from any human habitation, I took out of my pocket a sheet of paper and a fountain pen.” The pilot draws three sheep, all of which are rejected. Finally, exasperated, he draws a box and says: “The sheep you want is in there.”
Exhibition in Paris: The Little Prince
To his great astonishment, the strange boy is delighted. It wasn't me as a kid. What nonsense, I thought to myself. Why doesn't he paint the sheep the way the prince likes it? I couldn't understand the genius of these lines, my childish imagination was well developed, but if a book is read to me, please do it correctly and down to the smallest detail. Today this passage convinces me: It is an ode to fantasy, to unbiased childish clarity. “Grown-up people never understand anything by themselves. And it's far too difficult for children to explain things to them over and over again,” writes Saint-Exupéry in the first chapter.
“Man It is only with the heart that one can see rightly…”
The book is overflowing with wisdom. “One can only see clearly with the heart, what is essential is invisible to the eye” is probably the best known and has since ended up in numerous poetry albums or as a wall tattoo in the yoga studio.
In addition to thoughts on love, friendship and death, the fairy tale also contains social criticism. So the little prince travels to six planets before coming to earth. On every asteroid he experiences strange encounters: A monarch looking for subjects; a drunkard who drinks to forget drinking; a lanternlighter who only exercises orders; a vain who wants to be admired; a geographer who explains the world but has not seen it; a businessman who thinks he owns the stars.
Saint-Exupéry grew up here at Saint-Maurice-de Rémens Castle. A recreation of his most famous hero commemorates him
My French teacher fell in love with the latter. Of course, “Le Petit Prince” was read in the original in class. I didn't like my French teacher, he was a nasty, grim man who obviously didn't like children. But when he read about the number-obsessed businessman who was unable to do anything else because of all the star counting, even this teacher suddenly became very calm and caring. As if he wanted to give us French students something to take with them. A wisdom of life. Or maybe a regret: what became of my childhood dreams?
“The grown-up people were once children, but only a few remember it”, writes Antoine de Saint-Exupéry right at the beginning of his fairy tale. “The Little Prince” reminds us more than almost any other book of what childhood feels like – and perhaps that's why it's been a worldwide bestseller for 80 years.