The Little Prince

The Little Prince

Author	Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Original title	Le Petit Prince
Translator	Katherine Woods
Illustrator	Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Cover artist	Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Publisher	Gallimard
Publication date	1943
Published in English	1943

The Little Prince (French: Le petit prince), published in 1943, is French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's most famous novel, which he wrote in the United States while renting The Bevin House in Asharoken, New York, on Long Island. The novel includes a number of drawings by Saint-Exupéry himself, which are reproduced in most versions.

Ostensibly a children's book, it makes several profound and idealistic points about life and human nature. It really shows how different adults are from children. In it, Saint-Exupéry tells of his being stranded in the Sahara Desert, thousands of kilometers away from inhabited places, where he meets a young extra-terrestrial (though entirely human-appearing) prince. In their conversations, the author reveals his own views about the follies of mankind and the simple truths that people seem to forget as they grow older. The essence of the book is contained in the famous line uttered by the fox to the Little Prince: "On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur, l'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux" (It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye). There are also two other main points in the book, both spoken by the fox. They are: "You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed" and "It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important".

Throughout the book the children's view on the world, on the main points of the human life and relations between people, which is represented by the Little Prince and partially by the narrator, is set off against the "grown-ups" revealed in memories of the narrator and in the characters, met by the Little Prince on asteroids. But the author underlines, that the "'grown-ups' are like that. One must not hold it against them. Children should always show great forbearance toward grown-up people."

The Little Prince has been translated into more than 160 languages and, to date has sold more than 50 million copies worldwide. It has been claimed that The Little Prince is the best-selling book after the Bible and Karl Marx's Das Kapital [1]. It has been adapted into a movie musical by Lerner and Loewe, two different operas, as well as into an animated series. It is often used as a beginner's book for foreign language students.

Story

File:Littleprince-businessman.jpg

The Businessman, chapter 13

The Little Prince inhabits a house-sized planet, B612, which has three volcanoes (two active, and one dormant) and a rose. He spends his days caring for his asteroid, pulling out the baobab trees that are constantly trying to take root there. The trees will make his little planet turn to dust if they are not pulled out. The Prince leaves one day to see what the rest of the universe is like, and visits several other asteroids (numbered from 325 to 330) each of which is inhabited by an adult who is foolish in his own way:

• The King who can "control" the stars by ordering them to do what they would anyway. He then relates this to human subjects; it is the citizen's duty to obey, but only if the king's demands are good for the citizens.
• The Conceited Man who wants to be admired by everyone, but lives alone on his planet. Anything that is not a compliment he cannot hear.
• The Drunkard/Tippler who drinks to forget that he is ashamed of drinking.
• The Businessman who is constantly busy counting the stars he thinks he owns. He wishes to use them to buy more stars. The Prince then goes on to define property. The Prince owns the flower and volcanoes on his planet because he cares for them and they care for him. Because one cannot maintain the stars, he argues, the Businessman cannot own them.
• The Lamplighter who lives on an asteroid which rotates once a minute. Long ago, he was charged with the task of lighting the lamp at night and extinguishing it in the morning. At that point, the asteroid revolved at a reasonable rate, and he had time to rest. As time went on, the rotation sped up. Refusing to turn his back on his work, he now lights and extinguishes the lamp once a minute, getting no rest. (The Prince actually empathizes with the Lamplighter, who is the only adult to care about something other than himself.)
• The Geographer who spends all of his time making maps, but never leaves his desk to explore (even his own planet), going on the pretext that it is the job of an explorer to do so. Even if an explorer were to visit the Geographer, the Geographer is very doubting of any explorer's character and would most likely disregard the report. He doesn't trust things he hasn't seen with his own eyes, yet will not leave his desk.

File:The Little Prince.jpg

The Little Prince, drawn by Saint-Exupéry himself, chapter II

Out of professional interest, the geographer asks the Prince to describe his asteroid. The Prince describes the volcanoes and the rose. "We don't record flowers", says the geographer, because they are only temporary. The Prince is shocked and hurt to learn that his flower will someday be gone. The geographer then recommends that he visit the Earth.

On the Earth, the Prince sees a whole row of rosebushes, and is downcast because he thought that his was the only one in the whole universe. He then meets and tames a fox, who explains to the Prince that his rose is unique and special, because it is the one that he loves.

The Prince meets the narrator and asks him to draw a sheep. Not knowing how to draw a sheep, he draws what he knows, a boa with a bulging stomach, a drawing which previous viewers mistook for a hat. "No! No!" exclaims the Prince. "I don't want a boa with an elephant inside! I want a sheep..." He tries a few sheep drawings, which the Prince rejects. Finally he draws a box, which he explains has the sheep inside. The Prince, who can see the sheep inside the box just as well as he can see the elephant in the boa, accepts it.

Earlier in the desert, the Prince had met a snake that claims to have the power to return him to his home planet (A clever way to say that he can kill people, thus "Sending anyone he wishes back to the land from whence he came.") After some thought, he bids an emotional farewell to the narrator, explaining to him that while it will look as though he has died, he has not, but rather that his body is too heavy to take with him to his planet. He tells the narrator that it was wrong of the narrator to come and watch, as it will make him sad. He then allows the snake to bite him. The next morning when the narrator looks for the Prince, he finds his body has disappeared.

The story ends with a portrait of the landscape where the meeting of the Prince and the narrator took place with a plea for anyone encountering a strange child in that area who refuses to explain himself to contact the narrator immediately.

Inspiration

In The Little Prince, Saint-Exupéry talks about being marooned in the desert in a damaged aircraft. Without doubt, this account was drawn from his own experience in the Sahara. He also writes about this ordeal, in detail, in his book Wind, Sand and Stars.

On December 30, 1935 at 14:45, after a 18 hour and 36 minute flight, Saint-Exupéry, along with his navigator André Prévot, crashed in the Libyan Sahara desert en route to Saigon. They were attempting to fly from Paris to Saigon faster than anyone before them had for a prize of 150,000 francs. Their plane was a Caudron C-600 Simoun n°7042 (serial F-ANRY). Supposedly, the crash site is located in the Wadi Natrum. Both of them had survived the crash, but they were then faced with rapid dehydration in the Sahara. Their maps were primitive and ambiguous. Lost in the desert with a few grapes, a single orange, and some wine, the duo had only one day's worth of liquids. After that day, they had nothing. Both men began to see mirages, which were quickly followed by more vivid hallucinations. Sometime between the second and the third day, the two were so dehydrated that they stopped sweating altogether. Finally, on the fourth day, a Bedouin on a camel discovered them and administered native dehydration treatment that saved Saint-Exupéry and Prévot's lives.

In the desert, Saint-Exupéry had met a fennec (Vulpes zerda, desert sand fox), which had most likely inspired him to create the fox character in the book. In a 1918 letter that he had written to his sister Didi from Cape Juby, he tells her about raising a fennec that he adored.

Patachou, Petit Garçon, by Tristan Derème, is another probable influence for The Little Prince.

Antoine may have drawn inspiration for the Little Prince's appearance from himself as a youth. Friends and family would call him "le Roi-Soleil" due to his golden curly hair.

The Little Prince's reassurance to the Pilot that his dying body is only an empty shell resembles the words of Antoine's younger brother François's last words: "Don't worry. I'm all right. I can't help it. It's my body" (Airman's Odyssey).

Astronomy

In 2003, a small asteroid moon, Petit-Prince (discovered in 1998), was named after the Little Prince.

There is an asteroid called 46610 Bésixdouze, which is French for "B-six-twelve". B612 was the name given the asteroid which the Little Prince lived on. In addition, the asteroid's number, 46610, is written B612 in hexadecimal notation.

In addition, asteroid 2578 Saint-Exupéry was named after the author of The Little Prince.

With a need for holding six digits of information in five digit fields for the number of real asteroids, it is now possible to have an actual asteroid designated similarly to B612: B0612. The asteroid (110612) 2001 TA₁₄₂ is listed as (B0612) 2001 TA₁₄₂ in the compacted lists that use A=10, B=11, etc. to extend the existing five-digit fields in many asteroid software databases.

The B612 Foundation plans to experimentally alter the orbit of an asteroid to demonstrate that the deflection of an Earth-crossing asteroid is feasible.

References in popular culture

• In the Futurama episode "The Route of All Evil", the kids Cubert and Dwight get a space paper route and can be seen delivering newspapers to The Little Prince in an asteroid belt. He is later seen being knocked from his asteroid by a newspaper, into space, where he cries 'au revoir!'
• Kalan Porter, winner of Canadian Idol, was nicknamed "The Little Prince" due to his resemblance to the character.
• In the Australian Soap Opera Neighbours during the 1987 Brain-tumor storyline, The Little Prince was discussed as being owned by Lucy Robinson (Sasha Close) and as being her favorite book.
• In the animated series The Tick, villain character Omnipotus, an eater of planets, is at one point seen devouring the asteroid the Little Prince inhabits.
• In the classic space adventure game Star Control II, a constellation is described as "the snake-like creature who has swallowed the elephantine beast", a reference to the elephant-digesting boa constrictor from the Little Prince.
• Morrissey is seen reading the book in the music video for his song "Suedehead", though his affection for the novel almost certainly stems from his admiration of James Dean.
• In the film My Dinner with Andre, the eponymous character, a director of stage plays, declares that he sees fascist overtones in The Little Prince.
• In the newspaper parody website The Onion, the plot of the story is related as personal experience by the ghostly founder of the newspaper in an opinion column.
• In Regina Spektor's song "Baobabs," many references are made to the story of The Little Prince.
• In a photograph featuring Frank Zappa at home, copies of The Little Prince and Bible can be seen on the shelf.
• In 2005, the book was translated into Toba, an indigenous language of Argentina, as So Shiyaxauolec Nta'a. It was the first book translated into this language since the Bible.
• The book is one of few modern books to be translated into Latin, as Regulus.
• The actor James Dean was so fond of the book he actually memorized most of its passages.
• Mister Rogers was a fan of the book and had the quote "l'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux" framed in his office.
• Before France adopted the Euro as its currency, St.-Exupéry and The Little Prince were on the French 50 franc banknote...at the time roughly equivalent to US$10-12. One of the anticounterfiting measures on the banknote was microprinted text from "Le Petit Prince", visible with a strong magnifying glass.
• In the music video for Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence", the visual imagery is very close to the themes and storyline of the book. The most prominent being lead singer David Gahan being dressed like the King along with many displays of a rose, not only in the video, but on the actual album and single covers as well.
• In the Filipino movie "Let The Love Begin" starring Richard Gutierrez and Angel Locsin, Richard gives the book to Angel saying that it has been one of his favorites as a child.

Adaptations in other media

Music

• An Israeli song written by Yehonathan Gefen, with music by Shem Tov Levy, made the Little Prince into a fallen soldier: "The Little Prince from Company B / Will never again see a sheep eating a flower..." Hebrew lyrics.
• Anti-Folk singer/pianist Regina Spektor has a song entitled "Baobabs", the entire song referring to The Little Prince and the effect it has on its readers.
• French singer Mylene Farmer has recorded a song, "Dessine-moi un Mouton", which refers to the Little Prince.
• Russian rock band Mashina Vremeni played a concert program in 1979-1980. It was called The Little Prince and included intersong quotations from the book. The whole concept of the program (the live version was released in 2000) was based on the story and the philosophy of the book.
• Political commentator Rachel Marsden composed a song about the Petit Prince which was performed in an award-winning play in Saint Jean sur Richelieu, Quebec.
• The Spanish band, La Oreja De Van Gogh, quote a line from The Little Prince in their song, Dicen Que Dicen: "Lo que hace bello al desierto es que guarda agua en su interior" (What makes the desert beautiful is that it keeps water within itself).
• Brian Wilson, founder and guiding light of The Beach Boys and latterly a successful solo artist, has said in a June, 2007 interview that he has been collaborating with Van Dyke Parks, the composer who provided the lyrics for Wilson's acclaimed "Smile", on a new musical work entitled "Lucky Old Sun". Wilson said that it will be an adaptation in music of The Little Prince. The work will be divided into four sections, with Wilson himself providing the narration. It is scheduled to premiere at London's Royal Festival Hall in September 2007, and also seems likely to be released as a studio recording at some point, although no details are yet available.

Film

• In the 1940s/50's, Walt Disney planned to make The Little Prince into an animated movie, but due to some problems, it was never made.
• A film musical adaptation titled The Little Prince was made in 1974. This film is notable chiefly in that it marked the final collaboration of composer Frederick Loewe and lyricist Alan Jay Lerner. The authors were dissatisfied with the film's Hollywood treatment. Loewe refused to visit London to supervise the arrangement and recording of the score. The film was unsuccessful at the box office, but has become somewhat of a cult classic and is again available.
• In 1979, Will Vinton Studios produced a cartoon adaptation of the book. This short feature, narrated by actor Cliff Robertson, was one of Vinton's first Claymation productions.
• The Adventures of The Little Prince, a Japanese cartoon series loosely based on the book, aired in Europe and North America in the 1980s. The show was made by the Knack animation studio and first aired in Japan in 1978 under the title Hoshi no Ojisama Puchi Puransu (Prince of the Stars: Petit Prince). In it, the Little Prince often traveled to Earth to help people. During the 1980s, the English-language version was aired in the United States on Nickelodeon, as internationally-produced animation often was. The English version featured Julie Dees (later voiced by veteran voice actress Katie Leigh) in the role of the Little Prince and is available on DVD from Koch Vision.

Theatre

• An audio adaptation was made in 1954, with the French actor Gérard Philipe as the narrator, Jacques Grello as the fox, and Georges Poujouly as the Little Prince.
• A 1981 musical theatre adaptation entitled The Little Prince and the Aviator closed prior to its Broadway opening.
• A French-language musical, Le Petit Prince, by composer Richard Cocciante, ran at the Casino de Paris from October 2002 to January 2003. Daniel Lavoie played the Pilot while Jeff played the Little Prince. It was revived at Shanghai Oriental Art Centre in July 2007.
• A play adaptation, The Little Prince, was written by Rick Cummins and John Scoullar in 2000.

Opera

• An opera, The Little Prince, based on the book was composed by Rachel Portman. It had its stage premiere in 2003 at the Houston Grand Opera in Houston, Texas. It was broadcast on BBC2 in the UK on 27 November 2004 as a studio-filmed production starring Joseph McManners as the Prince and Teddy Tahu Rhodes as the Pilot.
• Another 2003 opera, The Little Prince, composed by the German composer Nikolaus Schapfl, premiered in Salzburg in 2003 and has been subsequently been performed in seven other European Cities by five different orchestras and ensembles (as of 2007) in always sold-out halls and opera houses. This operatic version is the first which was given the rights by the author's heirs in 1998. The opera is in two acts and calls for 11 soloists, chorus and orchestra. In 2005 it was broadcast by the Bavarian Classic Radio.

External links

• Sparknotes Book Study Guide
• The Little Prince in English
• The Little Prince - Wikiquote
• Study Guide/Analysis for "The Little Prince"
• Official site
• The Little Prince in 160 languages
• The Little Prince
• Flash site with German, French, and English text side by side
• Full text, in several languages
  • List of notable mistakes in the above translation by Katherine Woods