Today marks the 82nd day of the disappearance of French writer, journalist, and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. On July 31, 1944, Saint-Exupéry took disconnected successful an unarmed P-38 connected his ninth reconnaissance ngo for the Free French Air Force from an airbase connected Corsica, and ne'er returned.
His astir celebrated work, The Little Prince, tells the communicative of an aviator, downed successful the godforsaken and facing agelong likelihood of endurance (inspired by the author’s ain acquisition clang landing successful the Libyan godforsaken successful 1935), who encounters a unusual young prince, fallen to Earth from a tiny asteroid wherever helium lived unsocial with a azygous rose. The roseate has made him truthful miserable that, successful torment, helium has taken vantage of a flock of birds to convey him to different planets.
As Barry James successful The New York Times wrote: “A children’s fable for adults, The Little Prince was successful information an allegory of Saint-Exupéry’s ain life—his hunt for puerility certainties and interior peace, his mysticism, his content successful quality courageousness and brotherhood, and his heavy emotion for his woman Consuelo but besides an allusion to the tortured quality of their relationship.”
We instrumentality a look backmost astatine immoderate of the earliest reviews of Katherine Woods’s 1943 English-language translation of this beloved and deceptively profound novella.
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And present present is my secret, a precise elemental secret:
It is lone with the bosom that 1 tin spot rightly; what is indispensable is invisible to the eye.
“There is simply a verse successful the New Testament which is often quoted but ne'er taken seriously. Had it been we would not contiguous beryllium tearing the satellite and its civilization to bits. That verse successful the 18th Chapter of Matthew tells america that but we go arsenic children we cannot participate the Kingdom. And I anticipation I springiness nary discourtesy successful this transportation if I accidental that the substance whitethorn beryllium applied to literature. For I deliberation that overmuch of the wisest lit is that which seems written for children—stories of Aesop and Hans Christian Andersen, for example. And delight see those sentences my reappraisal of a beauteous publication written and illustrated by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince (Reynal & Hitchcock: $2). For present is simply a sweetly and simply told communicative of a small lad from a precise small asteroid, truthful large with meaning that adjacent important radical volition find contented successful it; truthful simply told that adjacent critics and assemblage professors ought to recognize its quality and meaning; a bladed small publication filled with affluent substance; thing casual to work and retrieve and hard to forget.”
–Paul Jordan-Smith, The Los Angeles Times, 1943
“The door’s wide unfastened connected my conjecture arsenic to however this volition sell. It whitethorn get a break, it whitethorn beryllium work by the close people, those uncommon adults who tin spell implicit the borderline of the Never Never Land without a backward look, who tin consciousness intuitively that intangible outer fringe of unreality that is wholly existent to children. Let’s accidental that those who loved the fey prime successful Barrie—in Robert Nathan—who work their Alice for sheer flight alternatively than aforesaid conscious nostalgia, they volition interaction the gossamer quality of The Little Prince, and chuckle implicit it, and instrumentality it arsenic simply and unaffectedly arsenic ‘St Ex’ himself. Perhaps content successful ‘the small prince’ is the forerunner of content successful the gremlins; who knows? This is simply a fairy communicative for grown ups; aboriginal the children volition assertion it, I americium sure. It is the communicative of the tiny carnal who came to Saint-Exupery erstwhile helium was stranded successful the Sahara, who told him the saga of his exotic travels successful hunt of truth, erstwhile helium near his ain tiny asteroid, and visited others, until helium reached the earth. It was the fox who wanted to beryllium tamed who taught him that helium indispensable instrumentality to his ain and find determination the happiness and the meaning of beingness helium had left.”
“…children are similar sponges. They soak into their pores the essence of immoderate publication they read, whether they recognize it oregon not … The Little Prince volition radiance upon children with a sidewise gleam. It volition onslaught them successful immoderate spot that is not the caput and glow determination until the clip comes for them to comprehend it.”
–P.L. Travers (author of Mary Poppins), The New York Herald Tribune, 1943
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A mentation of this station was primitively published successful 2023
Further Reading: How a Beloved Children’s Book Was Born of Despair
English (US) ·