Жанр сказки маленький принц

This article is about the novella. For other uses, including films made from the book, see Little Prince.

The Little Prince

Author	Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Original title	Le Petit Prince
Translator	(English editions) Katherine Woods[1] Bonnie Greer[2] T.V.F. Cuffe[3] Michael Morpurgo[4] Irene Testot-Ferry[5] Alan Wakeman Janet Hill[6] David Wilkinson Gregory Norminton[7]
Illustrator	Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Cover artist	Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Country	France
Language	French
Publisher	Reynal & Hitchcock (U.S.) Gallimard (France)[8]
Publication date	April 1943 (U.S.: English & French) 1945 (France: French)[8][Note 1]
Awards	Le Monde’s 100 Books of the Century
Preceded by	Pilote de guerre (1942)
Followed by	Lettre à un otage [fr] (1944)

The Little Prince (French: Le Petit Prince, pronounced [lə p(ə)ti pʁɛ̃s]) is a novella by French aristocrat, writer, and military pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It was first published in English and French in the United States by Reynal & Hitchcock in April 1943 and was published posthumously in France following liberation; Saint-Exupéry’s works had been banned by the Vichy Regime. The story follows a young prince who visits various planets in space, including Earth, and addresses themes of loneliness, friendship, love, and loss. Despite its style as a children’s book, The Little Prince makes observations about life, adults, and human nature.^[9]

The Little Prince became Saint-Exupéry’s most successful work, selling an estimated 140 million copies worldwide, which makes it one of the best-selling in history.^{[10][11][12][Note 2][14]} The book has been translated into over 505 different languages and dialects worldwide, being the second most translated work ever published, trailing only the Bible.^[15][16][17] The Little Prince has been adapted to numerous art forms and media, including audio recordings, radio plays, live stage, film, television, ballet, and opera.^[16][18]

Plot[edit]

The narrator begins with a discussion on the nature of grown-ups and their inability to perceive «important things». As a test to determine if a grown-up is as enlightened as a child, he shows them a picture depicting a boa constrictor which has eaten an elephant. The grown-ups always reply that the picture depicts a hat, and so he knows to only talk of «reasonable» things to them, rather than the fanciful.

The narrator becomes an aircraft pilot, and one day, his plane crashes in the Sahara desert, far from civilization. The narrator has an eight-day supply of water and must fix his aeroplane. Here, he is greeted unexpectedly by a young boy nicknamed «the little prince.» The prince has golden hair, a loveable laugh, and will repeat questions until they are answered.

The prince asks the narrator to draw a sheep. The narrator first shows him the picture of the elephant inside the snake, which, to the narrator’s surprise, the prince interprets correctly. After three failed attempts at drawing a sheep, the frustrated narrator draws a simple crate, claiming the sheep is inside. The prince exclaims that this was exactly the drawing he wanted.

Over the course of eight days in the desert, while the narrator attempts to repair his plane, the prince recounts his life story. He begins describing his tiny home planet: in effect, a house-sized asteroid known as «B 612» on Earth. The asteroid’s most prominent features are three minuscule volcanoes (two active, and one dormant or extinct) and a variety of plants.

The prince describes his earlier days cleaning the volcanoes and weeding unwanted seeds and sprigs that infest his planet’s soil; in particular, pulling out baobab trees that are constantly on the verge of overrunning the surface. If the baobabs are not rooted out the moment they are recognised, its roots can have a catastrophic effect on the tiny planet. Therefore, the prince wants a sheep to eat the undesirable plants, but worries it will also eat plants with thorns.

The prince tells of his love for a vain and silly rose that began growing on the asteroid’s surface some time ago. The rose is given to pretension, exaggerating ailments to gain attention and have the prince care for her. The prince says he nourished the rose and tended to her, making a screen and glass globe to protect her from the cold and wind, watering her, and keeping the caterpillars off.

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. Upon their goodbyes, the rose apologises for failing to show that she loved him. She wishes him well and turns down his desire to leave her in the glass globe, saying she will protect herself. The prince laments that he did not understand how to love his rose while he was with her and should have listened to her kind actions, rather than her vain words.

The prince has since visited six other planets, each of which was inhabited by a single, irrational, narrow-minded adult, each meant to critique an element of society. They include:

• A king with no subjects, who only issues orders that can’t be followed, such as commanding the sun to set at sunset.
• A conceited man who only wants the praise which comes from admiration and being the most-admirable person on his otherwise uninhabited planet.
• A drunkard who drinks to forget the shame of drinking.
• A businessman who is blind to the beauty of the stars and instead endlessly counts and catalogues them in order to «own» them all (critiquing materialism).
• A lamplighter on a planet so small, a full day lasts a minute. He wastes his life blindly following orders to extinguish and relight the lamp-post every 30 seconds to correspond with his planet’s day and night.
• An elderly geographer who has never been anywhere, or seen any of the things he records, providing a caricature of specialisation in the contemporary world.

It is the geographer who tells the prince that his rose is an ephemeral being, which is not recorded, and recommends that the prince next visit the planet Earth. The visit to Earth begins with a deeply pessimistic appraisal of humanity. The six absurd people the prince encountered earlier comprise, according to the narrator, just about the entire adult world. On earth there were:

111 kings … 7,000 geographers, 900,000 businessmen, 7,500,000 tipplers, 311,000,000 conceited men; that is to say, about 2,000,000,000 grown-ups.

Since the prince landed in a desert, he believed 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 voice of a boring person who only repeats what another says.

The prince encountered a whole row of rosebushes, becoming downcast at having once thought that his own rose was unique and thinking his rose had lied about being 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 laid down on the grass and wept, until a fox came along.

The fox desired to be tamed and taught the prince how to tame him. By being tamed, something goes from being ordinary and just like all the others to being special and unique. There are drawbacks since the connection can lead to sadness and longing when apart.

From the fox, the prince learns that his rose was indeed unique and special because she was the object of the prince’s love and time; he had «tamed» her, and now she was more precious than all of the roses he had seen in the garden. Upon their sad departing, the fox imparts a secret: important things can only be seen with the heart, not the eyes.

The prince finally met two people from Earth:

• 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 who talked to the prince about his product, a pill that eliminated the need to drink for a week, saving people 53 minutes.

Back in the present moment, it is the eighth day after the narrator’s plane crash and the narrator and the prince are dying of thirst. The prince has become visibly morose and saddened over his recollections and longs to return home and see his flower.

The prince finds a well, saving them. The narrator later finds the prince talking to the snake, discussing his return home and his desire 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 upset him. The narrator, realising 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 loveable 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, soundlessly falling down.

The next morning, the narrator is unable to find the prince’s body. He finally manages to repair his aeroplane and leave the desert. It is left up to the reader to determine if the prince returned home or died. The story ends with a drawing of the landscape where the prince and the narrator met and where the snake took the prince’s corporeal life. The narrator requests to be immediately contacted by anyone in that area encountering a small person with golden curls who refuses to answer any questions.

Tone and writing style[edit]

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.»^[19] The Little Prince was created when Saint-Exupéry was «an ex-patriate and distraught about what was going on in his country and in the world.»^[14] 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.»^[20]

An exquisite literary perfectionist, akin to the 19th century French poet Stéphane Mallarmé,^[21] 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…»^[22] He worked «long hours with great concentration.» According to the author himself, it was extremely difficult to start his creative writing processes.^[23] 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.»^[24] The French author frequently wrote at night, usually starting at about 11 p.m. accompanied by a tray of strong black coffee. In 1942 Saint-Exupéry related to his American English teacher, Adèle 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.^[22] 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.^[25]

While Saint-Exupéry was a native speaker of French, he was never able to achieve anything more than haltingly poor English. Adèle Breaux, his young Northport English tutor to whom he later dedicated a writing («For Miss Adèle Breaux, who so gently guided me in the mysteries of the English language»), related her experiences with her famous student as Saint-Exupéry in America, 1942–1943: A Memoir, published in 1971.^[26]

«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’.»^[27][28]

Inspirations[edit]

Events and characters[edit]

In The Little Prince, its narrator, the pilot, talks of being stranded in the desert beside his crashed aircraft. The account clearly drew on 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).^[9]

On 30 December 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.^[29] 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, that had a prize of 150,000 francs.^[30] Their plane was a Caudron C-630 Simoun,^{[Note 3]} and the crash site is thought to have been near to the Wadi Natrun valley, close to the Nile Delta.^[31]

Both miraculously survived the crash, only to face rapid dehydration in the intense desert heat.^[32] 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, which saved Saint-Exupéry’s and Prévot’s lives.^[30]

In the novella, the fox, believed to be modeled after the author’s intimate New York City friend, Silvia Hamilton Reinhardt, tells the prince that his rose is unique and special, as she is the one he loves.^[33] The novella’s iconic phrase, «One sees clearly only with the heart» is believed to have been suggested by Reinhardt.

The fearsome, grasping baobab trees, researchers have contended, were meant to represent Nazism attempting to destroy the planet.^[33] The little prince’s reassurance to the pilot that the prince’s 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».^[34]

Rose[edit]

Many researchers believe that the prince’s kindhearted, but petulant and vain, Rose was inspired by Saint-Exupéry’s Salvadoran wife Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry,^[33][35] with the small home planet being inspired by Guatemala where he crashed, broke multiple bones,^[36] and stayed to recover, surrounded with the view of 3 volcanoes.^[37] Despite a tumultuous 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 places 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.^[9]

This interpretation 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.»^[24]

Prince[edit]

Saint-Exupéry probably has 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») because of his golden curly hair. The author had also met a precocious eight-year-old with curly blond hair while he was residing with a family in Quebec City in 1942, Thomas De Koninck, the son of philosopher Charles De Koninck.^[38][39][40] Another possible inspiration for the little prince has been suggested as Land Morrow Lindbergh, the young, golden-haired son of fellow aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, whom he met during an overnight stay at their Long Island home in 1939.^{[41][42][Note 4]}

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.^[43] When Life photojournalist John Phillips questioned the author-aviator on his inspiration for the child character, Saint-Exupéry told him that one day he looked down on what he thought was a blank sheet and saw a small childlike figure: «I asked him who he was», he replied. «I’m the Little Prince» was the reply.^[44]

One of Saint-Exupéry’s earliest literary references to a small prince is to be found in his second news dispatch from Moscow, dated 14 May 1935. In his writings as a special correspondent for Paris-Soir, the author described traveling from France to the Soviet Union by train. Late at night, during the 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:^[45]

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.

Background[edit]

Upon the outbreak of the Second World War, a laureate of several of France’s highest literary awards and a successful pioneering aviator prior to the war, Saint-Exupéry initially flew with a reconnaissance squadron as a reserve military pilot in the Armée de l’Air (French Air Force).^[9] After France’s defeat in 1940 and its armistice with Germany, he and 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 for which he would be remembered, including a tender tale of loneliness, friendship, love and loss, in the form of a young prince visiting Earth.^[46]

An earlier memoir by the author recounted his aviation experiences in the Sahara, and he is thought to have drawn on the same experiences as plot elements in The Little Prince.

He 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 in 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 supporters of both ardent French Gaullist and Vichy France.^[47] Saint-Exupéry’s American translator (the author spoke poor English) wrote: «He 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.»^[22] However, the period was to be both a «dark but productive time» during which he created three important works.^[48]

Between January 1941 and April 1943, the Saint-Exupérys lived in two penthouse apartments on Central Park South,^[49] then the Bevin House mansion in Asharoken, New York, and still later at a rented house on Beekman Place in New York City.^[50][51]

The couple also stayed in Quebec 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-Exupérys resided.^{[52][53][54][55]} 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 Lindbergh.^[41][42]

After returning to the US 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 US 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, she suggested to him that working on a children’s story would help.^{[56][Note 5]} 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.^[51][52][52]

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 and so Consuelo was dispatched to find improved accommodations. After spending some time at an unsuitable clapboard country house in Westport, Connecticut,^[57] they found Bevin House, a 22-room mansion in Asharoken that overlooked Long Island Sound. The author-aviator initially complained, «I wanted a hut, and it’s the Palace of Versailles.»^[46] As the weeks wore on, the author became invested in his project and the home would become «a haven for writing, the best place I have ever had anywhere in my life.»^[58] He devoted himself to the book on mostly midnight shifts,^[22] usually starting at about 11 pm, fueled by helpings of scrambled eggs on English muffins, gin and tonics, Coca-Colas, cigarettes and numerous visits by friends and expatriates who dropped in to see their famous countryman. One of the visitors was his wife’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.^[46][51] 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.^[59] The story, the curator added, was created when he was «an ex-patriate and distraught about what was going on in his country and in the world.»^[14]

The large white Second French Empire-style mansion, hidden behind tall trees, afforded the writer a multitude of work environments, but he usually wrote at a large dining table.^[22] 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 search of sunlight. His meditative view of sunsets at the Bevin House were incorporated in the book, where the prince visits a small planet with 43 daily sunsets, a planet where all that is needed to watch a sunset «is move your chair a few steps.»^{[46][51][Note 6]}

Manuscript[edit]

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.^[11][60][61] It is the only known surviving handwritten draft of the complete work.^[62] 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 centenary celebration of the author’s birth, with major exhibitions of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s literary works.^[33][63] 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.^[64]

The story’s keynote aphorism, On ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur. 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 a Dictaphone recorder to produce oral drafts for his typist.^[22][60] 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.^[22]

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.^[60]

Further information: Morgan exhibitions

In April 2012 a Parisian auction house announced the discovery of two previously unknown draft manuscript pages that included new text.^[10][65] 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».^[10][65] 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.^[65][66]

Dedication[edit]

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 of Jewish descent, twenty-two years older than Saint-Exupéry.

Saint-Exupéry dedicated two books to him, Lettre à un otage [fr] (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:^[67]

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,

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.^[68] At the end of the Second World War, which Antoine de Saint-Exupéry did not 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[edit]

All of the novella’s simple but elegant watercolour illustrations, which were integral to the story, were painted by Saint-Exupéry. 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.^[51] 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.^{[Note 7]} Two or three original Little Prince drawings were reported in the collections of New York artist, sculptor and experimental filmmaker Joseph Cornell.^[69] 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.^[70][71]

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.^[44][46] 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.^[44] 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.»^[57] 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».^[46] 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.^[14]

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.^[33][63][72] 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.^[62] 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.^[48] A museum representative stated that the novella’s final drawings were lost.^[33]

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.^[33] According to Christine Nelson, curator of literary and historical manuscripts at the Morgan, «[t]he image evokes Saint-Exupéry’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.»^[14] 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-Exupéry chose in every case to obfuscate.»^[73] 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».^[14]

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.^[74] 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[edit]

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».^[75] 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.»^[76]

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.^[75]

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.^{[Note 8]} 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.^{[46][Note 9]}

Reception[edit]

Many of the book’s initial reviewers were flummoxed by the fable’s multi-layered story line and its morals,^[9] 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 nor adult’s literature classification. The New York Times reviewer wrote shortly before its publication «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.»^[79] 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.»^[60]

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.»^[57] P.L. Travers, author of the Mary Poppins series of children books, wrote in a New York 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.»^[60][80]

British journalist Neil Clark, in The American Conservative in 2009, offered an expansive view of Saint-Exupéry’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.»^[81]

The book enjoyed modest initial success, residing on The New York Times Best Seller list for only two weeks,^[64] as opposed to his earlier 1939 English translation, Wind, Sand and Stars which remained on the same list for nearly five months.^[44] 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».^[63]

Literary translations and printed editions[edit]

As of April 2017,^[82] The Little Prince became the world’s most translated non-religious book (into 300 languages) together with Italian novel The Adventures of Pinocchio.

Katherine Woods (1886–1968)^[83] produced the first English translation of 1943, which was later joined by several other English translations. Her translation contained some errors.^[84][85] 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.^[73] As of 2019 at least seven additional English translations have been published:^[86]

• Irene Testot-Ferry, (ISBN 0-7567-5189-6, 1st ed. 1995)
• T.V.F. Cuffe, (ISBN 0-14-118562-7, 1st ed. 1995)
• Alan Wakeman, (ISBN 1-86205-066-X, 1st ed. 1995)^[87]
• Richard Howard, (ISBN 0-15-204804-9, 1st ed. 2000)^[6]
• Ros and Chloe Schwartz, (ISBN 9781907360015, 1st ed. 2010)^[88]
• David Wilkinson, (bilingual English-French student edition, ISBN 0-9567215-9-1, 1st ed. 2011)
• Michael Morpurgo, (ISBN 978-1784874179, 1st ed. 2018)
• Guillain Méjane, (translated via the PoesIA project, a convolutional neural network, ISBN 9798621081355, 1st ed. 2020)

The Little Prince was also translated by Bonnie Greer for a BBC radio adaptation in 1999.

• Bonnie Greer, BBC Radio 4, broadcast 25 December 1999.^[2]

Each translation approaches the essence of the original with an individual style and focus.^[89][90]

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 2017, it has been translated into more than 300 languages and dialects, including Sardinian,^[91] the constructed international languages of Esperanto and Klingon, and the Congolese language Alur, as well as being printed in Braille for blind readers. It is also often used as an introduction into endangered varieties with very few speakers like Maya (2001), Aromanian (2006) or Banat Bulgarian (2017). It is one of the few modern books to have been translated into Latin, as Regulus, vel Pueri soli sapiunt^[92][93] in 1961 by Auguste Haury (1910–2002) and as Regulus in 2010 by Alexander Winkler. In 2005, the book was also translated into Toba Qom, an indigenous language of northern Argentina, as So Shiyaxauolec Nta’a. It was the first book translated into that language since the New Testament. It was also translated to a northern Italian dialect, Vogherese. 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».^[94]

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,^{[Note 10]} 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.^[96] 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.^[73][97]

The first edition to be published in France, Saint-Exupéry’s birthplace, was printed by his regular publisher in that country, Gallimard, only after^[8] the German occupation of France ended.^{[98][Note 11]} Prior to France’s liberation new printings of Saint-Exupéry’s works were made available only by means of secret print runs,^[100][101] 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.^[102]

Commemorating the novella’s 70th anniversary of publication, in conjunction with the 2014 Morgan Exhibition, Éditions 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).^[62]

A Portuguese translation of the novella in 2007, edited by Eidouro Gráfica e Editora Ltda and presented at the XIII Biannual Book Fair of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, holds the Guinness World Record for world’s largest book published.^[103] The impressive tome measures 2.01 m (6 ft 7 in) high and 3.08 m (10 ft 1 in) wide when open, containing 128 pages.

It has been translated into minority languages, such as the Irish language, by Éabhloid publishers in 2015.

Spanish editions[edit]

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.^[104][105] Other Spanish editions have also been created; in 1956 the Mexican publisher Diana released its first edition of the book, El pequeño príncipe, a Spanish translation by José María Francés.^[8] Another edition of the work was produced in Spain in 1964 and, four years later, in 1968, editions were also produced in Colombia and Cuba, with translation by Luis Fernández in 1961. Chile had its first translation in 1981; Peru in February 1985; Venezuela in 1986, and Uruguay in 1990.^{[104][106][107]}
The book is among the few books in the Castilian cant Gacería^[108] (as El pitoche engrullón) or the Madrid slang Cheli^[109] (as El chaval principeras).

Bavarian editions[edit]

The Little Prince has an adaptation for the inhabitants of Bavaria, Austria and South Tyrol, covering for a large variety of the Bavarian language. The book was adapted by Johannes Limmer and published in 2019. It is called Da gloane Prinz and contains the original pictures of Saint-Exupéry.^[110]

Chinese editions[edit]

The Little Prince is one of the most popular and beloved foreign works of literature in China. It is reported that there are more than 70 Chinese translations of the novella.^[111] According to the official website of the Succession Antoine de Saint-Exupéry-d’Agay, the version translated by Li Jihong, which was published in January 2013, sold over two million copies in less than four years.^[112] Cheng Li-chun published a translation in Taiwan in May 2022.^[113]

Extension of copyrights in France[edit]

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;^[114] thus most of Saint-Exupéry’s creative works will not fall out of copyright status in France for an extra 30 years.^[115][76] So the original French text was in copyright almost everywhere in the world until 1 January 2015, remains under copyright in the US until 2039^[116] and will remain in copyright in France until 2032.^[117] EU law on copyright, however, fluctuates country by country, despite years of attempts to harmonize it at 70 years. French law allows for a copyright of 70 years from the author’s death. Saint-Exupery, because of extraordinary service to his nation, is granted an additional 30 years, meaning, in France, Le Petit Prince does not actually fall out of copyright until the end of 2044.^{[contradictory]}

Adaptations and sequels[edit]

The wide appeal of Saint-Exupéry’s novella has led to it being adapted into numerous forms over the decades. Additionally, the title character himself has been adapted in a number of promotional roles, including as a symbol of environmental protection, by the Toshiba Group.^[118] He has also been portrayed as a «virtual ambassador» in a campaign against smoking, employed by the Veolia Energy Services Group,^[118] 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:

• Vinyl record, cassette and CD: as early as 1954 several audio editions in multiple languages were created on vinyl record, cassette tape and much later as a CD, with one English version narrated by Richard Burton.
• Radio broadcasts: radio plays were produced in the United States, with Raymond Burr, in 1956, and most recently in the United Kingdom on BBC in a 1999 dramatization by Bonnie Greer, produced by Pam Fraser Solomon.^[119]
• 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». In 1987, a Turkish version was adopted into a direct-to-video film by Remzi Aydin Jonturk. Starting in 2010, a three-season-long animated series was made that expanded upon the book. In 2015, a major new 3D film, combining computer animation and stop motion animation, was released as The Little Prince in English and Le Petit Prince in French.^[120][121] In 2023, a 2D-animated series will be released.^[122]
• 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.
• Graphic novel: a new printed version of the story in comic book form, by Joann Sfar in 2008, drew widespread notice.
• Pop-Up Book: a new printed edition, using the original text (as translated by Richard Howard in 2000) and St. Exupery’s original drawings as the basis for elaborate pop-up illustrations, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (ISBN 978-0-547-26069-3, 1st ed. 2009).
• 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.
• Concert music: Concert Suite on Le Petit Prince for solo violin, solo harp and chamber orchestra by Jean-Pascal Beintus (premiered by the DSO Berlin – Kent Nagano – 2008)

• Anime: a Japanese animation TV series was made in 1978, Hoshi no Ōjisama: Petit Prince, containing 39 episodes that do not follow the plot of the original novella. Each episode contains an adventure on a planet, usually Earth, where the little prince meets different people each time and makes friends. Some key elements of the original story have been kept. Namely, the little prince’s golden hair, his scarf, laughter, his planet name (B-612), the rose and the three volcanoes. The anime had been aired and dubbed into several languages including Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish. The English dub’s title is The Adventures of the Little Prince.^[123]
• 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).^[124] In this version, the shipwrecked narrator encounters the little prince on a lone island; the prince has returned to seek help against a tiger who threatens his sheep.^[125] Another sequel titled The Return of the Little Prince was written by former actress Ysatis de Saint-Simone, niece of Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry.^[126]

Honours and legacy[edit]

Museums and exhibits[edit]

Morgan exhibitions[edit]

New York City’s Morgan Library & Museum mounted three showings of the 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,^[127] 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,^{[Note 12]} along with photos of the author, correspondence to Consuelo, a signed first edition of The Little Prince, and several international editions in other languages.^[93]

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.^[63] 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. It was as 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.^[62]

The new, more comprehensive exhibits included 35 watercolor paintings and 25 of the work’s original 140 handwritten manuscript pages,^[129] 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.^[130][131] 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.^[48] 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 drawing’s progressive refinement.^[60] 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».^{[63][72][80][131][132]} Several of the manuscript pages bore accidental coffee stains and cigarette scorch marks.^[48] 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,^{[Note 13]} as well as materials from other private collections, libraries and museums in the United States and France.^[133] 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 Sís on his new work The Pilot and The Little Prince: The Life of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,^[132][134]

Additional exhibits included photos of Saint-Exupéry by Life photojournalist John Phillips, other photos of the author’s New York area homes,^[62] an Orson Welles screenplay of the novella the filmmaker attempted to produce as a movie in collaboration with Walt Disney,^{[44][63][Note 14]} as well as one of the few signed copies extant of The Little Prince, gifted to Hamilton’s 12-year-old son.^{[Note 15]}

Permanent exhibits[edit]

• 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.^{[95][135][136]}

Special exhibitions[edit]

• 

  The Little Prince as part of a street art project in Funchal (Madeira)

  In 1996 the Danish sculptor Jens Galschiøt 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,^[137] but was later stolen from an exhibition in Billund in 2011.^[138]

• 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.^{[139][140][141]}
• In 2012 the Catalan architect Jan Baca unveiled a sculpture in Terrassa, Catalonia showing the Little Prince along with the sentence, «It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye».^[142]
• In February 2022, nearly eight decades after it was written, «The Little Prince» has arrived in Paris. The exhibit began on February 17 and will end on June 26. It contains 600 items, including photographs, poems, and newspaper clippings relating to «The Little Prince.»^[143]

Places[edit]

Playground[edit]

• One of the «story playgrounds» – a series of playgrounds themed after famous children’s stories in Holon, Israel – is themed after The Little Prince. It features sculptures and play structures depicting scenes and characters from the book.

Schools[edit]

• L’école 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,^[144] 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 colourful paintings of the prince is found on its website’s welcome page.^[145]

Avenue[edit]

• In southern Brazil, in the city of Florianópolis, there is the Avenida Pequeno Príncipe (Little Prince Avenue in Portuguese), whose name is a tribute to Saint-Exupéry, who passed through the city during his aviator career, an event that became part of the local culture.^[146]

Insignia and awards[edit]

• Prior to its decommissioning in 2010, the GR I/33 [fr] (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.^[147] 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.^[148][149]
• 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.^{[150][151][152]}

Numismatics and philatelic[edit]

• 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.^[75][153] Among the anti-counterfeiting measures on the banknote was micro-printed text from Le Petit Prince, visible with a strong magnifying glass.^[154] 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.^[155]
• 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.^[156] Philatelic tributes have been printed in at least 24 other countries as of 2011.^[157]

Astronomy[edit]

• 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.^[158]
• An asteroid discovered in 1975, 2578 Saint-Exupéry, was also named after the author of The Little Prince.^[159]
• Another asteroid discovered in 1993 was named 46610 Bésixdouze, 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.^[160]

The Little Prince Day[edit]

Since 2020, June 29 is International Little Prince Day. This date was chosen to commemorate the birth of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, which occurred on June 29, 1900. The Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Foundation started the initiative striving to promote the humanist values ​​carried by the book published in 1943. Mark Osborne was one of the first personalities to participate in the Little Prince Day 2020.^[161]

See also[edit]

• List of The Little Prince adaptations, a listing of The Little Prince story adapted into various media.
• The Little Prince (1974 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
• Eloise at the Plaza, a 2003 TV film in which many references to The Little Prince can be identified
• The Little Prince (TV series), a 2010 TV series
• The Little Prince (2015 film), a 2015 animated film directed by Mark Osborne
• Le Monde‘s 100 Books of the Century
• Invisible Essence: The Little Prince, a 2018 documentary film about the book

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

Translations[edit]

• de Saint-Exupéry, Antoine (2006). The Little Prince: And Letter to a Hostage. Translated by Cuffe, T. V. F.. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-118562-0. OCLC 1023214985.
• ——— (6 September 2018). The Little Prince. Translated by Morpurgo, Michael. London: Vintage Children’s Classics. ISBN 9781784874179.
• ——— (30 May 2019). The Little Prince. Translated by Norminton, Gregory. Alma Classics. ISBN 978-1-84749-824-3.
• ——— (15 January 2018). The Little Prince. Translated by Testot-Ferry, Irene. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth. ISBN 978-1-84022-760-4. OCLC 1105536767.
• ——— (1943). The Little Prince. Translated by Woods, Katherine (1st ed.). New York: Reynal & Hitchcock. ISBN 9780152023980. OCLC 898880592. Retrieved 28 July 2020.

Sources[edit]

• Beaumont, Peter (1 August 2010). «Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince Poised for a Multimedia Return to Earth: The Boy Who Lived on an Asteroid Whose Tale Was Told in a Classic French Novella Is Being Revived on TV, Film And In Print». The Observer. Retrieved 15 October 2011.
• Brown, Hannibal (2004). «The Country Where the Stones Fly«. Visions of a Little Prince. Archived from the original (documentary research) on 29 March 2007. Retrieved 16 September 2011.
• Dunning, Jennifer (12 May 1989). «In the Footsteps of Saint-Exupery». The New York Times. Retrieved 14 September 2010.
• Heuré, Gilles (2006). L’insoumis: Léon Werth, 1878–1955. Paris: Éditions Viviane Hamy. ISBN 978-2878582192.
• Saint-Exupéry, Consuelo de (2003). The Tale of the Rose: The Love Story Behind The Little Prince. Translated by Allen, Esther. New York City: Random House. ISBN 978-0-8129-6717-3.
• Schiff, Stacy (1994). Saint-Exupéry: A Biography. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-679-40310-4.
• Schiff, Stacy (1996). Saint-Exupéry: A Biography. Vintage Canada. ISBN 978-0-679-30822-5.
• Schiff, Stacy (2006). Saint-Exupéry: A Biography. Henry Holt. ISBN 978-0-805-07913-5.
• Severson, Marilyn S. (2004). Masterpieces of French Literature: Greenwood Introduces Literary Masterpieces. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-313-31484-1.
• Webster, Paul (1993). Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: The Life and Death of The Little Prince. London: Pan Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-333-61702-1.

Further reading[edit]

• Dunn, Bruce. The Yellow Umbrella: A City Fable. Mushroom Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0615295404 (English)
• Galembert, Laurent de. La grandeur du Petit Prince (thesis), Éditions Le Manuscrit, 26 November 2002, ISBN 2-7481-1916-9 (French)

External links[edit]

• Le Petit Prince at Project Gutenberg Australia
• LePetitPrince.com (in French) Site officiel du Petit Prince; and TheLittlePrince.com Archived 26 December 2021 at the Wayback Machine Official site of The Little Prince
• NYC-ARTS Profile: The Little Prince, PBS interview on the 2014 Morgan Exhibition (video, 12:39)
• The Little Prince: A New York Story Exhibition, NBC news report on the 2014 Little Prince exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum (video, 3:10)
• Study Guide at SparkNotes
• www.petit-prince-collection.com Website dedicated to the largest collection of Little Prince books in the world. This impressive collection (nearly five thousand different editions of the full text in over 420 different languages and dialects) belongs to the Jean-Marc Probst Foundation for the Little Prince in Lausanne.
• The Little Prince excerpts and collection in 400 languages and dialects and in English
• List of different editions
• The Museum of The Little Prince in Hakone ; and 箱根の星の王子さまのミュージアム (in Japanese)
• A bibliography of biographical works on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
• Il Piccolo Principe e Antoine De Saint-Exupéry (in Italian)
• Le Petit Prince series in Indic Languages
• Enthusiast website: The Little Prince Quotations
• The Little Prince Pictures (in Chinese)
• The Little Prince (in Arabic)
• laetaprinco.org Website dedicated to reading Little Prince online in popular languages.

This article is about the novella. For other uses, including films made from the book, see Little Prince.

The Little Prince

Author	Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Original title	Le Petit Prince
Translator	(English editions) Katherine Woods[1] Bonnie Greer[2] T.V.F. Cuffe[3] Michael Morpurgo[4] Irene Testot-Ferry[5] Alan Wakeman Janet Hill[6] David Wilkinson Gregory Norminton[7]
Illustrator	Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Cover artist	Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Country	France
Language	French
Publisher	Reynal & Hitchcock (U.S.) Gallimard (France)[8]
Publication date	April 1943 (U.S.: English & French) 1945 (France: French)[8][Note 1]
Awards	Le Monde’s 100 Books of the Century
Preceded by	Pilote de guerre (1942)
Followed by	Lettre à un otage [fr] (1944)

The Little Prince (French: Le Petit Prince, pronounced [lə p(ə)ti pʁɛ̃s]) is a novella by French aristocrat, writer, and military pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It was first published in English and French in the United States by Reynal & Hitchcock in April 1943 and was published posthumously in France following liberation; Saint-Exupéry’s works had been banned by the Vichy Regime. The story follows a young prince who visits various planets in space, including Earth, and addresses themes of loneliness, friendship, love, and loss. Despite its style as a children’s book, The Little Prince makes observations about life, adults, and human nature.^[9]

The Little Prince became Saint-Exupéry’s most successful work, selling an estimated 140 million copies worldwide, which makes it one of the best-selling in history.^{[10][11][12][Note 2][14]} The book has been translated into over 505 different languages and dialects worldwide, being the second most translated work ever published, trailing only the Bible.^[15][16][17] The Little Prince has been adapted to numerous art forms and media, including audio recordings, radio plays, live stage, film, television, ballet, and opera.^[16][18]

Plot[edit]

The narrator begins with a discussion on the nature of grown-ups and their inability to perceive «important things». As a test to determine if a grown-up is as enlightened as a child, he shows them a picture depicting a boa constrictor which has eaten an elephant. The grown-ups always reply that the picture depicts a hat, and so he knows to only talk of «reasonable» things to them, rather than the fanciful.

The narrator becomes an aircraft pilot, and one day, his plane crashes in the Sahara desert, far from civilization. The narrator has an eight-day supply of water and must fix his aeroplane. Here, he is greeted unexpectedly by a young boy nicknamed «the little prince.» The prince has golden hair, a loveable laugh, and will repeat questions until they are answered.

The prince asks the narrator to draw a sheep. The narrator first shows him the picture of the elephant inside the snake, which, to the narrator’s surprise, the prince interprets correctly. After three failed attempts at drawing a sheep, the frustrated narrator draws a simple crate, claiming the sheep is inside. The prince exclaims that this was exactly the drawing he wanted.

Over the course of eight days in the desert, while the narrator attempts to repair his plane, the prince recounts his life story. He begins describing his tiny home planet: in effect, a house-sized asteroid known as «B 612» on Earth. The asteroid’s most prominent features are three minuscule volcanoes (two active, and one dormant or extinct) and a variety of plants.

The prince describes his earlier days cleaning the volcanoes and weeding unwanted seeds and sprigs that infest his planet’s soil; in particular, pulling out baobab trees that are constantly on the verge of overrunning the surface. If the baobabs are not rooted out the moment they are recognised, its roots can have a catastrophic effect on the tiny planet. Therefore, the prince wants a sheep to eat the undesirable plants, but worries it will also eat plants with thorns.

The prince tells of his love for a vain and silly rose that began growing on the asteroid’s surface some time ago. The rose is given to pretension, exaggerating ailments to gain attention and have the prince care for her. The prince says he nourished the rose and tended to her, making a screen and glass globe to protect her from the cold and wind, watering her, and keeping the caterpillars off.

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. Upon their goodbyes, the rose apologises for failing to show that she loved him. She wishes him well and turns down his desire to leave her in the glass globe, saying she will protect herself. The prince laments that he did not understand how to love his rose while he was with her and should have listened to her kind actions, rather than her vain words.

The prince has since visited six other planets, each of which was inhabited by a single, irrational, narrow-minded adult, each meant to critique an element of society. They include:

• A king with no subjects, who only issues orders that can’t be followed, such as commanding the sun to set at sunset.
• A conceited man who only wants the praise which comes from admiration and being the most-admirable person on his otherwise uninhabited planet.
• A drunkard who drinks to forget the shame of drinking.
• A businessman who is blind to the beauty of the stars and instead endlessly counts and catalogues them in order to «own» them all (critiquing materialism).
• A lamplighter on a planet so small, a full day lasts a minute. He wastes his life blindly following orders to extinguish and relight the lamp-post every 30 seconds to correspond with his planet’s day and night.
• An elderly geographer who has never been anywhere, or seen any of the things he records, providing a caricature of specialisation in the contemporary world.

It is the geographer who tells the prince that his rose is an ephemeral being, which is not recorded, and recommends that the prince next visit the planet Earth. The visit to Earth begins with a deeply pessimistic appraisal of humanity. The six absurd people the prince encountered earlier comprise, according to the narrator, just about the entire adult world. On earth there were:

111 kings … 7,000 geographers, 900,000 businessmen, 7,500,000 tipplers, 311,000,000 conceited men; that is to say, about 2,000,000,000 grown-ups.

Since the prince landed in a desert, he believed 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 voice of a boring person who only repeats what another says.

The prince encountered a whole row of rosebushes, becoming downcast at having once thought that his own rose was unique and thinking his rose had lied about being 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 laid down on the grass and wept, until a fox came along.

The fox desired to be tamed and taught the prince how to tame him. By being tamed, something goes from being ordinary and just like all the others to being special and unique. There are drawbacks since the connection can lead to sadness and longing when apart.

From the fox, the prince learns that his rose was indeed unique and special because she was the object of the prince’s love and time; he had «tamed» her, and now she was more precious than all of the roses he had seen in the garden. Upon their sad departing, the fox imparts a secret: important things can only be seen with the heart, not the eyes.

The prince finally met two people from Earth:

• 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 who talked to the prince about his product, a pill that eliminated the need to drink for a week, saving people 53 minutes.

Back in the present moment, it is the eighth day after the narrator’s plane crash and the narrator and the prince are dying of thirst. The prince has become visibly morose and saddened over his recollections and longs to return home and see his flower.

The prince finds a well, saving them. The narrator later finds the prince talking to the snake, discussing his return home and his desire 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 upset him. The narrator, realising 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 loveable 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, soundlessly falling down.

The next morning, the narrator is unable to find the prince’s body. He finally manages to repair his aeroplane and leave the desert. It is left up to the reader to determine if the prince returned home or died. The story ends with a drawing of the landscape where the prince and the narrator met and where the snake took the prince’s corporeal life. The narrator requests to be immediately contacted by anyone in that area encountering a small person with golden curls who refuses to answer any questions.

Tone and writing style[edit]

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.»^[19] The Little Prince was created when Saint-Exupéry was «an ex-patriate and distraught about what was going on in his country and in the world.»^[14] 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.»^[20]

An exquisite literary perfectionist, akin to the 19th century French poet Stéphane Mallarmé,^[21] 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…»^[22] He worked «long hours with great concentration.» According to the author himself, it was extremely difficult to start his creative writing processes.^[23] 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.»^[24] The French author frequently wrote at night, usually starting at about 11 p.m. accompanied by a tray of strong black coffee. In 1942 Saint-Exupéry related to his American English teacher, Adèle 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.^[22] 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.^[25]

While Saint-Exupéry was a native speaker of French, he was never able to achieve anything more than haltingly poor English. Adèle Breaux, his young Northport English tutor to whom he later dedicated a writing («For Miss Adèle Breaux, who so gently guided me in the mysteries of the English language»), related her experiences with her famous student as Saint-Exupéry in America, 1942–1943: A Memoir, published in 1971.^[26]

«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’.»^[27][28]

Inspirations[edit]

Events and characters[edit]

In The Little Prince, its narrator, the pilot, talks of being stranded in the desert beside his crashed aircraft. The account clearly drew on 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).^[9]

On 30 December 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.^[29] 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, that had a prize of 150,000 francs.^[30] Their plane was a Caudron C-630 Simoun,^{[Note 3]} and the crash site is thought to have been near to the Wadi Natrun valley, close to the Nile Delta.^[31]

Both miraculously survived the crash, only to face rapid dehydration in the intense desert heat.^[32] 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, which saved Saint-Exupéry’s and Prévot’s lives.^[30]

In the novella, the fox, believed to be modeled after the author’s intimate New York City friend, Silvia Hamilton Reinhardt, tells the prince that his rose is unique and special, as she is the one he loves.^[33] The novella’s iconic phrase, «One sees clearly only with the heart» is believed to have been suggested by Reinhardt.

The fearsome, grasping baobab trees, researchers have contended, were meant to represent Nazism attempting to destroy the planet.^[33] The little prince’s reassurance to the pilot that the prince’s 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».^[34]

Rose[edit]

Many researchers believe that the prince’s kindhearted, but petulant and vain, Rose was inspired by Saint-Exupéry’s Salvadoran wife Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry,^[33][35] with the small home planet being inspired by Guatemala where he crashed, broke multiple bones,^[36] and stayed to recover, surrounded with the view of 3 volcanoes.^[37] Despite a tumultuous 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 places 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.^[9]

This interpretation 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.»^[24]

Prince[edit]

Saint-Exupéry probably has 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») because of his golden curly hair. The author had also met a precocious eight-year-old with curly blond hair while he was residing with a family in Quebec City in 1942, Thomas De Koninck, the son of philosopher Charles De Koninck.^[38][39][40] Another possible inspiration for the little prince has been suggested as Land Morrow Lindbergh, the young, golden-haired son of fellow aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, whom he met during an overnight stay at their Long Island home in 1939.^{[41][42][Note 4]}

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.^[43] When Life photojournalist John Phillips questioned the author-aviator on his inspiration for the child character, Saint-Exupéry told him that one day he looked down on what he thought was a blank sheet and saw a small childlike figure: «I asked him who he was», he replied. «I’m the Little Prince» was the reply.^[44]

One of Saint-Exupéry’s earliest literary references to a small prince is to be found in his second news dispatch from Moscow, dated 14 May 1935. In his writings as a special correspondent for Paris-Soir, the author described traveling from France to the Soviet Union by train. Late at night, during the 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:^[45]

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.

Background[edit]

Upon the outbreak of the Second World War, a laureate of several of France’s highest literary awards and a successful pioneering aviator prior to the war, Saint-Exupéry initially flew with a reconnaissance squadron as a reserve military pilot in the Armée de l’Air (French Air Force).^[9] After France’s defeat in 1940 and its armistice with Germany, he and 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 for which he would be remembered, including a tender tale of loneliness, friendship, love and loss, in the form of a young prince visiting Earth.^[46]

An earlier memoir by the author recounted his aviation experiences in the Sahara, and he is thought to have drawn on the same experiences as plot elements in The Little Prince.

He 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 in 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 supporters of both ardent French Gaullist and Vichy France.^[47] Saint-Exupéry’s American translator (the author spoke poor English) wrote: «He 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.»^[22] However, the period was to be both a «dark but productive time» during which he created three important works.^[48]

Between January 1941 and April 1943, the Saint-Exupérys lived in two penthouse apartments on Central Park South,^[49] then the Bevin House mansion in Asharoken, New York, and still later at a rented house on Beekman Place in New York City.^[50][51]

The couple also stayed in Quebec 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-Exupérys resided.^{[52][53][54][55]} 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 Lindbergh.^[41][42]

After returning to the US 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 US 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, she suggested to him that working on a children’s story would help.^{[56][Note 5]} 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.^[51][52][52]

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 and so Consuelo was dispatched to find improved accommodations. After spending some time at an unsuitable clapboard country house in Westport, Connecticut,^[57] they found Bevin House, a 22-room mansion in Asharoken that overlooked Long Island Sound. The author-aviator initially complained, «I wanted a hut, and it’s the Palace of Versailles.»^[46] As the weeks wore on, the author became invested in his project and the home would become «a haven for writing, the best place I have ever had anywhere in my life.»^[58] He devoted himself to the book on mostly midnight shifts,^[22] usually starting at about 11 pm, fueled by helpings of scrambled eggs on English muffins, gin and tonics, Coca-Colas, cigarettes and numerous visits by friends and expatriates who dropped in to see their famous countryman. One of the visitors was his wife’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.^[46][51] 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.^[59] The story, the curator added, was created when he was «an ex-patriate and distraught about what was going on in his country and in the world.»^[14]

The large white Second French Empire-style mansion, hidden behind tall trees, afforded the writer a multitude of work environments, but he usually wrote at a large dining table.^[22] 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 search of sunlight. His meditative view of sunsets at the Bevin House were incorporated in the book, where the prince visits a small planet with 43 daily sunsets, a planet where all that is needed to watch a sunset «is move your chair a few steps.»^{[46][51][Note 6]}

Manuscript[edit]

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.^[11][60][61] It is the only known surviving handwritten draft of the complete work.^[62] 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 centenary celebration of the author’s birth, with major exhibitions of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s literary works.^[33][63] 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.^[64]

The story’s keynote aphorism, On ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur. 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 a Dictaphone recorder to produce oral drafts for his typist.^[22][60] 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.^[22]

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.^[60]

Further information: Morgan exhibitions

In April 2012 a Parisian auction house announced the discovery of two previously unknown draft manuscript pages that included new text.^[10][65] 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».^[10][65] 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.^[65][66]

Dedication[edit]

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 of Jewish descent, twenty-two years older than Saint-Exupéry.

Saint-Exupéry dedicated two books to him, Lettre à un otage [fr] (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:^[67]

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,

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.^[68] At the end of the Second World War, which Antoine de Saint-Exupéry did not 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[edit]

All of the novella’s simple but elegant watercolour illustrations, which were integral to the story, were painted by Saint-Exupéry. 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.^[51] 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.^{[Note 7]} Two or three original Little Prince drawings were reported in the collections of New York artist, sculptor and experimental filmmaker Joseph Cornell.^[69] 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.^[70][71]

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.^[44][46] 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.^[44] 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.»^[57] 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».^[46] 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.^[14]

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.^[33][63][72] 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.^[62] 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.^[48] A museum representative stated that the novella’s final drawings were lost.^[33]

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.^[33] According to Christine Nelson, curator of literary and historical manuscripts at the Morgan, «[t]he image evokes Saint-Exupéry’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.»^[14] 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-Exupéry chose in every case to obfuscate.»^[73] 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».^[14]

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.^[74] 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[edit]

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».^[75] 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.»^[76]

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.^[75]

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.^{[Note 8]} 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.^{[46][Note 9]}

Reception[edit]

Many of the book’s initial reviewers were flummoxed by the fable’s multi-layered story line and its morals,^[9] 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 nor adult’s literature classification. The New York Times reviewer wrote shortly before its publication «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.»^[79] 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.»^[60]

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.»^[57] P.L. Travers, author of the Mary Poppins series of children books, wrote in a New York 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.»^[60][80]

British journalist Neil Clark, in The American Conservative in 2009, offered an expansive view of Saint-Exupéry’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.»^[81]

The book enjoyed modest initial success, residing on The New York Times Best Seller list for only two weeks,^[64] as opposed to his earlier 1939 English translation, Wind, Sand and Stars which remained on the same list for nearly five months.^[44] 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».^[63]

Literary translations and printed editions[edit]

As of April 2017,^[82] The Little Prince became the world’s most translated non-religious book (into 300 languages) together with Italian novel The Adventures of Pinocchio.

Katherine Woods (1886–1968)^[83] produced the first English translation of 1943, which was later joined by several other English translations. Her translation contained some errors.^[84][85] 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.^[73] As of 2019 at least seven additional English translations have been published:^[86]

• Irene Testot-Ferry, (ISBN 0-7567-5189-6, 1st ed. 1995)
• T.V.F. Cuffe, (ISBN 0-14-118562-7, 1st ed. 1995)
• Alan Wakeman, (ISBN 1-86205-066-X, 1st ed. 1995)^[87]
• Richard Howard, (ISBN 0-15-204804-9, 1st ed. 2000)^[6]
• Ros and Chloe Schwartz, (ISBN 9781907360015, 1st ed. 2010)^[88]
• David Wilkinson, (bilingual English-French student edition, ISBN 0-9567215-9-1, 1st ed. 2011)
• Michael Morpurgo, (ISBN 978-1784874179, 1st ed. 2018)
• Guillain Méjane, (translated via the PoesIA project, a convolutional neural network, ISBN 9798621081355, 1st ed. 2020)

The Little Prince was also translated by Bonnie Greer for a BBC radio adaptation in 1999.

• Bonnie Greer, BBC Radio 4, broadcast 25 December 1999.^[2]

Each translation approaches the essence of the original with an individual style and focus.^[89][90]

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 2017, it has been translated into more than 300 languages and dialects, including Sardinian,^[91] the constructed international languages of Esperanto and Klingon, and the Congolese language Alur, as well as being printed in Braille for blind readers. It is also often used as an introduction into endangered varieties with very few speakers like Maya (2001), Aromanian (2006) or Banat Bulgarian (2017). It is one of the few modern books to have been translated into Latin, as Regulus, vel Pueri soli sapiunt^[92][93] in 1961 by Auguste Haury (1910–2002) and as Regulus in 2010 by Alexander Winkler. In 2005, the book was also translated into Toba Qom, an indigenous language of northern Argentina, as So Shiyaxauolec Nta’a. It was the first book translated into that language since the New Testament. It was also translated to a northern Italian dialect, Vogherese. 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».^[94]

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,^{[Note 10]} 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.^[96] 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.^[73][97]

The first edition to be published in France, Saint-Exupéry’s birthplace, was printed by his regular publisher in that country, Gallimard, only after^[8] the German occupation of France ended.^{[98][Note 11]} Prior to France’s liberation new printings of Saint-Exupéry’s works were made available only by means of secret print runs,^[100][101] 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.^[102]

Commemorating the novella’s 70th anniversary of publication, in conjunction with the 2014 Morgan Exhibition, Éditions 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).^[62]

A Portuguese translation of the novella in 2007, edited by Eidouro Gráfica e Editora Ltda and presented at the XIII Biannual Book Fair of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, holds the Guinness World Record for world’s largest book published.^[103] The impressive tome measures 2.01 m (6 ft 7 in) high and 3.08 m (10 ft 1 in) wide when open, containing 128 pages.

It has been translated into minority languages, such as the Irish language, by Éabhloid publishers in 2015.

Spanish editions[edit]

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.^[104][105] Other Spanish editions have also been created; in 1956 the Mexican publisher Diana released its first edition of the book, El pequeño príncipe, a Spanish translation by José María Francés.^[8] Another edition of the work was produced in Spain in 1964 and, four years later, in 1968, editions were also produced in Colombia and Cuba, with translation by Luis Fernández in 1961. Chile had its first translation in 1981; Peru in February 1985; Venezuela in 1986, and Uruguay in 1990.^{[104][106][107]}
The book is among the few books in the Castilian cant Gacería^[108] (as El pitoche engrullón) or the Madrid slang Cheli^[109] (as El chaval principeras).

Bavarian editions[edit]

The Little Prince has an adaptation for the inhabitants of Bavaria, Austria and South Tyrol, covering for a large variety of the Bavarian language. The book was adapted by Johannes Limmer and published in 2019. It is called Da gloane Prinz and contains the original pictures of Saint-Exupéry.^[110]

Chinese editions[edit]

The Little Prince is one of the most popular and beloved foreign works of literature in China. It is reported that there are more than 70 Chinese translations of the novella.^[111] According to the official website of the Succession Antoine de Saint-Exupéry-d’Agay, the version translated by Li Jihong, which was published in January 2013, sold over two million copies in less than four years.^[112] Cheng Li-chun published a translation in Taiwan in May 2022.^[113]

Extension of copyrights in France[edit]

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;^[114] thus most of Saint-Exupéry’s creative works will not fall out of copyright status in France for an extra 30 years.^[115][76] So the original French text was in copyright almost everywhere in the world until 1 January 2015, remains under copyright in the US until 2039^[116] and will remain in copyright in France until 2032.^[117] EU law on copyright, however, fluctuates country by country, despite years of attempts to harmonize it at 70 years. French law allows for a copyright of 70 years from the author’s death. Saint-Exupery, because of extraordinary service to his nation, is granted an additional 30 years, meaning, in France, Le Petit Prince does not actually fall out of copyright until the end of 2044.^{[contradictory]}

Adaptations and sequels[edit]

The wide appeal of Saint-Exupéry’s novella has led to it being adapted into numerous forms over the decades. Additionally, the title character himself has been adapted in a number of promotional roles, including as a symbol of environmental protection, by the Toshiba Group.^[118] He has also been portrayed as a «virtual ambassador» in a campaign against smoking, employed by the Veolia Energy Services Group,^[118] 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:

• Vinyl record, cassette and CD: as early as 1954 several audio editions in multiple languages were created on vinyl record, cassette tape and much later as a CD, with one English version narrated by Richard Burton.
• Radio broadcasts: radio plays were produced in the United States, with Raymond Burr, in 1956, and most recently in the United Kingdom on BBC in a 1999 dramatization by Bonnie Greer, produced by Pam Fraser Solomon.^[119]
• 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». In 1987, a Turkish version was adopted into a direct-to-video film by Remzi Aydin Jonturk. Starting in 2010, a three-season-long animated series was made that expanded upon the book. In 2015, a major new 3D film, combining computer animation and stop motion animation, was released as The Little Prince in English and Le Petit Prince in French.^[120][121] In 2023, a 2D-animated series will be released.^[122]
• 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.
• Graphic novel: a new printed version of the story in comic book form, by Joann Sfar in 2008, drew widespread notice.
• Pop-Up Book: a new printed edition, using the original text (as translated by Richard Howard in 2000) and St. Exupery’s original drawings as the basis for elaborate pop-up illustrations, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (ISBN 978-0-547-26069-3, 1st ed. 2009).
• 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.
• Concert music: Concert Suite on Le Petit Prince for solo violin, solo harp and chamber orchestra by Jean-Pascal Beintus (premiered by the DSO Berlin – Kent Nagano – 2008)

• Anime: a Japanese animation TV series was made in 1978, Hoshi no Ōjisama: Petit Prince, containing 39 episodes that do not follow the plot of the original novella. Each episode contains an adventure on a planet, usually Earth, where the little prince meets different people each time and makes friends. Some key elements of the original story have been kept. Namely, the little prince’s golden hair, his scarf, laughter, his planet name (B-612), the rose and the three volcanoes. The anime had been aired and dubbed into several languages including Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish. The English dub’s title is The Adventures of the Little Prince.^[123]
• 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).^[124] In this version, the shipwrecked narrator encounters the little prince on a lone island; the prince has returned to seek help against a tiger who threatens his sheep.^[125] Another sequel titled The Return of the Little Prince was written by former actress Ysatis de Saint-Simone, niece of Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry.^[126]

Honours and legacy[edit]

Museums and exhibits[edit]

Morgan exhibitions[edit]

New York City’s Morgan Library & Museum mounted three showings of the 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,^[127] 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,^{[Note 12]} along with photos of the author, correspondence to Consuelo, a signed first edition of The Little Prince, and several international editions in other languages.^[93]

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.^[63] 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. It was as 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.^[62]

The new, more comprehensive exhibits included 35 watercolor paintings and 25 of the work’s original 140 handwritten manuscript pages,^[129] 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.^[130][131] 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.^[48] 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 drawing’s progressive refinement.^[60] 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».^{[63][72][80][131][132]} Several of the manuscript pages bore accidental coffee stains and cigarette scorch marks.^[48] 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,^{[Note 13]} as well as materials from other private collections, libraries and museums in the United States and France.^[133] 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 Sís on his new work The Pilot and The Little Prince: The Life of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,^[132][134]

Additional exhibits included photos of Saint-Exupéry by Life photojournalist John Phillips, other photos of the author’s New York area homes,^[62] an Orson Welles screenplay of the novella the filmmaker attempted to produce as a movie in collaboration with Walt Disney,^{[44][63][Note 14]} as well as one of the few signed copies extant of The Little Prince, gifted to Hamilton’s 12-year-old son.^{[Note 15]}

Permanent exhibits[edit]

• 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.^{[95][135][136]}

Special exhibitions[edit]

• 

  The Little Prince as part of a street art project in Funchal (Madeira)

  In 1996 the Danish sculptor Jens Galschiøt 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,^[137] but was later stolen from an exhibition in Billund in 2011.^[138]

• 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.^{[139][140][141]}
• In 2012 the Catalan architect Jan Baca unveiled a sculpture in Terrassa, Catalonia showing the Little Prince along with the sentence, «It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye».^[142]
• In February 2022, nearly eight decades after it was written, «The Little Prince» has arrived in Paris. The exhibit began on February 17 and will end on June 26. It contains 600 items, including photographs, poems, and newspaper clippings relating to «The Little Prince.»^[143]

Places[edit]

Playground[edit]

• One of the «story playgrounds» – a series of playgrounds themed after famous children’s stories in Holon, Israel – is themed after The Little Prince. It features sculptures and play structures depicting scenes and characters from the book.

Schools[edit]

• L’école 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,^[144] 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 colourful paintings of the prince is found on its website’s welcome page.^[145]

Avenue[edit]

• In southern Brazil, in the city of Florianópolis, there is the Avenida Pequeno Príncipe (Little Prince Avenue in Portuguese), whose name is a tribute to Saint-Exupéry, who passed through the city during his aviator career, an event that became part of the local culture.^[146]

Insignia and awards[edit]

• Prior to its decommissioning in 2010, the GR I/33 [fr] (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.^[147] 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.^[148][149]
• 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.^{[150][151][152]}

Numismatics and philatelic[edit]

• 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.^[75][153] Among the anti-counterfeiting measures on the banknote was micro-printed text from Le Petit Prince, visible with a strong magnifying glass.^[154] 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.^[155]
• 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.^[156] Philatelic tributes have been printed in at least 24 other countries as of 2011.^[157]

Astronomy[edit]

• 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.^[158]
• An asteroid discovered in 1975, 2578 Saint-Exupéry, was also named after the author of The Little Prince.^[159]
• Another asteroid discovered in 1993 was named 46610 Bésixdouze, 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.^[160]

The Little Prince Day[edit]

Since 2020, June 29 is International Little Prince Day. This date was chosen to commemorate the birth of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, which occurred on June 29, 1900. The Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Foundation started the initiative striving to promote the humanist values ​​carried by the book published in 1943. Mark Osborne was one of the first personalities to participate in the Little Prince Day 2020.^[161]

See also[edit]

• List of The Little Prince adaptations, a listing of The Little Prince story adapted into various media.
• The Little Prince (1974 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
• Eloise at the Plaza, a 2003 TV film in which many references to The Little Prince can be identified
• The Little Prince (TV series), a 2010 TV series
• The Little Prince (2015 film), a 2015 animated film directed by Mark Osborne
• Le Monde‘s 100 Books of the Century
• Invisible Essence: The Little Prince, a 2018 documentary film about the book

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

Translations[edit]

• de Saint-Exupéry, Antoine (2006). The Little Prince: And Letter to a Hostage. Translated by Cuffe, T. V. F.. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-118562-0. OCLC 1023214985.
• ——— (6 September 2018). The Little Prince. Translated by Morpurgo, Michael. London: Vintage Children’s Classics. ISBN 9781784874179.
• ——— (30 May 2019). The Little Prince. Translated by Norminton, Gregory. Alma Classics. ISBN 978-1-84749-824-3.
• ——— (15 January 2018). The Little Prince. Translated by Testot-Ferry, Irene. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth. ISBN 978-1-84022-760-4. OCLC 1105536767.
• ——— (1943). The Little Prince. Translated by Woods, Katherine (1st ed.). New York: Reynal & Hitchcock. ISBN 9780152023980. OCLC 898880592. Retrieved 28 July 2020.

Sources[edit]

• Beaumont, Peter (1 August 2010). «Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince Poised for a Multimedia Return to Earth: The Boy Who Lived on an Asteroid Whose Tale Was Told in a Classic French Novella Is Being Revived on TV, Film And In Print». The Observer. Retrieved 15 October 2011.
• Brown, Hannibal (2004). «The Country Where the Stones Fly«. Visions of a Little Prince. Archived from the original (documentary research) on 29 March 2007. Retrieved 16 September 2011.
• Dunning, Jennifer (12 May 1989). «In the Footsteps of Saint-Exupery». The New York Times. Retrieved 14 September 2010.
• Heuré, Gilles (2006). L’insoumis: Léon Werth, 1878–1955. Paris: Éditions Viviane Hamy. ISBN 978-2878582192.
• Saint-Exupéry, Consuelo de (2003). The Tale of the Rose: The Love Story Behind The Little Prince. Translated by Allen, Esther. New York City: Random House. ISBN 978-0-8129-6717-3.
• Schiff, Stacy (1994). Saint-Exupéry: A Biography. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-679-40310-4.
• Schiff, Stacy (1996). Saint-Exupéry: A Biography. Vintage Canada. ISBN 978-0-679-30822-5.
• Schiff, Stacy (2006). Saint-Exupéry: A Biography. Henry Holt. ISBN 978-0-805-07913-5.
• Severson, Marilyn S. (2004). Masterpieces of French Literature: Greenwood Introduces Literary Masterpieces. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-313-31484-1.
• Webster, Paul (1993). Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: The Life and Death of The Little Prince. London: Pan Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-333-61702-1.

Further reading[edit]

• Dunn, Bruce. The Yellow Umbrella: A City Fable. Mushroom Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0615295404 (English)
• Galembert, Laurent de. La grandeur du Petit Prince (thesis), Éditions Le Manuscrit, 26 November 2002, ISBN 2-7481-1916-9 (French)

External links[edit]

• Le Petit Prince at Project Gutenberg Australia
• LePetitPrince.com (in French) Site officiel du Petit Prince; and TheLittlePrince.com Archived 26 December 2021 at the Wayback Machine Official site of The Little Prince
• NYC-ARTS Profile: The Little Prince, PBS interview on the 2014 Morgan Exhibition (video, 12:39)
• The Little Prince: A New York Story Exhibition, NBC news report on the 2014 Little Prince exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum (video, 3:10)
• Study Guide at SparkNotes
• www.petit-prince-collection.com Website dedicated to the largest collection of Little Prince books in the world. This impressive collection (nearly five thousand different editions of the full text in over 420 different languages and dialects) belongs to the Jean-Marc Probst Foundation for the Little Prince in Lausanne.
• The Little Prince excerpts and collection in 400 languages and dialects and in English
• List of different editions
• The Museum of The Little Prince in Hakone ; and 箱根の星の王子さまのミュージアム (in Japanese)
• A bibliography of biographical works on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
• Il Piccolo Principe e Antoine De Saint-Exupéry (in Italian)
• Le Petit Prince series in Indic Languages
• Enthusiast website: The Little Prince Quotations
• The Little Prince Pictures (in Chinese)
• The Little Prince (in Arabic)
• laetaprinco.org Website dedicated to reading Little Prince online in popular languages.

Маленький принц
Le Petit Prince
Жанр:	сказка
Автор:	Антуан де Сент-Экзюпери
Язык оригинала:	французский
Публикация:	1943

«Ма́ленький принц» (фр. Le Petit Prince) — наиболее известное произведение Антуана де Сент-Экзюпери.

Впервые опубликована 6 апреля 1943 года в Нью-Йорке.

Рисунки в книге выполнены самим автором и не менее знамениты, чем сама книга. Важно, что это не иллюстрации, а органическая часть произведения в целом: сам автор и герои сказки всё время ссылаются на рисунки и даже спорят о них. Уникальные иллюстрации в «Маленьком принце» разрушают языковые барьеры, становятся частью универсального визуального лексикона, понятного каждому.

«Ведь все взрослые сначала были детьми, только мало кто из них об этом помнит» — Антуан де Сент-Экзюпери, из посвящения к книге.

История публикаций

• Написана в 1942 году в Нью-Йорке.
• Впервые опубликована в 1943 г. в США издательством «Reynal & Hitchcock». Вышла в печати сначала на английском (англ. «The Little Prince», в переводе Катерины Вудс, Katherine Woods); затем на французском языке.
• Первое французское издание: «Editions Gallimard», 1946 г.

Переводы

«Маленький принц» переведен на более чем 180 языков и диалектов, в том числе на основные европейские, азиатские, африканские и американские языки. Есть издания на фриульском в Италии, бамана в Мали, арагонском в Испании, креольском на Кюрасао и гасконском во Франции. Только в Индии существуют издания на хинди, телугу, маратхи, панджаби, тамильском, малаялами, бенгальском и конкани. В Китае насчитывается более 30 изданий и более 60 в Корее.

В русском переводе Норы Галь (1958) «Маленький принц» впервые опубликован в журнале «Москва» в 1959 г.

Прообразы героев «Маленького принца»

Маленький принц

Образ Маленького принца одновременно и глубоко автобиографичен, и как бы отстранён от взрослого автора-летчика. Он рождён из тоски по умирающему в себе маленькому Тонио — потомку обнищавшего дворянского рода, которого в семье называли за его белокурые (сперва) волосы «Королём-Солнце», а в колледже прозвали Лунатиком за привычку подолгу смотреть на звёздное небо. Само словосочетание «Маленький принц» встречается ещё в «Планете людей» (как и многие другие образы и мысли). А в 1940 году в перерывах между боями с нацистами Экзюпери часто рисовал на листке мальчика — когда крылатого, когда верхом на облаке. Постепенно крылья сменит длинный шарф (какой, кстати, носил и сам автор), а облако станет астероидом Б-612.

Роза

Прообраз капризной и трогательной Розы тоже хорошо известен, это, безусловно, жена Экзюпери Консуэло — импульсивная латиноамериканка, которую друзья прозвали «маленьким сальвадорским вулканом».

Лис

Насчет Лиса споров о прообразах и вариантах перевода было побольше. Вот что пишет переводчица Нора Галь в статье «Под звездой Сент-Экса»: «Когда „Маленький принц“ печатался у нас впервые, вышел жаркий спор в редакции: Лис в сказке или Лиса — опять-таки, женский род или мужской? Кое-кто считал, что лисица в сказке — соперница Розы. Здесь спор уже не об одном слове, не о фразе, но о понимании всего образа. Даже больше, в известной мере — о понимании всей сказки: её интонация, окраска, глубинный внутренний смысл — всё менялось от этой „мелочи“. А я убеждена: биографическая справка о роли женщин в жизни Сент-Экзюпери понять сказку не помогает и к делу не относится. Уж не говорю о том, что по-французски le renard мужского рода. Главное, в сказке Лис — прежде всего друг. Роза — любовь, Лис — дружба, и верный друг Лис учит Маленького принца верности, учит всегда чувствовать себя в ответе за любимую и за всех близких и любимых».

Можно добавить ещё одно наблюдение. Необычно большие уши Лиса на рисунке Экзюпери, скорее всего, навеяны маленькой пустынной лисичкой фенек — одно из многочисленных существ, прирученных писателем во время службы в Марокко.

Интересные факты

• Многие^[кто?] изучавшие французский язык (включая профессиональных филологов^{[каких?]}) считают «Маленького принца» лучшим пособием для освоения французского языка на начальном этапе.
• В 2003 году луна астероида «45 Eugenia» (открыт астрономами в 1998 году на телескопе в Mauna Kea, Гавайи) была названа «Маленький принц». Одновременно название связано с погибшим в молодости принцем Наполеоном-Эженом (Наполеон IV), сыном императрицы Евгении, в честь которой назван сам астероид.
• В 2011 году в Москве сербским режиссером Срджаном Симичем был поставлен спектакль по мотивам «Маленького принца», в котором действие книги переносится в современное Косово.

«Маленький принц» в культуре

Фильмы

• 1966 Маленький принц — фильм Арунаса Жебрюнаса.
• 1974 Маленький принц — фильм Стэнли Донена.
• 1974 Маленький принц — мультфильм Уилла Винтона.
• 1978—1980 Приключения Маленького принца — Мультсериал режиссёра Франклина Кофода.
• 1993 Маленький принц — фильм Андрея Росс, продюсер Олег Руд, снят на Сахалинской киностудии «Авантес».
• 2002 Маленький принц — мюзикл Риккардо Коччанте.
• 2010 Легенда песков — авторский фильм Евгения Дядюли.

Музыка

• Елена Камбурова — «Маленький принц», слова Николая Добронравова, музыка Микаэла Таривердиева из к/ф «Пассажир с „Экватора“» (1968).
• Рок-группа «Машина времени», альбом «Маленький принц» (1980).
• Композитор Евгений Глебов, балет «Маленький принц» (1981).
• Каролина (Татьяна Корнева) — «Мой Маленький принц», из альбома «Дискобар» (1990).
• Mylene Farmer — Dessine-moi un mouton («Нарисуй мне барашка»).
• Necro Stellar — песня «43 заката», альбом «Расширяющаяся вселенная 1988—2008».
• Necro Stellar — песня «Последняя планета, которую посетил Маленький Принц, была Земля», альбом «Расширяющаяся вселенная 1988—2008».
• Рок-проект «Егор и Опизд…шие» — «Маленький принц возвращался домой», альбом «Прыг-Скок» (1990).
• Голландская Группа Ekseption, альбом «Ekseption 3», песни из которого посвящены именно этому рассказу; такие как к примеру «Morning Rose» или «B 612»
• Группа «Маленький принц» солист и лидер группы — Александр Хлопков (участник группы «Мираж» с 1988), музыкальный стиль — евродиско, первый альбом «Мы встретимся снова» (1989). Авторы песен для группы: Андрей Литягин, Елена Степанова, Игорь Николаев, Сергей Трофимов.

• У российской певицы МакSим в альбоме 2009 года «Одиночка» есть песня «Я люблю тебя», в которой такие строки: «Ты просто посмотри на звёзды. Ты мой принц, я — твоя роза У Экзюпери всё про нас, лети».
• Песня «Никогда» группы Fleur начинается словами: «Расскажи мне о смерти, мой Маленький принц…».
• Александр Дольский, песня «Маленький принц».
• Otto Dix, песня «Маленький принц».
• Олег Медведев — песня «Маленький принц»
• 11-летняя певица Катя Рябова с песней Маленький принц завоевала 2-е место на детском конкурсе Евровидения в 2009-м году. В песне поётся о том, как ученица прочитала сказку «Маленький принц» и о том, что она хочет быть с ним.
• В песне «Ты для меня» группы «Винтаж», звучат в припеве следующие слова: «Ты для меня как маленький принц для живого цветка…»
• У Витаса есть песня «Маленький принц».
• У Александра Буйнова в песне «Мы в ответе за тех кого приручили», в припеве звучат такие слова «…А помнишь, как читали в запой Экзюпери, А слова вспомни те, что вслух заучили — Мы в ответе за тех, кого приручили.»

Упоминания «Маленького принца»

• Katamari Damacy: Сюжет игры базируется на этом произведении А. де Сент-Экзюпери, в сиквеле We Love Katamari также фигурирует говорящая роза.
• Star Control 2: «the snake-like creature who has swallowed the elephantine beast», что является отсылкой на слона в удаве.
• Syberia: «Нарисуй мне мамонта». — «А можно нарисовать ящик с мамонтом внутри?»
• В Москве появлялись рекламные щиты с известной фразой Маленького принца о баобабах, при этом в слове «баобаб» последние три буквы были выделены — отсылка на Б. А. Березовского.
• В Футурама в серии The Route of All Evil один из получателей газеты юных разносчиков — Маленький принц.
• Слона в удаве можно увидеть в менеджере пакетов aptitude — aptitude moo -vvvvv.

См. также

• 100 книг века по версии Le Monde

Ссылки

	Маленький принц в Викицитатнике?
	Маленький принц на Викискладе?

• «Маленький принц» в переводе Норы Галь на сайте Wikilivres
• Официальный сайт «Маленького принца» в России
• Официальная группа «Маленького принца» в России в социальной сети ВКонтакте
• Официальный Твиттер «Маленького принца» в России
• Вавилон: Нора Галь, Избранные переводы
• Маленький принц на 198 языках
• Petit-Prince: Астероид Маленький принц
• «Маленький принц» на Lingwa de Planeta, с параллельным русским текстом
• Музыкальный спектакль по мотивам книги «Маленький принц»
• Спектакль «Маленький принц» с балканской музыкой
• С. Курий «Зоркое сердце Экзюпери»
• Марсель Мижо. Самолет Сент-Экзюпери. Журнал «Кругозор» (№ 2, 1966)

Произведения Антуана де Сент-Экзюпери
Романы и новеллы	Авиатор 1926 • Южный почтовый 1929 • Ночной полёт 1931 • Планета людей 1939 • Военный лётчик 1942 • Маленький принц 1943
Изданные посмертно	Письмо заложнику 1944 • Цитадель 1948 • Письма юности 1953 • Записные книжки 1953 • Письма к матери 1953 • Военные записки 1982 • Манон, танцовщица 2007

«Маленький принц» — детство, но в то же время глубокомысленное произведение. Антуан де Сент-Экзюпери поместил в легкую и небольшую сказку отражение реального взрослого мира с его достоинствами и недостатками. Местами это сатира, миф, фантастика и трагический рассказ. Поэтому многогранная книга нравится и маленьким, и большим читателям.

История создания

«Маленький принц» родился во время Великой отечественной войны. Началось все с рисунков Экзюпери, на которых он изображал того самого «маленького принца».

Экзюпери, будучи военным пилотом, однажды попал в авиакатастрофу, это произошло в 1935 году в Ливийской пустыне. Бередившие старые раны, воспоминания о катастрофе и новости о начавшейся мировой войне вдохновили писателя на создание произведения. Он задумался о том, что каждый из нас несёт ответственность за место, где он живет, будь то маленькая квартира или целая планета. А борьба ставит эту ответственность под сомнение, ведь именно в ходе той ожесточенной схватки многих стран было впервые применено смертоносное ядерное оружие. Увы, многие люди наплевательски относились к своему дому, раз позволили войнам довести человечество до таких крайним мер.

Произведение было создано в 1942 году в США, спустя год оно стало доступным для читателя. Маленький принц стал заключительным творением автора и принес ему мировую известность. Автор посвятил свою книгу другу (Леону Верту), причем, тому мальчику, которым его товарищ когда-то был. Стоит отметить, что Леон, который был писателем критиком, являясь евреем, страдал от преследований в период развития нацизма. Ему тоже пришлось покинуть свою планету, но не по своей воле.

Жанр, направление

Экзюпери рассуждал о смысле жизни, и в этом ему помогал жанр притчи, для которого характерна ярко выраженная мораль в финале, назидательный оттенок повествования. Сказка в качестве притчи — наиболее распространенное скрещение жанров. Отличительной чертой сказки можно назвать то, что она имеет фантастический и простой сюжет, но при этом носит поучительный характер, помогает юным читателям сформировать нравственные качества, а взрослым задуматься над их взглядами и поведением. Сказка – отражение реальной жизни, но действительность подается читателю через вымысел, как бы это парадоксально не звучало. Жанровое своеобразие произведения говорит о том, что «Маленький принц» — философская сказка-притча.

Произведение также можно отнести к фантастическому рассказу.

Смысл названия

Маленький принц – история о путешественнике, который странствует всей вселенной. Он не просто путешествует, а находится в поиске смысла жизни, сущности любви и секрета дружбы. Он познает не только мир вокруг, но и себя, и самопознание – его главная цель. Он еще растет, развивается и символизирует непорочное и нежное детство. Поэтому автор нарек его «маленьким».

А почему принц? На своей планете он один, она вся принадлежит ему. Он очень ответственно подходит к своей хозяйской роли и, несмотря на скромный возраст, уже выучился за ней ухаживать. Подобное поведение наталкивает на мысль, что перед нами благородный мальчик, управляющий своим владением, а как его лучше назвать? Принцем, ведь он наделен властью и мудростью.

Суть

Сюжет берет свое начало в пустыне Сахара. Пилот самолета, совершив вынужденную посадку, встречает того самого Маленького принца, что прибыл на Землю с другой планеты. Мальчик рассказывал своему новому знакомому о своем путешествии, о тех планетах, на которых успел побывать, о своей прежней жизни, о розе, что была его верной подругой. Маленький принц так сильно любил свою розу, что готов был отдать за нее жизнь. Мальчику был дорог его дом, ему нравилось наблюдать за закатами, хорошо, что на его планете их можно было лицезреть несколько раз на дню, и для этого Маленькому принцу нужно было только двигать стул.

Однажды, мальчик ощутил себя несчастным и принял решение отправиться на поиски приключений. Роза была горда и редко одаривала покровителя своим теплом, поэтому не удерживала его. Во время своего путешествия Маленький принц встретил: Правителя, который уверен в своей абсолютной власти над звездами, Честолюбца, для которого главное, чтобы им восхищались, Пьяницу, который пьёт из чувства вины за злоупотребление алкоголем, как бы это парадоксально не звучало. Мальчик встретил даже Делового человека, главным занятием которого является подсчет звезд. Маленький принц столкнулся с Фонарщиком, зажигавшим и тушившим фонарь на своей планете каждую минуту. Повстречал он и Географа, который за всю свою жизнь не видел ничего, кроме своей планеты. Последним местом положения путешественника стала планета Земля, где он нашел настоящего друга. Все основные события описаны нами в кратком содержании книги для читательского дневника.

Главные герои и их характеристика

1. Маленький принц – образ частично автобиографичный, хоть и очень сложно себе представить, что взрослый летчик когда-то был маленьким мечтателем. Главный герой – маленький мальчик, но в тоже время он очень часто оказывается умнее взрослых, которые «очень любят цифры». Экзюпери наделил своего героя на первый взгляд несовместимыми качествами: спонтанностью и надежностью. Он добр и очень любит свою Розу, которая осталась на его планете. В то же время он все еще растет и многих вещей не знает. Например, дружбе он научился лишь на планете Земля, а свою любовь осознал лишь после разлуки.
2. Роза. Прототипом Розы является жена автора – Консуэло, латиноамериканка с горячим нравом. Роза была особенным цветком, маленький принц узнал бы ее среди тысячи других роз, все остальные цветы были для него «пустыми». Роза была хрупкой и уязвимой, поэтому мальчик накрывал ее стеклянным колпаком. Зато характер этой дамы был взрывным и капризным: она повелительно обращалась к собеседнику и часто настаивала на чем-то своем.
3. Летчик играет роль рассказчика в произведении. Несмотря на то, что он взрослый и опытный, мужчина в одночасье находит общий язык с Маленьким принцем. Все потому, что в детстве он отличался от всех людей, да и позже так не нашел способа понять их и стать таким же, как они. Он лишь приспособился к их порядкам. Непонимание автор показал через рисунки и их трактовку. Рассказчик рисовал одно, а окружающие видели другое. В итоге он разуверился в себе и перестал рисовать, стал летчиком. Но вот гость с другой планеты сразу его понял. Это вселило в сердце пилота надежду, что это не он бездарен, просто все остальные не поняли его. Таким образом, перед нами человек тонкой душевной организации, чутко воспринимающий критику и умеющий ценить духовное родство.
4. Лис – дикий зверь, который стал настоящим другом Маленькому принцу. Именно он научил его ответственности за того, кого тот приручил. Из его уст часто проскальзывают мудрые советы и нравоучения, вероятно, это универсальный образ наставника, которого каждый из нас рано или поздно встречает на своем пути.

Темы и проблемы

1. Экзюпери в своем произведении говорит о многих глобальных проблемах. Прежде всего, его беспокоит вопрос смысла жизни. Именно на него ищет ответ маленький путешественник, пробираясь через космические пространства. Очевидно, что большинство его соседей не доходят до сути бытия, они просто живут в привычных рамках и не выходят за пределы маленьких и несчастных мирков. Только главный герой отважился идти дальше и взглянуть в душу себе самому. Ведь в общении с обитателями Земли он понял и признал свои ошибки, а в финале вернулся к Розе.
2. Также автор повествует о любви, дружбе и ответственности. Экзюпери не просто раскрыл тему дружбы или же любви, но и донес до читателя важность ответственности за близкого человека, да и за мир в целом. Герой ежедневно трудился, обороняя свою планету, очищая ее и ухаживая за ней. Также он любил и лелеял Розу, лишь его заботами она осталась жива.
3. Проблему всепоглощающего зла втор рисует с помощью баобабов, которые, если их не искоренять, поглотят все живое. Это символ любого паразитизма на Земле. Нужно жить своим трудом, а не нападать на чужие земли, искореняя все живое. Описание жизнедеятельности баобабов — это воплощение антивоенной темы, ведь в образе агрессивных деревьев легко можно увидеть гитлеровскую армию.
4. Проблему взаимоотношений мужчины и женщины Экзюпери показывает через отношения Маленького принца и Розы. Более того, в реальной жизни — это отражение отношений автора и его жены. Жить вместе непросто, особенно, если характеры не сходятся. Но настоящая любовь вдохновляет людей на самоотречение, заставляет заботиться друг о друге, что бы ни случилось.
5. Экзюпери в своем произведении остро ставит проблему одиночества, о котором знал не понаслышке, сидя в кабине пилота. Чтобы показать одиночество, автор помещает летчика в пустыню, но, как говорит Маленький принц, одиноким можно быть и среди людей. Эта проблема актуальна в современном обществе как никогда.
6. Тема разума и чувств. Устами Лиса Экзюпери пытается донести до читателя, что нельзя все увидеть глазами, «зорко одно лишь сердце», как говорит Лис.

Главная мысль

Основная идея автора становится понятна сразу после прочтения произведения. Ему удалось создать сказочную историю, в которой он простым языком донес до читателя сложные вещи, от понимания которых зависит мир во всем мире. Автор говорит о том, что люди должны научиться доверять друг другу и нести ответственность за все то, что любят. Смысл книги заключается во фразе:

Любить — это не значит смотреть друг на друга, это значит смотреть в одном направлении.

Человек должен беречь свой дом, а не раздирать его войнами на окровавленные, безжизненные части. Эта мысль особенно актуальна была тогда, в дни Второй Мировой Войны. Маленький принц ежедневно убирал свою планету, не позволяя баобабам принять угрожающие масштабы. Если бы мир смог вовремя объединиться и смести с лица земли национал-социалистическое движение во главе с Гитлером, то кровопролитие можно было предотвратить. Ибо те, кто любит мир, должны были позаботиться о нем, а не запираться на своих маленьких планетках, думая, что гроза пройдет мимо. Из-за этой разобщенности и безответственности правительств и народов пострадали миллионы людей, и писатель призывает, наконец, научиться преданно и ответственно любить ту гармонию, которую обеспечивает только дружба.

Чему учит?

История Маленького принца – удивительно проникновенная и поучительная. Творение Экзюпери повествует о том, как важно иметь верного друга рядом и как важно нести ответственность за тех, кого ты «приручил». Сказка учит любить, дружить, предостерегает от одиночества. Кроме того, не стоит запираться на своей маленькой территории, отгораживаясь от всего мира вокруг. Нужно выходить из зоны комфорта, познавать новое, искать себя.

Экзюпери также призывает читателя слушать не только свой разум в принятии решений, но и свое сердце, ведь главного глазами не увидишь.

Автор: Елизавета Буркова

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3)    Тематика и проблематика сказки. Спасение человечества от грядущей неизбежной катастрофы — одна из основных тем сказки «Маленький принц». Эта поэтическая сказка о мужестве и мудрости безыскусной детской души, о таких важных «недетских» понятиях, как жизнь и смерть, любовь и ответственность, дружба и верность.

4)    Идейный замысел сказки. «Любить — это не значит смотреть друг на друга, это значит смотреть в одном направлении»

—    эта мысль определяет идейный замысел повести-сказки. «Маленький принц» был написан в 1943 году, и трагедия Европы во Второй мировой войне, воспоминания писателя о разгромленной, оккупированной Франции накладывают свой отпечаток на произведение. Своей светлой, грустной и мудрой сказкой Экзюпери защищал неумирающую человечность, живую искру в душах людей. В известном смысле повесть явилась итогом творческого пути писателя, философским, художественным его осмыслением. Только художник способен увидеть сущность — внутреннюю красоту и гармонию окружающего его мира. Еще на планете фонарщика Маленький принц замечает: «Когда он зажигает фонарь — как будто еще рождается одна звезда или цветок. А когда он гасит фонарь — как будто звезда или цветок засыпают. Прекрасное занятие. Это по-настоящему полезно, потому что красиво». Главный герой говорит внутренней стороне прекрасного, а не ее внешней оболочке. Человеческий труд должен иметь смысл,- а не просто превращаться в механические действия. Любое дело полезно лишь тогда, когда оно внутренне прекрасно.

5)    Особенности сюжета сказки. Сент-Экзюпери берег за основу традиционный сказочный сюжет (Прекрасный принц из-за несчастной любви покидает отчий дом и странствует по бесконечным дорогам в поисках счастья и приключений. Он старается снискать славу и покорить тем самым неприступное сердце принцессы.), но переосмысливает его по-своему, даже иронически. Его прекрасный принц совсем ребенок, страдающий от капризного и взбалмошного цветка. Естественно, о счастливом финале со свадьбой не идет и речи. В скитаниях Маленький принц встречается не со сказочными чудовищами, а с людьми, околдованными, словно злыми чарами, эгоистическими и мелочными страстями. Но это только внешняя сторона сюжета. Несмотря на то что Маленький принц ребёнок, ему открывается истинное видение мира, недоступное даже взрослому человеку. Да и люди с омертвелыми душами, которых встречает на своем пути главный герой, намного страшнее сказочных чудовищ. Взаимоотношения принца и Розы намного сложнее, чем отношения принцев и принцесс из фольклорных сказок. Ведь именно ради Розы Маленький принц жертвует материальной оболочкой — он выбирает телесную смерть. В повести две сюжетные линии: рассказчика и связанная с ним тема мира взрослых людей и линия Маленького принца, история его жизни.

6)    Особенности композиции сказки. Композиция произведения весьма своеобразна. Парабола — основной компонент структуры традиционной притчи. «Маленький принц» не исключение. Выглядит это так: действие происходит в конкретном времени и конкретной ситуации. Сюжет развивается следующим образом: происходит движение по кривой, которое, достигнув высшей точки накала, вновь возвращается к исходной точке. Особенность такого сюжетостроения в том, что, вернувшись к исходной точке, сюжет обретает новый философско-этический смысл. Новую точку зрения на проблему находит решение. Начало и конец повести «Маленький принц» имеют отношение к прибытию героя на Землю или с покиданием Земли, лётчиком и Лисом. Маленький принц опять улетает на свою планету ухаживать и растить прекрасную Розу. Время, которое лётчик и принц — взрослый и ребёнок провели вместе, они открыли для себя много нового и друг в друге, и в жизни. Расставшись, они унесли с собой частички друг друга, они стали более мудрыми, узнали мир другого и свой, только с другой стороны.

7)    Художественные особенности произведения. В повести очень богатый язык. Автор использует массу удивительных и неподражаемых литературных приемов. В его тексте слышится мелодия: «…А по ночам я люблю слушать звезды. Словно пятьсот миллионов бубенчиков…» Его проста — это детская истина и точность. Язык Экзюпери полон воспоминаний и размышлений о жизни, о мире и, конечно, о детстве: «…Когда мне было шесть лет… я увидел однажды удивительную картинку…» или: «…Вот уже шесть лет, как мой друг вместе с барашком меня покинул». Стиль и особая, не похожая ни на что мистическая манера Сент-Экзюпери — это переход от образа к обобщению, от притчи к морали. Язык его произведения естественен и выразителен: «смех, точно родник в пустыне», «пятьсот миллионов бубенчиков» Казалось бы, обыденные, привычные понятия неожиданно приобретают у пего новый оригинальный смысл: «вода», «огонь», «дружба» и т.д. Столь же свежи и естественны многие его метафоры: «они (вулканы) спят глубоко под землей, пока один из них не вздумает проснуться»; писатель употребляет парадоксальные сочетания слов, какие в обычной речи не встретишь: «дети должны быть очень снисходительны к взрослым», «если идти всё прямо да прямо, далеко не уйдешь…» или «у людей уже не хватает времени что-либо узнавать». Повествовательная манера повести также обладает рядом особенностей. Это доверительная беседа старых друзей — так автор общается с читателем. Мы чувствуем присутствие автора, верящего в добро и разум, в скорую пору, когда жизнь на земле изменится. Можно говорить о своеобразной мелодике повествования, грустной и задумчивой, строящейся на мягких переходах от юмора к серьезным раздумьям, на полутонах, прозрачных и легких, подобно акварельным иллюстрациям сказки, созданным самим писателем и являющимся неотъемлемой частью художественной ткани произведения. Феномен сказки «Маленький принц» в том, что написанная для взрослых она прочно вошла в круг детского чтения.

Жанровое своеобразие произведения А. де Сент-Экзюпери «Маленький принц»

«Маленький принц» был написан А. де Сент-Экзюпери в 1943 году. Свой отпечаток на это произведение наложили трагедия Европы во Второй мировой войне и воспоминания писателя об оккупированной, разгромленной Франции. Этим светлым, грустным и мудрым произведением Экзюпери защищает неумирающую человечность. Повесть в некотором смысле стала итогом творческого пут писателя, художественным и философским его осмыслением. Обратиться к жанру притчи писателя побудила потребность в глубоких обобщениях. Для этого жанра характерны:

• Отсутствие конкретно-исторического содержания;
• Дидактическая обусловленность;
• Условность.

Эти свойства дали возможность Экзюпери выразить свои взгляды на нравственнее проблемы того периода времени, который крайне волновали писателя.

Сказка, так же, как и притча, является древнейшим жанром устного народного творчества. Она учит человека, как нужно жить, вселяет в него оптимизм, веру в будущее, в торжество справедливости и добра. За всей фантастичностью сказочной фабулы и художественного вымысла неизменно скрыты реальные человеческие отношения. в сказке, как и в притче, всегда торжествует правда, социальная и нравственная.

Сказка-притча А. де Сент-Экзюпери написана не только для детей. Это произведение так же и для взрослых, еще не до конца утративших детскую впечатлительность, по-детски открытый взгляд и способность фантазировать. Сам писатель обладал таким зрением.

«»Маленький принц» Антуана де Сент-Экзюпери как философская сказка» 👇

То, что произведение Экзюпери является именно сказкой, определяется по сказочным признакам, имеющимся в повести: сказочные персонажи, фантастическое путешествие главного героя.

Прообразом сказки Экзюпери можно считать фольклорную волшебную сказку, в которой прекрасный принц из-за безответной любви уходит из отчего дома и странствует в поисках приключений и счастья по бесконечным дорогам. Он стремится снискать себе славу и тем самым покорить неприступное сердце принцессы.

Писатель взял за основу этот сюжет и по-своему переосмыслил его. Прекрасный принц А. де Сент-Экзюпери еще совсем ребенок, который страдает любви к взбалмошному и капризному цветку. Поэтому в этом случае о счастливом финале со свадьбой не может быть и речи. В своих скитаниях маленький принц встречается не с чудовищами, а с людьми, которые околдованы, будто чарами злого колдуна, мелочными и эгоистическими страстями. Однако это является лишь внешней стороной сюжета. «Маленький принц», в первую очередь, это философская сказка.

«Маленький принц» как философская сказка

За незатейливым, простым сюжетом «Маленького принца» и иронией скрыт глубочайший философский смысл. Автор в этом произведении в отвлеченном виде через символы, метафоры и иносказания затрагивает темы мирового масштаба:

• Жизни и смерти;
• Добра и зла;
• Истинной любви;
• Человеческого бытия;
• Нравственной красоты;
• Бесконечного одиночества;
• Дружбы;
• Взаимоотношения личности и толпы и т.д.

Несмотря на то, что герой сказки, Маленький принц, еще ребенок, ему открывается недоступное взрослому человеку истинное видение мира. А люди с омертвевшими душами, с которыми сталкивается на своем пути главный герой, гораздо страшнее сказочных чудовищ. А взаимоотношения Маленького принца и Розы гораздо сложнее, чем отношения принцесс и принцев из фольклорных сказок. Именно ради Розы главный герой жертвует материальной оболочкой и выбирает телесную смерть. В сказке очень сильны романтические традиции. Во-первых, выбор именно жанра сказки. Не случайно романтики обращаются к жанрам фольклора. Он является детством человечества, а в романтизме тема детства – одна из ключевых.

Так как «Маленький принц» является произведением философским, писатель в нем поднимает в обобщенно-отвлеченном виде глобальные проблемы. Экзюпери здесь рассматривает тему Зла в разных аспектах. С одной стороны, это зло внутри отдельного человека, то есть некое «микрозло». Это внутренняя опустошенность, омертвелость жителей планет, олицетворяющих собой все пороки, присущие людям. Автор подчеркивает, насколько драматичен и мелочен мир, современный ему. Однако Сент-Экзюпери совершенно не является пессимистом. Автор верит в то, что подобно Маленькому принцу, человечество когда-нибудь сумеет постичь тайну бытия, и каждый человек когда-нибудь сможет найти свою путеводную звезду, и она будет освещать его путь.

Второй аспект – «макрозло». Баобабы в произведении Экзюпери – это персонифицированный образ зла. Одно из толкований данного метафорического образа связано с фашизмом. Писатель хотел, что все люди заботливо выкорчевывали «баобабы», несущие в себе зло грозившие разорвать на части планету. Писатель просит: «Берегитесь баобабов!».

Неразрешимым является и конфликт между Маленьким принцем и жителями планет – «странными взрослыми». Они никогда не смогут понять принца-ребенка, они чужды друг к другу, глухи и слепы к порыву души и зову сердца. Трагедия этих людей заключается в тот, что у них нет стремления стать Личностью. Эти «серьезные люди» живут в своем, искусственно созданном мирке, отгородившись от всех остальных. У каждого человека своя планета. Эти люди свой мирок считают истинным смыслом бытия. Они никогда не смогут познать, что такое настоящая любовь, истинная дружба и красота. Отсюда вытекает принцип двоемирия – основной принцип романтизма. Мру обывателя, которому духовное начало недоступно, и миру художника (автор, Маленький принц, Роза, Лис), которому характерны нравственные качества, никогда не соприкоснуться. Лишь Художник может увидеть сущность окружающего мира – его гармонию и внутреннюю красоту.