Second Reading: 44. A weekly series in which Eileen Battersbyrevisits titles from the literary canon.
A SMALL BOY sets off on a quest. But this is no ordinary quest, he is the Little Prince, responsible owner of three volcanoes and, already a prisoner of love, he is searching for friends and for truth. His odyssey takes him to foreign places; he has strange encounters, few of them pleasant, but he soldiers on because he has courage and hope. He is also fortunate enough to meet a wise fox who advises him: "Words are the source of misunderstandings." The same fox, intent on serving the boy well, also shares an important secret with him. "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly" says the fox, "what is essential is invisible to the eye." The Little Prince knows that these words are important; he repeats them, "so that he would be sure to remember."
The fox is aware that the boy's journey has been undertaken because of the demands made by his love for the beautiful flower he tends; the flower is petulant and ungrateful. But such is love. The fox explains that "it is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important." The fox offers wisdom far beyond the understanding of any of the men the Little Prince meets.
Oh yes, the humans inhabiting the various planets he visits prove a disappointing lot. One man is so conceited he spends his days waiting for people to admire him. But nobody comes. Another drinks the hours away, while another, a businessman, frantically counts the stars, failing to see their beauty and mystery, responding to them only as objects to acquire. Then there is the lamplighter who lights the lamps, only to extinguish them and light them again - because those are his orders, there is nothing else. The ways of men are odd indeed discovers the Little Prince.
Published in 1945 after Saint-Exupéry, a professional pilot who was flying reconnaissance missions for the US forces had disappeared somewhere over the North African desert or perhaps over the Mediterranean, The Little Princeis an elegant parable shaped by subtle wit and a sense of longing. The narrator is a pilot recalling an experience he had had, "in the Desert of Sahara" six years earlier. His tone is thoughtful, conversational: "Something was broken in my engine. And as I had with me neither mechanic nor any passengers, I set myself to attempt the difficult repairs all alone. It was a question of life or death for me: I had scarcely enough drinking water to last a week."
Saint-Exupéry wrote his gorgeous tale in bursts during a stay in New York. His friends knew what he was engaged upon as he sat with a little doll propped up on the arm of his sofa. The drawings are important, they hold the key because central to the story is the boy's awareness that adults tend to miss the point of most things; invariably failing to see the real picture at which they are looking.
Saint-Exupéry was both blessed and cursed in that he never lost touch with his childhood. Imagination, he believed, is our surest salvation. Also adding to the magic of the story is his understanding of loneliness and the solitude of flying. "The first night, then, I went to sleep on the sand, a thousand miles from any human habitation. I was more isolated than a shipwrecked sailor on a raft in the middle of the ocean."
Into this absolute solitude enters the Little Prince with his request: "If you please draw me a sheep!" The two engage in a strange conversation but an intense bond is formed when the boy discovers that the grounded narrator has also "come from the sky." This information encourages the boy to tell his story. At its heart is his tormented relationship with the flower. The graceful narrative dances on light, despite its dark realities. Saint-Exupéry's body was never found yet his most famous work, urging us to look beyond the prosaic, to listen to the music of life, continues to beguile.