Mais les yeux sont aveugles, Il faut chercher avec le cœur (Le Petit Prince)
When Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s short “conte” Le Petit Prince was published in the mid nineteen forties, many critics opined that it was a good children’s book, and a quaint distraction from the writer’s more serious writings like Courrier Sud and Terre des Hommes. Even in 1966, the French essayist Gaëtan Picon declared that Le Petit Prince was “un conte charmant” (83) and nothing more. Yet, more than seventy years after its publication, this philosophical fablehas become one of the most beloved and admired books in the French literary canon. Translated in over two hundred and fifty languages – including Latin and braille – it is placed on the list of all best-selling books ever published in the world, and is also considered one of the best ever written. In 1999, for example, when the French newspaper Le Monde published a list of the one hundred best books of the 20th century, Le Petit Prince was listed in 4th position. Today, this beautiful parable about an extraterrestrial “Petit Prince”, who visits Earth from a tiny asteroid, is regarded as one of greatest classics of all times.
The circumstances of the composition of Le Petit Prince are known in detail, thanks to Stacy Schiff’s biography of the author. The textwas written during Saint-Exupéry’s unhappy exile from France during World War II. He had sought refuge in the United States in December 1940, but, once there, he started to feel cut off from France and from his family. Saint-Exupéry’s Salvadoran wife Consuelo had stayed behind in France (although she would join him later in the US) and their marriage was not working out very well at that time. He was deeply involved with one of his aristocratic mistresses, “the stunning wife of a Brazilian Prince, Nada de Brigance” (Schiff 370), and with other transitory lovers like Sylvia Reinhardt (Schiff 372). He soon started to suffer from ill health, and, in the summer of 1941, he was admitted to hospital in Los Angeles. According to Paul Webster (243-44) it is probably during these acute moments of loneliness, as he lingered in an isolation ward, that Le Petit Prince was conceived. After Saint-Exupéry left the hospital, he was very depressed. In an attempt to lift his spirits, Elizabeth Reynal, the wife of one of his US publishers, suggested that he work on a book for children; it is thus that he started working on what would eventually become his most famous work of all. Curtis Hitchcock, his American publisher, claims to have commissioned the book after seeing Saint-Exupéry’s sketch of a golden-haired little boy on a restaurant table cloth in 1941 (Webster 244). Although it only took Saint-Exupéry three months to complete the manuscript, it is probable that the project had been close to his heart for a very long time.
Le Petit Prince is a short book: it contains one hundred and fifteen pages of text which are interspersed with forty-six whimsical watercolour illustrations of varying sizes, drawn by the author himself. These illustrations form an integral part of the story; they help the readers to “see” the characters and places that are mentioned in the book. The story itself is divided into twenty-seven short chapters ranging in length from one page to nine pages. It is told from the point of view of a first person narrator, a pilot, and is based on one of Saint-Exupéry’s previous memoirs Terre des Hommes, published in 1939.
Le Petit Prince starts with a dedication to one of Saint-Exupéry’s closest friends – the writer and art critic Léon Werth (1878–1955) – or rather to “l’enfant qu’a été autrefois cette grande personne” [“the child he once was”] (Petit Prince 7). [Quotations from Le Petit Prince will henceforth be indicated by the letters PP, followed by the page number.] In the very first pages of the “conte” the narrator/pilot explains how when he was six he was thwarted in his aspiration to become an artist. When he showed his drawing of an elephant being digested in the stomach of a boa constrictor to adults, they all saw his drawing as being that of a hat; they would advise him to set aside his artistic ambitions and to take up a more practical, mature hobby. He thus laments the adults’ lack of creative understanding, for, as he puts it: “c’est fatigant, pour les enfants, de toujours et toujours leur donner des explications [“it is tiring for children to have to explain things over and over to them”] (PP 11). Now, as an adult, the narrator has become a pilot; he has often flown solo, and thus has always felt alone in the world.
The plot of the story begins in chapter 2. The narrator/pilot explains how six years earlier he crash-landed in the Sahara desert. As he was frantically attempting to repair his plane before running out of water, he was accosted by a tiny apparition, that of the “Petit Prince”, a boy with golden hair who seemed to appear out of nowhere. When the boy made a most incongruous request to the pilot to draw him a sheep: “S’il vous plaît ... dessine moi un mouton” (PP 14), the pilot showed him his old picture of the elephant inside the snake, which the “Petit Prince” interpreted correctly. However, he told the pilot that he did not want a picture of an elephant in a boa, and again asked the pilot to draw him a sheep. After a few failed attempts at drawing a sheep that would please the “Petit Prince”, the pilot drew a box that had three holes on one side of the box, claiming that the box held a sheep inside it. To his complete amazement, the little boy exclaimed that this was exactly the picture that he wanted. The “Petit Prince” was thus capable of seeing beyond what the eye can see, and of creating the meaning of things with his heart. Immediately, the pilot found a kindred spirit in him and no longer felt alone. And so begins the story of the relationship between this “Petit Prince” and the narrator/pilot.
From chapters 3 to 9 the “Petit Prince” recounts the story of his life to the pilot, over a period of eight days. He lives on a tiny planet – the B612 asteroid. It houses two active volcanoes and a dormant one, which the “Petit Prince” cleans and rakes every day. Also living on his planet are the seeds of rose bushes, which are good, and the seeds of the baobab trees, which are dangerous. If the seeds of the baobab are allowed to take root on the surface, they will grow into gigantic trees, overtake his tiny planet, and eventually rip it apart. That is why he is constantly uprooting new shoots of the baobab so as to prevent them from infesting his whole planet. The “Petit Prince” tells the pilot that the reason he wants to own a sheep is because they can eat these undesirable baobab plants; but the narrator informs him that a sheep will also eat roses, even those that have thorns.
Then the “Petit Prince” mentions his affection for a mysterious beautiful animate Rose who suddenly began sprouting and growing petals on the asteroid’s surface. He lovingly took care of her; watched her grow; nourished her; and made a glass globe to protect her from the cold windy nights. She had four thorns and was very beautiful; but she was also vain, proud, flirtatious and manipulative. Although the “Petit Prince” loved her, he also realized that she was taking advantage of his affection for her. Thus he decided to leave his planet and to visit other planets, so as to escape her tyrannical demands. Taking advantage of a flight of migrating birds, he travelled onward through the cosmos.
From chapters 10 to 15 the “Petit Prince” recounts his visit to six planets before arriving on Earth, each one inhabited by a foolish, narrow-minded adult. These adults represent self-obsessed and deluded people who assume that the world revolves around them; they live mechanical, empty lives. First there is the King who believes that he rules over the entire universe, although he has no subjects on whom to rule. Then the “Petit Prince” meets a conceited man, the sole inhabitant of his planet who believes that he is the richest and most handsome man of his domain. On the third planet lives a drunkard who drinks in order to forget the shame of being a drunk. On the fourth one lives a businessman who only believes in numbers, and claims to own all the stars, even though he cannot remember what they are called. After leaving this planet, the “Petit Prince” meets a lamplighter who extinguishes and relights a lamp every single minute. At first, the lamplighter’s actions seem absurd and without any real purpose at all; but later his selfless devotion to his orders earns him the admiration of the “Petit Prince”, because at least he is taking care of something other than himself. The last person the “Petit Prince” encounters before he lands on Earth is an elderly geographer who has never explored the world that he claims to be mapping because he prefers to leave that task to explorers. However, the geographer asks le “Petit Prince” to describe his home, and the young Prince mentions his Rose, to which the geographer replies that he does not list flowers because of their ephemeral nature. His comments on the frail nature of flowers reveals to the “Petit Prince” that his own flower on his tiny planet is fragile, and her existence transitory. This is when the “Petit Prince” decides to visit Earth.
From chapters 16 to 19 the “Petit Prince” describes his arrival on planet Earth. For a while he is all alone until he meets a yellow snake who tells him that he is in the desert, where few men live; but that one can also be alone among the company of men. The snake also tells him that, despite his thin and frail appearance, he has mastered life’s mysteries, and that he has the power to return him to his planet whenever he wishes to go back there. The snake with his poisonous bite and his biblical allusions can be seen as a symbol of the unavoidable phenomenon of death. After a few more futile attempts at trying to find companionship on earth, the “Petit Prince” arrives in a garden where he comes across five thousand rosebushes in full bloom. The sight of the rose bushes leads to the realisation that his Rose is not unique after all, but merely one common flower among thousands. He sadly admits that: “Je me croyais riche d’une fleur unique, et je ne possède qu’une rose ordinaire [...] Et, couché dans l’herbe, il pleura” [“I thought that I possessed a unique flower; and I only own an ordinary rose … And lying there in the grass, he started to cry”] (PP 83). As the “Petit Prince” is mourning the ordinariness of his Rose, a Fox comes along quite suddenly, and speaks to him.
The Fox has a very special interest in people because they raise chickens and he was wonderinf if the “Petit Prince” was also looking for chickens. If that was the case, then the “Petit Prince” would be competing with him; but the “Petit Prince” replied that he was only looking for people to befriend. The Fox explains that one can only become friends with someone else by creating bonds with that person, and by taming him or her. The act of taming someone makes this person special because “On ne connaît que les choses que l’on apprivoise […] Tu deviens responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as apprivoisé” [“We only know those we have tamed (…). You are always responsible for those that you have tamed”] (PP 88-92). The Fox also tells the “Petit Prince” that, despite all the hundreds of roses he has just seen in the garden, his Rose really is unique and special because he loves her, cares for her, and has tamed her; and that she has tamed him as well. It was the time that he has spent with his Rose that has made her so special. And, then, finally, the Fox told him this secret: “On ne voit bien qua’vec le cœur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux” [“It is only through the heart that one can really see; what is essential is invisible to the eye”] (PP 92). To the Fox, this is the point of existence – caring for and showing solidarity with others. This is what was missing in the inhabitants of the planets visited by the “Petit Prince”: an emotional attachment to others.
The “Petit Prince” then remembers that back on his own planet there grows a single helpless Rose, who needs him, and that his task is to care for her. This realization makes him discover the true nature of his relationship with his Rose: that it is his responsibility to the Rose that makes her special to him. He also learns that he should look with his heart, and not with his eyes. After teaching the “Petit Prince” this important lesson, the Fox bids him goodbye. After the Fox leaves, the “Petit Prince” meets “un auguilleur” [“a railway pointsman”] who describes how passengers are constantly rushing from one place to another aboard trains. On a metaphorical level these travellers represent people who are never satisfied with anything, and who do not even know what it is that they are after. After the pointsman, the “Petit Prince” comes across a merchant who is selling pills that eliminate thirst and can save a calculated fifty-three minutes from every week spent drinking. The pill in this story can be seen as a symbol for the consumption of useless goods by humans. It is after his meeting with the merchant of pills that the “Petit Prince” meets the narrator/pilot.
It is now the eighth day after the pilot’s plane-crash; he has just drunk the last drop of his water supply, and he worries that both he and the “Petit Prince” will die of thirst. They both set out to find a well in the middle of a desert and come across one at daybreak; but this is no ordinary water, because “Elle était bonne pour le coeur” [“It was good for the heart”] (PP 100). In other words, it contains the meaning of life for both of them, as it is born out of friendship, and out of a feeling of togetherness. Finding and sharing this water satisfies their physical and spiritual thirst.
The pilot has repaired his plane, so he will be able to fly away; and now that the “Petit Prince” has transmitted his message of love and solidarity to the pilot, he, too, will be going back home soon. Later on, the pilot overhears the “Petit Prince” talking to a yellow snake, discussing his return home to his asteroid and talking about his eagerness to reunite with his Rose; but before he leaves he gives the pilot the gift of hearing laughing stars, a gift that no one else possesses. The “Petit Prince” allows the snake to bite him; he falls gently in the sand without making a sound. The next morning, when the pilot tries to find the “Petit Prince”, his body has disappeared, for he has left for his planet. The story ends with the narrator’s drawing of the landscape where the pilot first met the “Petit Prince”, and where the snake took his life. The narrator then asks his readers to contact him immediately if they ever encounter, in the African desert, a golden-haired little boy with an infectious laugh, who refuses to answer questions.
Le Petit Prince is replete with themes, motifs and symbols which help illuminate the real message of the story. The most important theme is undoubtedly the Prince’s love for his Rose; he leaves his planet because of her unpredictability. She permeates all his discussions with the narrator, and, eventually, she becomes the reason he wants to return to his planet. There are many theories about who the Rose really represents. Traditionally, in literature, the rose is a symbol for love and femininity as seen in the poems of Dante and Ronsard; but, in this story she is presented as vain and manipulative. According to Maria de Crisenoy, the Rose is a metaphor for the writer’s first love, the poet Louise de Vilmorin, with whom he became engaged but never married because of her higher social status (67). Other critics, however, such as Adam Gopnik, believe that the Rose is a symbol of his Salvadoran wife, Consuelo, and that the conflict between her and the “Petit Prince” represents Saint-Exupéry’s stormy relationship with her. For Gopnik, the central love story of the Prince and the Rose derives from Saint-Exupéry’s stormy love affair with his wife Consuelo, from whom the Rose takes her cough, her flightiness, her imperiousness and her sudden swoons.
Indeed, there are numerous similarities between the Rose and Consuelo: the Rose is vain – “Ainsi l’avait-elle tourmenté par sa vanité un peu ombrageuse” (PP 40); she is complicated – “Cette fleur est bien compliquée ” (PP 41); she is proud – “C’etait une fleur tellement orgueilleuse” (PP 44). There is nothing exceptional about her – “Je me croyais riche d’une fleur unique, et je ne possède qu’une rose ordinaire […] Et voici qu’il en était cinq mille, toutes semblables, dans un seul jardin ! ” (PP 83). But later, during his travels, he remarks that “Je n’aurais jamais dû m’enfuir” [“I should never have run away”] (PP 42). One can argue that this is a confession by Saint-Exupéry that he should not have left Consuelo in France, and fled to the US where he took numerous lovers.
However, other critics like Eugen Drewermann, believe that the Rose is in fact a metaphor for Saint-Exupéry’s mother. He states: “la personne dont cet enfant parle, […] celle qu’il aime par-dessus tout, ne peut être que sa mère” [“the person about whom the child is talking, (…) the person that he loves above all else, can only be his mother”] (85). Drewermann explains how in the conversation between the “Petit Prince” and the Rose they always use the formal pronoun “vous”. The use of the formal “vous” rather than the use of the pronoun “tu” is revealing here: it was customary in all aristocratic families at that time, such as the Saint-Exupéry’s (his father was a count, and his mother a countess) to use the formal pronoun “vous” when addressing one another. Therefore this conversation is probably modelled on real conversations which took place among members of the Saint-Exupéry family, especially between Saint-Exupéry and his mother.
There is an illustration of the “Petit Prince” standing on his small planet, the asteroid B 612, at the end of chapter three. Again, according to Drewermann, from a psychoanalytical perspective the two volcanoes on the planet can be interpreted as a visual metaphor for the breasts of his mother, whereas the four tiny flowers which surround the “Petit Prince” represent his four siblings, fed by the generous bosom of their mother. The Rose demands to be looked after and to be protected. The question remains what or who does she (the mother) need protection from? Antoine’s father had died of a cerebral hemorrhage when Antoine was only four. Consequently, his mother surrounded herself with her five children, and felt safe in the knowledge that they were her security blanket, protecting them from other predatory suitors. When the Rose says “ils peuvent venir les tigres avec leurs griffes, […] je ne crains rien des tigres” [“Let them come, these tigers (…), I am not scared of them”] (PP 40-41), we could see in the image of the tiger a metaphor for the libidinous and predatory males trying to seduce Antoine’s mother. Little by little the “Petit Prince” understands that the new flower (his mother) has gathered around its stems a few thorns (her children) for self-protection, and has entrusted to her eldest son (Antoine) the role of a knight protector, which is a very heavy burden for one so young. [Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was the fourth of five children; he had three older sisters and a younger brother.] When the “Petit Prince” confides to the pilot: “Je n’ai alors rien su comprendre” [“I did not understand anything then”] (PP 42), he means that he should have guessed the affection behind the ruses of his mother; but “j’étais trop jeune pour savoir l’aimer” [“I was too young to love her”] (PP42).
Saint Exupéry spent much time working on the illustrations in the story. He had often insisted on being the ultimate judge on their placement, their sizes, their colour and on the texts to accompany the illustrations. We know that he worked very hard on the illustration of the baobab, which is impressive and also very symbolic. In the printed book, the illustration of the baobab takes a full page, and is named at the bottom of page 31. On a metaphorical level, the baobab represents unknown dangers, and is designed specifically to warn children against these dangers: “Enfants! Faites attention aux baobabs” [“Children beware of the baobab trees’] (PP30), says the narrator as he echoes the words of the “Petit Prince”. The baobab symbolizes unknown forces; if left unchecked, they can become dangerous, which is why the “Petit Prince” is constantly uprooting these undesirable young plants as soon as they appear. In this context the baobab trees can be seen as a metaphor for grown-ups who are capable of crushing and smothering the aspirations and independence of children, whom they want to mold and fashion in their own image. However, there are other researchers, like Rita Reif, who believe that the dangerous fearsome baobab trees attempting to destroy the planet have a darker and more sinister meaning. They represent “the author's visual metaphor for Nazism”.
As far as the real baobab trees are concerned, Saint-Exupéry knew them well; he had lived for a while in Africa at Cap Juby, in Southern Morocco, and, while there, he had come into contact with the Berber language and had probably found out that Baobab was known as “l’arbre à l’envers” [“The upside – down tree”]. Although in many parts of Africa the baobab tree is known as “The Tree of Life”, and is an icon of the African savannah and a symbol of life and positivity in a landscape where little else can thrive, in the story the narrator/pilot insists on the dangerous aspects of the baobab tree.
A great deal of symbolism can be attached to the Fox in this story. He often appears in many French “contes” and is the animal that most represents human characteristics. He can be contradictory or sly; he is either a likeable figure, or a worrying one. In short, he represents humanity. In Le Petit Prince he is a natural, calm creature, a friend who will help the “Petit Prince” to surmount incredible odds, to confront and resolve his quest. Many critics postulate that the wise Fox represents the young New York journalist Sylvia Reinhardt, with whom the author had a brief, but amicable affair. But other critics believe that, in the illustration of the Fox which appears on page 86, the Fox resembles Anubis, the ancient Egyptian jackal-God of mummification. He assisted in the rites which allowed a dead person to make the transition from this world to the underworld. Symbolically, like Anubis, the Fox here helps the “Petit Prince” to make the transition from his state of confusion to one of enlightenment, of understanding the true nature of love, forgiveness and friendship.
Critics have offered conflicting and divergent theories concerning the author’s inspiration for the “Petit Prince”. Collette Branchu posits that the young prince is based on the writer himself, when he was a child. For her, Saint-Exupéry writes about himself through his depiction of this wise little boy who questions the mysteries of life, such as friendship, loneliness, attachment, love, and death (28). Eugen Drewermann agrees with this interpretation. For him Le Petit Prince should be read as the coded message of childhood as experienced by Saint-Exupéry himself. It should be seen as “une espèce de rêve régénérateur personnel” [“a kind of personal regenerative dream”] (79), for it was written at a time when the author was suffering from some form of existential crisis. Paul Webster also believes that the hero of the story is none other than Saint-Exupéry himself, the blond-haired little boy that he was before he left the magic garden at Saint-Maurice castle where he spent his summer holidays (246). Again according to Webster, Saint-Exupéry used this story to write about his personal distress over his mariage to Consuelo, and about the emptiness of his liaisons with other women. For Webster, the conversations between the Prince and the Rose seem to echo the conversations about fidelity that took place between the couple during the summer of 1942. Webster further adds that, while he was writing the story, he and Consuelo were making a last-ditch attempt to make their marriage work.
However, other critics believe that the “Petit Prince” is modelled on Saint-Exupéry’s young blond-haired brother François, who died of rheumatic fever when he was fifteen. There is also a suggestion that the “Petit Prince” is based on a young eight-year-old boy with curly blond hair, Thomas de Koninck, whom the author met while he stayed with a family in Canada in 1942, though de Koninck has denied this. As far as the field of Roses is concerned, it can be seen as a metaphor for the other mistresses of the author; it is probably Saint-Exupéry’s own acknowledgement that, despite the numerous affairs he had with other women, in the end, only his “Rose” Consuelo mattered, for she was unique. Although the Saint-Exupérys had a tempestuous marriage, he still chose to depict the Rose as someone who needs tender and loving care.
While Le Petit Prince presents itself as a tale for children, it is, nevertheless, a moral allegory, a parable, for as Saint-Exupéry says in his story “je n’aime pas qu’on lise mon livre à la légère” [“I would not want people to take my book lightly”] (PP24). The “conte” can also be viewed as a fable, as there are animals and flowers that talk to the “Petit Prince” and teach him about things that matter. Alternatively, Le Petit Prince could also be seen as a pieceof fantasy writing, or as a science-fiction story, in which a visitor from another planet falls to Earth, communicates with all kinds of beings, and tells the narrator about his adventures.
On the 31st of July 1944, while taking part in war activities, Saint-Exupéry flew off in his unarmed Lighting P-38 plane, on an assigned reconnaissance mission. He disappeared over the ocean, shot by enemy fire. Unfortunately, he never saw the publication of the French edition of Le Petit Prince as it was released in France in 1945. Today, the story continues to enchant children and adults alike everywhere. As well as the numerous translations of the story, there also exist musical, operatic, ballet, stage and film versions of the story. Probably the best-known cinematic version of the story to date is the musical adaptation that Paramount Pictures released in 1974, starring Gene Wilder in the role of the Fox, and with music by Lerner and Loewe. Recently, computer animated versions of the Petit Prince in Russian, French, English, Japanese and Swedish have been released. A big budget animated film version of the “conte”, voiced by famous French and Hollywood stars had its world premiere at the Cannes Festival in May 2015.
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Citation: Tirven-Gadum, Vina. "Le Petit Prince". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 August 2015 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16832, accessed 16 October 2024.]
