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The Book
There are no other books quite like The Little Prince. It functions as both a children's book and a complex philosophical work. It has sold 200 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling books in publishing history. It has also been translated into over 250 languages, with some estimates being as high as 658 languages and dialects. This makes it the most translated non-religious text.
“To be understood [The Little Prince] needs a heart stretched to the utmost by suffering and love, the kind of heart that, luckily, is not often found in children.” P.L. Travers, author of Mary Poppins
What Changed in the Play
The Little Prince has been adapted to many formats, including radio plays, film, opera, ballet, and theatre (two notable musical adaptations and this play). In this particular adaptation, certain aspects of the text are removed, including one of the men on the planet (the drunkard) and the men the Little Prince encounters on Earth (the railway switchman and the merchant). Many of the narrations from the Aviator are removed, many of which are expressive of his internal journey.
One such moment comes at the end of the novel. As the Little Prince is leaving the Aviator for the last time, he says, “Pourquoi fallait-il que j’eusse de la peine” or “Why must I feel this anguish.”
Antoine de
Saint-Exupéry
French writer, poet, journalist, aviator, and author of Le Petit Prince.
A Troubled Childhood
Saint-Exupéry was born in 1900 in Lyon, France. He long recalled his childhood as a happy time. He was a creative child and often conducted his own experiments and wrote romantic poetry about his family. He also gained a fascination with flying and aviation at a young age, which would lead him to his eventual career. He lost both his father and brother in childhood, which affected him deeply. He remained deeply immature and often found himself at odds with many adults in his life.
World War II & Writing Le Petit Prince
During WWII, Saint-Exupéry transitioned from flying mail to joining reconnaissance missions under the French Air Force. He was outraged by those in the French community who refused to take a stand against German occupation. Endangered by his advocacy, he left for New York at the end of 1940. In 1942, he moved to Long Island, where he would write Le Petit Prince. His exile in the United States was a dark time in his life, filled with intense loneliness and despair. These emotions, along with his frustration with the war in Europe, are evident in much of the book he wrote. Many of the characters and events in the book pull from his life experiences, including the Rose, who is based on his wife.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
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At the start of WWII, Saint-Exupéry flew as a reserve military pilot in the French Air Force. After France’s defeat in 1940 he fled occupied France to North America. 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.
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The story drew on many of Saint-Exupéry’s own experiences. The most easily notable being when he and copilot-navigator André Prévot crashed in the Sahara after 19hrs and 44m in the air. They were attempting to break the speed record for a Paris-to-Saigon flight in a Caudron C-630 Simon plane. The pair experienced dehydration in the intense heat and both described seeing vivid hallucinations. On the fourth day, a Bedouin on a camel found them and rehydrated them saving their lives.
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Some connections to the author’s experiences are more representative such as the baobab trees which continually grasp onto the prince’s planet. They are thought to represent Nazism attempting to take over (which had been on a steady rise from before Saint-Exupéry’s plane crash through his service in WWII from 1939-1940 and certainly til the publication of The Little Prince in 1943l. The fox is believed to be modelled after the author’s NYC friend, Silvia Hamilton Reinhardt - as the iconic phrase “One sees clearly only with the heart” is believed to have been suggested by her.
Illustrations
When I asked Saint-Ex how the Little Prince had entered his life, he told me 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, ” Saint-Ex said. “I’m the Little Prince,” was the reply. -John Phillips, LIFE photojournalist
Saint-Exupéry went on to draw the beloved character in the margins of his letters and notebooks, many of which are archived at the Morgan Library in New York. In 1940 he doodled a friend a character with thinning hair, much like his own, wearing a bow-tie. He gave a similar drawing to Elizabeth Reynal, a French-speaking friend in New York, who eventually convinced him to weave his character into a children’s story. Click through the gallery to the right or visit the library's site linked below to view more!
