What You See, When You Close Your Eyes
Book Review of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
I would have liked to begin this story in the manner of a fairy tale.
I would have liked to write:
‘Once upon a time there was a little prince
who lived on a planet scarcely bigger than himself,
and who was in need of a friend…’
To those who understand life,
that would have a much greater air of truth.
(De Saint-Exupéry 1995, 18)
Come on, come on, hurry, or we might miss it! Take bigger steps than you ever thought possible, push back against the wind slowing you down, and set your lungs on fire! Let us run barefoot through tall grass and over warm sand until every inch of our body aches, feel the pain and laugh out loud, because you know, we know, we will not be late. There is no time to catch your breath. This is important and we cannot miss it: the sunset. We are here! The sun paints the sky in the most magnificent oranges, yellows, blues and pinks. Rays of light write words in the clouds that read like poetry, grass tickles our toes and the sun kisses, caresses our skin. Let your eyes drink in the sight, as the day draws its last breath. The day has to die to make space for a new one to be born. During such a moment, you can either mourn the day that was, wish it to come back, or you can find joy and excitement in the day that will soon arrive. Can you even imagine that there is a planet where the sun sets forty-three times a day? Where you do not have to make haste as we just did? Where you only have to move your chair a little to see the next one? Believe it or not, it exists.
Now that the sun has gone to sleep, we might be able to catch a glimpse of this planet. Light makes space for darkness waking up the moon. The stars wipe the sleep from their eyes to show their faces. If you lay down on your back you can see them better. The world disappears from view, all you see is the sky showing off its glittering treasures. There it is, the planet I was talking about. It’s a tiny planet, not much bigger than a house. If you squint your eyes you can spot it. The little prince lives there, with his rose, his three volcanoes, and the baobab trees. ‘‘Asteroid B 612’’ (15) is what the planet is called, or at least it is what grown-ups call it, since they just love numbering, systemising and explaining beautiful things that have no number, do not fit in a system and are inexplicable. The little prince did not always stay on his asteroid. He left it for a while to travel to other planets, one of these was our home planet: Earth. That is where he met Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who was a pilot stranded in the Sahara desert after his plane had crashed during a record flight. While he was trying to fix it, he heard a little voice saying: ‘‘If you please draw me a sheep!’’ (5). This is how he met the little prince. Six years later, in 1942, De Saint-Exupéry wrote a book about his experience, named after the little prince himself.
De Saint-Exupéry writes about what the little prince tells him about his life on Asteroid B 612, about the rose he has to protect, about the volcanoes he has to clean to stop them from erupting, about the baobabs he has to uproot to make sure they do not destroy the planet, and about the countless sunsets he can watch by just moving his chair a little. He also talks about how he has travelled to other planets. On the first planet he visited, he met a king with no subjects, then he continued to a planet inhabited by a conceited man without any admirers, his journey took him further to a planet where a drunk was drinking to forget how ashamed he was for his drinking. Again on different planets, he met a businessman, who fancied himself the owner of the stars, a lamplighter, who could never rest, and a geographer, who has never travelled. After visiting these planets, he came to the planet Earth, inhabited by ‘‘one-hundred-and-eleven kings […], seven thousand geographers, nine hundred thousand businessmen, seven-and-a-half million drunks, three-hundred-and-eleven million conceited men… In other words, approximately two billion grown-ups’’ (77). During his visit he met several animals and people, who showed him what life on earth is like. The first animal he met was a snake, a small animal, who wields greater power than any king. The snake explained this power to the little prince: ‘‘Whomever I touch […] I return them to the earth from whence they came’’ (82). Moreover, the little prince met two people, first he crossed paths with a railway pointsman, who told him about the people in the trains, rushing from one place to the next, never satisfied with where they are, never knowing where they are going, always on the go. ‘‘Only the children are flattening their noses against the window panes. […] They’re the lucky ones’’ (104). After this encounter, he met a fox who taught the little prince how to tame him. A process which transforms something, or someone from being ordinary to being unique and one of a kind. Now, in the Sahara desert, after all his travels, the little prince longs to go back home, to his planet, to his rose, to his sunsets. He remembers what the snake told him and asks the animal to bring him back home. He will go back, leaving behind the old shell that is his heavy body. The pilot is sad to see the little prince go, therefore he ends his narration with a request for anybody who meets a boy with golden curls, a boy that never answers any of your questions, to alert him that the little prince has returned.
This story about the little prince fits well among classics like Aesop’s and Jean de la Fontaine’s fables, Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales, George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and more recent works like Carlie Mackery’s The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, James Norbury’s Big Panda and Tiny Dragon and Toon Tellegen’s fables. I can only describe it as a poetic modern fairy tale with an incredible philosophical depth to it. The story warms my heart, time and again. I certainly recommend reading and rereading it, not only because it is a short book that does not take too long to read, but especially because it provokes its reader’s thoughts and pushes them to reflect on it. The Little Prince wants to be shared and discussed. I myself have read it several times now, and every time I read it I discover something new: a new quote I had not really noticed before, a new meaning hiding just behind the words, a new thought I had not yet stumbled upon.
Once you have read The Little Prince, it will take hold of you and never let you go. Time and again, I realise just how strong the hold of this story on one’s heart is. When I worked in a bookshop, customers, many a time, bought a copy of the book and told me with proud smiles on their faces that they collected copies from the different languages of the places they had visited. They showed me pictures of their The Little Prince bookshelves, which were way more than just a display of different copies of the book in different languages. These shelves, told stories of the journeys these proud owners had been on, what they had seen, the people they had met along the way. There is so much more beneath the surface, for those who are willing to look further than a picture, further than a children’s story about a little prince, for those who actually see that this book is trying to teach us a certain way of life.
This way of life is important for all grown-ups. De Saint-Exupéry dedicated this book to children and to the grown-ups that can still remember they once were children, even though he thinks few of them do. The Little Prince teaches us to tap into our inner child, the child that has been silenced over the years, but that is still alive in each of us. The child that can forget all the systems, numbers, figures, and binaries we have forced our world into. The child that keeps asking questions without giving up, without preformulating the answers, without prejudice, without reasoning from an existing paradigm. The child that does not simply put labels on the people, animals, nature and other entities in this world, but actually looks at them with wonder, curiosity, and imagination. It sees everything as if for the very first time since it can still be in awe of the world. On page 101, De Saint-Exupéry (1995) lets us in on a secret: ‘‘very simply: you can only see things clearly with your heart. What is essential, is invisible to the eye’’ (101). There is so much more than our eyes can see, there is more behind the numbers, definitions, systems, divisions and binaries. The world is more complicated and more beautiful. Let us close our grown-up eyes that have been shaped by paradigms, prejudices, and labels in order to enable our children’s eyes to be opened. Those are the eyes of our hearts that look at the world with wonder and without judgement. Let us take the time to fill the pockets in our heads and in our hearts with the sights these eyes give us.
The stars shine bright tonight. The skies are clear and Asteroid B 612 is visible. If one day, in the future, you look up at the night sky and you cannot see it, that is fine. Now you know it exists, you will see it everywhere, even when it’s invisible. If you listen closely you will hear the little prince’s voice: ‘‘At night, you will look up at the stars. Mine is too small to point out to you. It is better that way. For you, my star will be just one of many stars. That way, you will love watching all of them’’ (122).
Bibliography
De Saint-Exupéry, Antoine. 1995. The Little Prince. Translated by T.V.F. Cuffe. London: Puffin Books.