401402's Full Review: Antoine De Saint-Exupery and Bonifacio Del Carril ...
I was really shocked when I had to realize that there is no review yet about THE book. After The Bible and Tao Te King from Loa Tse it must be the third most translated and possibly most famous children and family book in the world. And there is nobody who wants to write about it?
Well, quite the right challenge for me then! So I put my brand new Sennheiser 580 on, switch to the Atmospheres channel at DirecTV (Pagan Saints, from CD Flesh and Bone is just running, so I just needed to take a pause and order it quickly on Amazon, incredible - a job less than of 1 minute!) and think back, way back when I first got my very first copy from my mother at the age of about 8 or 9. Since then I have owned about 50! copies in several languages and somehow I never had one longer than some weeks in the shelf. And I always replaced it kind of immediately. I do not know of any book making such a warming and meaningful gift to a friend, colleague, children or spouse than this one. And I do not know of any family over there in Europe that would not have at least one copy! Really!
Why is that? Well, probably for the same very reason you find about 1,000 Internet sites about the book. All created by people like me who always loved it, always got it out of the shelf every now and then to get inspired, to dream away, to follow track with your fantasy or simply feel like a kid again. Most importantly: to loose all day-in-day-out civilization-get-things-done-and-forget-about-your-inner-self stuff and become a little prince yourself who discovers the universe, makes friends with the most passionate and naïve openness ever imagined.
The Author
French author Antoine de Saint-Exupery, born in 1900 in Lyon, France, pilot pioneer from 1927 in some dangerous missions (Sahara, Mediterranean etc. where he started to experience his vision of friendship, solitude, the meaning of life and liberty), pilot in WWII against the German's. After Germany's takeover (he could never accept the defeat) he left France and published this book (ISBN 0844276227) in New York with immediate success. In 1942 he joined the American Army, facing refuse over his desire to fight against the German's at the French Front, he finally succeeded and was given an airplane that he took to some successful missions over Africa and over his occupied home country. On July 31st 1944 he went to his final mission where his plane was shot by the German's over the Mediterranean. I believe he finally found piece, joy and glory there.
Exupery is known as one of the most famous French authors of all time. His work The little Prince, though, remains the absolutely outstanding piece of art a human has ever brought to paper as you will experience for all your life, once you have bought this book!
The Book
The story starts when the author describes a drawing he had made as a child where a Boa Constrictor has swallowed an elephant after he was reading about these incredible species. Excited about his elephant in a snake he showed the picture around to many adults and of his questions what the picture might show, everyone answered him: "a hat". Disappointed about such a lack of fantasy he decided to live alone all his life and thus became a pilot later where he had to face some lonely but wonderful years. Once he got stranded in the African desert and did not see any chance to survive due to the absence of any material or tools to fix his plane he prepared to die in the sand when…
…a sweet, small and open voice asked him: "If you please-- draw me a sheep!". With surprise but growing hope and amazement about this little prince, standing in front of him and asking for a picture of a sheep, he began to draw and after a couple of rejected drafts (including his famous picture of the Boa with the elephant - the prince would recognize the digested elephant of course) he decided to draw a box with holes and the sheep inside. "That is exactly the way I wanted it! Do you think that this sheep will have to have a great deal of grass?"
"Why?"
"Because where I live everything is very small..."
"There will surely be enough grass for him," I said. "It is a very small sheep that I have given you." He bent his head over the drawing: "Not so small that-- Look! He has gone to sleep..."
And that was how the pilot made the acquaintance of the little prince.
What follows is the stories the little prince would tell the man about adventure when coming down from is planet to see some other worlds, learn about people and make friends. Everything is told in a language that almost makes you cry all the time. The tiny little prince in his innocence and longing for all good things, for getting to know every place and everyone with great and loving curiosity, he is not only a wanderer but messenger of simplicity, fantasy, love, friendship and childish naivity. The stories are of such profound and deeply moving riddles and lace with philosophy and poetic metaphors ("What is essential is invisible to the eye...").
Meeting all sorts of weird people, trying to understand their behavior (wonderful persiflage of the adult's world!) the little prince would always ask questions and answer them himself in his childish and all natural understanding of most honest and beloved values that you always feel to have this little boy holding in your arms while reading. When he met the fox he made his own experience of friendship, and leaving a friend. His explanations of the pain of leaving a friend are so moving that I have to quote a couple of sentences here:
So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near--
"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."
"It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted meto tame you..."
"Yes, that is so," said the fox.
"But now you are going to cry!" said the little prince.
"Yes, that is so," said the fox.
"Then it has done you no good at all!"
"It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields." And then he added:
"Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret."
The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.
"You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world."
And the roses were very much embarrassed.
"You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an
ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you-- the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.
And he went back to meet the fox.
"Goodbye," he said.
"Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
"What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to
remember.
"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."
"It is the time I have wasted for my rose--" said the little prince, so that he would be sure to
remember.
"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose..."
"I am responsible for my rose," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
I have never seen a book that is equally beloved and valued from individuals of all ages. This alone proves that there is a treasure in our world that goes way beyond all imagination of a good read. In fact, it is much more than that. It is a friend for your life, a little prince in your heart who would always remind you that all important things in life can be found within you and are for free all around us!
Of all the thousands of Internet pages you can find (try any search engine, you'll be surprised!!!) I only want to give you one link today as a very special present. This is my very special Thank You for all readers of this review, giving you the whole book (including illustrations) on the Internet. I bet you won't get back to Epinions.com tonight and get to buy the book tomorrow! Have a wonderful night tonight, I am with you when you put this link into your browser and dream away with the little prince for the rest of your life…
http://www.elpa.post.ru/win/MP/EN/I.html
Well, I just could not resist, here are some more wonderful links to the little prince:
This Spanish language edition of the classic story features the format of the bestselling 100th anniversary edition of The Little Prince , published i...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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