Le Pétit Prince

I read The Little Prince some time ago, ages, ago; but I met him last year or perhaps the year before, in some class or another. It was probably European History; even if it wasn't, that's how I think I'll remember it. That would fit.

I have a beautiful copy of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, that was my mother's. I am looking at it right now, to write this. On the title page there are the words TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY KATHARINE WOODS. Someday soon I will take my Barnes and Noble giftcard and buy it in French; perhaps I can read it now. My friend, my Little Prince friend, would not approve. He does not like French. He says English is confusing enough for him, thank you very much, you can have your verb conjugations.

* * *

The reason I have The Little Prince in front of me now is because I was looking for a quote to begin a rather boring entry about how I am tired and stressed and sad of late, who knows why. I used my favorite site, quotegarden, to find one, and I saw this:

"It is such a secret place, the land of tears." ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

It is beautiful and very true, but it does not express how I felt today. Last night I felt very like I wanted to cry, but I didn't let myself. This is always a mistake; while I am unable to regulate the amount of sleep I get, my body is acutely aware of when it is getting short-changed on tears. That is not nearly so dramatic or sad as it sounds: just frustrating. Here is the quote for how I felt today:

" I didn't want my picture taken because I was going to cry. I didn't know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of my throat and I'd cry for a week. I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full." ~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

I know if I write an entry about this quote, though, I will probably begin to cry, and then I will never finish anything and certainly not my economics notes. So. The Little Prince.

* * *

Saint-Exupéry's Little Prince, like mine, came from a different planet than his narrator. They discuss things of great consequence--everything they talk of is of great consequence. The Little Prince only talks of things as if they were of great consequence. They do not understand each other, but they do understand each other.

My little prince friend and I talk about everything; school and philosophy mostly, and how I am feeling and what he is doing. He does not often talk about what he is feeling--that is my language, and occasionally I have to translate it for him. We weave in and out of sarcasm deftly; in and out of subjects abruptly; in and out of vocabulary clumsily. He is an optimist and a realist; I am a cynic and a idealist, or so we have decided. Or so I have decided. I don't think little princes have much need for labels one way or the other.

* * *

The first time that I realized I was friends with the little prince was not long ago. Saint-Exupéry defines his character like so:

"The little prince never let go of a question once he asked it."

This, more than any other single phrase in the English language, I think, describes my friend. He has never dropped a subject in his life, ever. I am well used to him bringing up a question or a point from pages before in our conversation, with no preamble at all, no segue. Now I just answer and on we go, retracing conversational steps sometimes, finding new tangents sometimes, and sometimes hitting on something that one of us really wanted to talk about.

You cannot evade a question, with the little prince; it will come back up, perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps the next day, probably all three. One must be very careful with one's responses. Whereas normal people take, "Eh, I'll explain later," to mean "I don't really want to and I probably will not," little princes will be around, later, waiting for an explanation. One must be careful.

* * *

It is possible, I suppose, that if my friend is the little prince, that I am the narrator, Saint-Exupéry. When we discuss philosophy, when we agree that grown-ups do not understand anything (present company excluded, of course), it certainly seems so.

However, I think it is far more likely that I am the flower.

" 'This flower is a very complex creature...'

'At night I want you to put me under a glass globe. It is very cold where you live. In the place I came from...'

But she interrupted herself at that point. She had come in the form of a seed. She could not have known anything of any other worlds. Embarrassed over having let herself be caught on the verge of such a naive untruth, she coughed two or three times, in order to put the little prince in the wrong.

'The screen?'

'I was just going to get it when you spoke to me...'

Then she forced her cough a little more so that he should suffer from remorse just the same."

Or perhaps I am the fox.

"'My life is very monotonous,' he said. 'I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life....And then look, you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat...'

....

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 me to 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.' "


* * *

My other friends--and I do have a few! Others, I mean--also often remind me of books, of characters. I suppose it comes of all that reading I did at an impressionable young age. Perhaps I shall explain their characters, sometime.

* * *

I must go now; the Little Prince just signed in on the instant messenger. I will talk to him for a while, and perhaps even get out those tears that I have been putting off for a while now. If I do, I will explain to him--because my being upset disquiets him--how I have felt so on the brink lately, how ridiculous it is that I feel so, how good and necessary those tears are.

He won't understand at all; Little Princes don't really comprehend worries about the future or regrets about the past or fears about the world or other such things. They think mainly of the here and now, and there is a sort of naive but wise optimism about them; a childish certainty that everything will be all right, an adultish certainty that whether it will be or not, one is happiest and sanest if one thinks it so.

We will talk and we will laugh and it will be both frustrating and good for me that one of the only people I talk about how I feel with is also a person who cannot really understand why I feel so oddly. My little prince cannot compound my bad feelings, cannot feed my sadness with empathy, because he does not know how.

"Everything will be all right," he will say for the millionth time, with such sureness and solemnity that one almost forgets he is a little naive blond-haired child, and one can believe that he has fallen from a star.