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| The Jones are celebrating MJ's birthday with her |
Today, The Jones are celebrating MJ's birthday. They are sailing across the Seine River while they are listening and reading some fragments of The Little Prince, one of the most wonderful books created by the French writer Antoine de Saint Exupéry.
Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944) was a French writer, poet, aristocrat, journalist, and pioneering aviator. He became a laureate of several of France's highest literary awards and also won the U.S. National Book Award. He is best remembered for his novella The Little Prince, Le Petit Prince, and for his lyrical aviation writings, including Wind, Sand and Stars and Night Flight.
More information: Biography
Saint-Exupéry was a successful commercial pilot before World War II, working airmail routes in Europe, Africa and South America. At the outbreak of war, he joined the French Air Force, Armée de l'Air, flying reconnaissance missions until France's armistice with Germany in 1940. After being demobilised from the French Air Force, he travelled to the United States to help persuade its government to enter the war against Nazi Germany.
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| Joaquín Jones and The Grandma in the bateaux |
Following a 27-month hiatus in North America, during which he wrote three of his most important works, he joined the Free French Air Force in North Africa, although he was far past the maximum age for such pilots and in declining health.
He disappeared over the Mediterranean on a reconnaissance mission in July 1944, and is believed to have died at that time.
He disappeared over the Mediterranean on a reconnaissance mission in July 1944, and is believed to have died at that time.
Prior to the war, Saint-Exupéry had achieved fame in France as an aviator. His literary works -among them The Little Prince, translated into 300 languages and dialects- posthumously boosted his stature to national hero status in France. He earned further widespread recognition with international translations of his other works.
The Little Prince, in French Le Petit Prince, first published in April 1943, is a novella, the most famous work of French aristocrat, writer, poet, and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
More information: The Little Prince
The novella is one of the best books of the 20th century in France. Translated into 300 languages and dialects, selling nearly two million copies annually, and with year-to-date sales of over 140 million copies worldwide, it has become one of the best-selling books ever published.
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| The Little Prince |
After the outbreak of the Second World War, Saint-Exupéry escaped to North America.
Despite personal upheavals and failing health, he produced almost half of the writings for which he would be remembered, including a tender tale of loneliness, friendship, love, and loss, in the form of a young prince visiting Earth.
An earlier memoir by the author had recounted his aviation experiences in the Sahara Desert, and he is thought to have drawn on those same experiences in The Little Prince.
Despite personal upheavals and failing health, he produced almost half of the writings for which he would be remembered, including a tender tale of loneliness, friendship, love, and loss, in the form of a young prince visiting Earth.
An earlier memoir by the author had recounted his aviation experiences in the Sahara Desert, and he is thought to have drawn on those same experiences in The Little Prince.
In The Little Prince, its narrator, the pilot, talks of being stranded in the desert beside his crashed aircraft. The account clearly drew on Saint-Exupéry's own experience in the Sahara, an ordeal described in detail in his 1939 memoir Wind, Sand and Stars, Terre des hommes.
On December 30, 1935, at 02:45 am, after 19 hours and 44 minutes in the air, Saint-Exupéry, along with his copilot-navigator André Prévot, crashed in the Sahara desert. They were attempting to break the speed record for a Paris-to-Saigon flight, in a then-popular type of air race, called a raid, and win a prize of 150,000 francs. Their plane was a Caudron C-630 Simounand the crash site is thought to have been near to the Wadi Natrun valley, close to the Nile Delta.
Both miraculously survived the crash, only to face rapid dehydration in the intense desert heat.Their maps were primitive and ambiguous. Lost among the sand dunes with a few grapes, a thermos of coffee, a single orange, and some wine, the pair had only one day's worth of liquid.
They both began to see mirages, which were quickly followed by more vivid hallucinations. By the second and third days, they were so dehydrated that they stopped sweating altogether. Finally, on the fourth day, a Bedouin on a camel discovered them and administered a native rehydration treatment, which saved Saint-Exupéry's and Prévot's lives.
They both began to see mirages, which were quickly followed by more vivid hallucinations. By the second and third days, they were so dehydrated that they stopped sweating altogether. Finally, on the fourth day, a Bedouin on a camel discovered them and administered a native rehydration treatment, which saved Saint-Exupéry's and Prévot's lives.
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| The Jones sailing across the Seine River |
The prince's home, Asteroid B-612, was likely derived as a progression of one of the planes Saint-Exupéry flew as an airmail pilot, which bore the serial number A-612.
During his service as a mail pilot in the Sahara, Saint-Exupéry had viewed a fennec, desert sand fox, which most likely inspired him to create the fox character in the book.
In a letter written to his sister Didi from the Western Sahara's Cape Juby, where he was the manager of an airmail stopover station in 1928, he tells of raising a fennec that he adored.
During his service as a mail pilot in the Sahara, Saint-Exupéry had viewed a fennec, desert sand fox, which most likely inspired him to create the fox character in the book.
In a letter written to his sister Didi from the Western Sahara's Cape Juby, where he was the manager of an airmail stopover station in 1928, he tells of raising a fennec that he adored.
In the novella, the fox, believed to be modelled after the author's intimate New York City friend, Silvia Hamilton Reinhardt, tells the prince that his rose is unique and special, as she is the one he loves. The novella's iconic phrase, One sees clearly only with the heart, is believed to have been suggested by Reinhardt.
The fearsome, grasping baobab trees, researchers have contended, were meant to represent Nazism attempting to destroy the planet. The little prince's reassurance to the pilot that the prince's body is only an empty shell resembles the last words of Antoine's dying younger brother François, who told the author, from his deathbed: Don't worry. I'm all right. I can't help it. It's my body.
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| The Little Prince and his Rose |
Many researchers believe that the prince's kindhearted but petulant and vain rose was inspired by Saint-Exupéry's Salvadoran wife Consuelo de Saint Exupéry, with the small home planet being inspired by her small native country, El Salvador, also known as The Land of Volcanoes. Despite a raucous marriage, Saint-Exupéry kept Consuelo close to his heart and portrayed her as the prince's rose, whom he tenderly protects with a wind screen and places under a glass dome on his tiny planet.
Saint-Exupéry's infidelity and the doubts of his marriage are symbolized by the vast field of roses the prince encounters during his visit to Earth. This interpretation was described by biographer Paul Webster who stated she was the muse to whom Saint-Exupéry poured out his soul in copious letters... Consuelo was the rose in The Little Prince. I should have judged her by her acts and not by her words, says the prince. She wrapped herself around me and enlightened me. I should never have fled. I should have guessed at the tenderness behind her poor ruses.
More information: The New Yorker
All of the novella's simple but elegant watercolour illustrations, which were integral to the story, were painted by Saint-Exupéry. He had studied architecture as a young adult but nevertheless could not be considered an artist -which he self-mockingly alluded to in the novella's introduction. Several of his illustrations were painted on the wrong side of the delicate onion skin paper that he used, his medium of choice.
True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done,
the zest of creating things new.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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