THE LITTLE PRINCE, SEE THE INVISIBLE WITH YOUR HEART

A late-summer Sunday is synonymous with vermouth at Can Déu, football, and -of course- Lego.

Today, The Grandma has invited Claire Fontaine to build four magnificent Lego sets based on The Little Prince -a masterpiece by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry that also happens to be one of The Grandma's most beloved books, because it speaks of something as complexly simple as life itself.

There are books that belong to childhood. There are books that we discover as adults. And then there are a few extraordinary books that seem to accompany us throughout our entire lives. The Little Prince is one of them.

Published in 1943 and written and illustrated by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, a universal son of Lyon, Le Petit Prince appears, at first sight, to be a children's story. There are drawings, tiny planets, talking flowers, strange adults and a little blond boy who travels through the universe asking questions.

But appearances, as the Little Prince himself teaches us, can be deceptive. Behind its apparent simplicity lies one of the most profound reflections ever written about love, friendship, loneliness, responsibility, loss and what it means to be human. Perhaps that is why The Little Prince is not really a book for children. Nor is it a book for adults. It is simply a book for life.

The story begins with one of literature's most memorable misunderstandings. As a child, the narrator draws a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. Adults look at the picture and see a hat. So the boy draws the inside of the snake to make the meaning obvious. The adults advise him to abandon drawing and concentrate instead on geography, history, arithmetic and grammar. And in only a few pages, Saint-Exupéry establishes one of the central ideas of the book. Growing older and growing wiser are not necessarily the same thing.

The adults in The Little Prince have acquired knowledge, status, possessions and responsibilities, but somewhere along the way many of them have lost something essential: the ability to see beyond appearances.

The Little Prince has not. He asks questions. He observes. He wonders. He refuses to accept something merely because everybody else considers it normal. And perhaps this is the first philosophical invitation of the book: adulthood should not require us to abandon the child we once were.

During his journey, the Little Prince visits several tiny planets. On each one he meets an adult. There is a king who wants to rule even when there is almost nobody to rule. A vain man who needs constant admiration. A drunkard who drinks because he is ashamed of drinking. A businessman obsessed with counting and owning stars. A lamplighter endlessly following orders. And a geographer who writes about the world without actually exploring it.

They are amusing characters. But they are also mirrors. Each has reduced life to a single obsession: power, admiration, possession, routine, knowledge without experience.

Saint-Exupéry's satire is gentle, but devastating. These adults are so busy organising life that they have forgotten to live it. And perhaps this is one reason why reading The Little Prince as an adult can be slightly uncomfortable. Eventually, we recognise ourselves.

How many things do we count simply because society has taught us that numbers prove their value? Money. Followers. Productivity. Qualifications. Possessions. Years. Achievements.

The businessman counts stars and believes that owning them makes him important. The Little Prince cannot understand why. Sometimes neither should we. 

Then there is the rose. The Little Prince loves his rose, but loving her is not easy. She is beautiful, proud, demanding and contradictory. He is young and does not yet know how to understand her. So he leaves his asteroid. Only later does he begin to understand what she meant to him. When he reaches Earth and discovers a garden containing thousands of roses, he is devastated. He had believed that his rose was unique. Apparently she is not.

And then the fox teaches him one of the most important lessons in the book. What makes someone unique is not necessarily what they are. It is the relationship we have created with them. The Little Prince's rose matters because he has watered her. Protected her. Listened to her. Worried about her. Spent time with her.

Love transforms one rose among thousands into his rose. Saint-Exupéry is telling us that value does not simply exist. Sometimes we create it through care. 

Perhaps no character expresses the philosophy of The Little Prince more beautifully than the fox. The fox asks the Little Prince to tame him. But taming does not mean domination. It means creating ties. Before their friendship, the Little Prince is merely one little boy among thousands, and the fox merely one fox among thousands. Afterwards, they become unique to each other.

That uniqueness has a price. If we create bonds, separation can hurt. The fox knows this from the beginning. And still he chooses friendship. That is an extraordinarily mature idea for a book often placed on children's shelves. Saint-Exupéry does not promise that love will protect us from sadness. He suggests almost the opposite. We can suffer because we have loved. But the solution is not to avoid loving.

The memories, meaning and transformation created by that relationship make the vulnerability worthwhile. The colour of the wheat will remind the fox of the Little Prince's golden hair. After somebody has become important to us, the world itself contains reminders of them. Absence changes presence.

The fox teaches another lesson that connects love with something we can never recover: time. The Little Prince's rose is important because of the time he has devoted to her. This idea is extraordinarily simple and extraordinarily profound. Our most valuable gift is rarely an object.

It is often time.

Time spent listening. Time spent caring. Time spent teaching. Time spent travelling with someone. Time spent sitting beside somebody when there is nothing useful to say. Time spent simply being there.

Money can sometimes be recovered. Possessions can be replaced. Time cannot.

And therefore the time we freely give to another person may be one of the purest forms of love. The fox's lesson does not end with affection. Love creates responsibility. Once we establish a genuine bond with another being, we cannot behave as though that relationship has no consequences. This is true of friendship. Of family. Of love. Perhaps even of our relationship with animals, communities and the world around us. The Little Prince learns that loving his rose means accepting responsibility for her.

Not ownership. Responsibility. There is an enormous difference. 

Much of the framing story takes place in the Sahara, where the narrator has crashed his aeroplane. The desert seems empty. Yet emptiness is one of Saint-Exupéry's great illusions. A desert may conceal a well. A house may contain memories. A star may contain somebody we love. The visible world never tells the entire story. That is why the book repeatedly invites us to look beyond surfaces. The things that give life meaning -love, trust, memory, loyalty, friendship- cannot normally be weighed or counted. They do not appear on balance sheets. They cannot be photographed easily. And yet they may be more real to us than almost anything we can touch.

And eventually The Little Prince becomes a book about loss. This is perhaps where reading it at different stages of life changes the book most profoundly. A child may experience the ending as mysterious. An adult who has experienced separation or bereavement may read those same pages very differently. Saint-Exupéry does something remarkable. He does not pretend that absence is not painful. Instead, he transforms memory into another form of presence. After the Little Prince leaves, the stars will never again be simply stars for the narrator. Somewhere among them is his friend. And therefore the entire night sky has changed. The person may be absent. But the relationship has altered the world permanently. Anyone who has deeply missed somebody can understand this. 

Sometimes a street becomes a memory. A song becomes a person. A smell becomes a childhood. A photograph becomes a conversation. A star becomes somebody who is no longer beside us.

Perhaps this is why The Little Prince can comfort without offering easy consolation. It understands that love survives in the way we continue to see the world.

There is another curious thing about The Little Prince. You can read exactly the same words at ten, twenty, forty or seventy years old. The words have not changed. But you have. And therefore the book changes too. Read it when you are a child and you may understand the Little Prince. Read it when you are young and you may understand the rose. Read it after falling in love and you may understand the fox. Read it after losing somebody and you may understand the stars. Read it when life has become too busy and perhaps you will suddenly recognise the businessman counting things that do not really matter. Read it when you feel lost and you may understand the pilot alone in the desert.

The book waits patiently for us. And each time we return, it seems to know which lesson we need.

Perhaps the story becomes even more moving when we remember who wrote it. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was not simply a writer imagining an aviator. He was himself a pioneering pilot. He flew dangerous postal routes across Africa and South America and experienced crashes, isolation and the immense solitude of the sky and desert. Then came war. Saint-Exupéry wrote The Little Prince during exile in the United States while Europe was being torn apart by the Second World War. 

In 1944, he returned to flying reconnaissance missions. On 31 July, he took off from Corsica. He never returned. His aircraft disappeared over the Mediterranean. The man who had written about a little prince who leaves Earth and becomes associated forever with the stars had himself vanished into the sky. It is difficult to read the ending in quite the same way after knowing that.

Maybe this is ultimately why The Little Prince never grows old. Technology changes. Countries change. Societies change. We change. But human beings continue asking remarkably similar questions.

Who do I love? Who loves me? What deserves my time? What have I lost? What am I responsible for? What really matters? And what will remain when I am gone?

Saint-Exupéry does not answer these questions with philosophical theories. He gives us a boy. A rose. A fox. A desert. A well. And a sky full of stars.

Perhaps we are all, in some way, little travellers moving from one tiny planet to another, meeting people, creating bonds, making mistakes, saying goodbye and slowly discovering what deserves to be called essential.

That may be why there is no wrong moment to read The Little Prince.

Read it when you are happy. Read it when you are lonely. Read it when you have fallen in love. Read it when somebody has left. Read it when you are beginning something. Read it when something has ended. Read it when you know exactly where you are going. And read it when you have absolutely no idea. Because The Little Prince is not really a book that tells us how to live. It simply reminds us to look again at the life we are already living.

And perhaps, beneath all the numbers, obligations, possessions and noise of the grown-up world, to ask ourselves whether we can still see the elephant inside the boa constrictor. 

After all, the essential things were never meant to be seen with the eyes.

Download The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Et tu ouvriras parfois ta fenêtre, 

comme ça, pour le plaisir… 
Et tes amis seront bien étonnés 

de te voir rire en regardant le ciel.

And you will sometimes open your window, 

just for fun... 
And your friends will be properly astonished 

to see you laughing as you look up at the sky.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY, 'LE PETIT PRINCE' OF LYON

Today, The Grandma wants to pay tribute to one of the best writers of the 20th century, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the author of The Little Prince, one of her most beloved and favourite works, who was born on a day like today in 1900.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was born in Lyon, a city that The Grandma knows very well from when she studied and worked there.

Lugdunum, capital of Gaul and city of light is a beautiful dynamic and enterprising city that is proud of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and that pays tribute to him in every corner of Vieux Lyon.

These past months, The Grandma has visited Lyon many times for sports. When she lived there some years ago, she became a season ticket holder for its football team and was able to enjoy good French league matches, good derbies (against Saint-Etiénne) and also a women's team that was hegemonic in Europe at the time.

Everything in life is in cycles and it seems that now they can once again have their women's team touching those stars that Saint-Exupéry described in The Little Prince and that remind us day after day that what is truly important is invisible to the eye.

Saint Eixupéry disappeared during a reconnaissance mission over Corsica on 31 July 1944 and although his disappearance has never been considered a closed case, we all know that dying does not necessarily mean disappearing because as long as his work is read, his legacy will live on.

Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger de Saint-Exupéry (29 June 1900-disappeared 31 July 1944) was a French writer, poet, journalist, and pioneering aviator whose life and work were inseparably linked. Best known as the author of The Little Prince, he is regarded as one of the twentieth century's most influential literary figures, combining philosophical reflection with firsthand experiences of aviation and war.

Born into an aristocratic family in Lyon, Saint-Exupéry lost his father at an early age and was raised by his mother alongside his siblings. The death of his younger brother François during childhood had a profound emotional impact on him and influenced many of the themes that would later appear in his writing. After unsuccessfully applying to the French Naval Academy, he completed his military service and trained as a pilot, discovering the vocation that would shape the rest of his life.

In the 1920s he joined the pioneering airmail service Aéropostale, flying dangerous postal routes across France, North Africa, and later South America. At a time when aviation was still in its infancy, these flights demanded exceptional courage and endurance. The isolation of the cockpit, the responsibility of transporting the mail, and the bonds formed between pilots became recurring themes in his literary work.

Saint-Exupéry began publishing fiction while pursuing his aviation career. His first notable work was The Aviator (1926), followed by Southern Mail (1929). International recognition came with Night Flight (1931), a novel that portrayed the risks and moral responsibilities of early commercial aviation. Rather than focusing solely on adventure, his writing explored duty, friendship, sacrifice, and the search for meaning in human existence.

In 1931, he married Salvadoran writer and artist Consuelo Suncín. Their marriage was passionate, complicated, and often turbulent, yet it remained one of the defining relationships of his life. Many scholars believe that Consuelo inspired the Rose in The Little Prince, symbolizing both love and the challenges of close human relationships.

Throughout the 1930s Saint-Exupéry worked as both an aviator and a journalist. He travelled widely, reporting from the Soviet Union and covering the Spanish Civil War. These experiences deepened his concerns about political extremism, violence, and the loss of human dignity, subjects that increasingly appeared in his essays and fiction.

One of the defining moments of his life occurred in December 1935, when he attempted to break the speed record on the Paris-Saigon route. His aircraft crashed in the Libyan Desert, leaving him and his mechanic stranded with almost no water. After several days of wandering through the Sahara while suffering from dehydration and hallucinations, they were rescued by a Bedouin. The experience profoundly influenced his later writing and inspired several of the desert scenes that would become central to The Little Prince.

In 1938, he survived another serious aircraft accident in Guatemala during an attempt to establish a long-distance flight record. Although he recovered, he suffered permanent injuries that affected his health for the remainder of his life.

His 1939 memoir Wind, Sand and Stars became one of his greatest literary successes, earning prestigious awards in both France and the United States. Blending autobiography, philosophy, and reflections on aviation, the book argues that hardship and shared responsibility reveal humanity at its best.

When the Second World War began, Saint-Exupéry returned to military service as a reconnaissance pilot in the French Air Force. Flying dangerous intelligence missions during the Battle of France, he witnessed the rapid collapse of his country. These experiences formed the basis of Flight to Arras (1942), an account that combines personal testimony with reflections on courage, duty, and the tragedy of war.

After France's defeat, he spent much of the war in the United States. Although he attempted to remain above political divisions among the French resistance movements, he consistently argued for national unity and reconciliation. During his American exile he wrote The Little Prince, published in 1943 in both French and English. Although presented as a children's story, the novella explores universal themes including friendship, love, loneliness, imagination, responsibility, and the importance of seeing beyond appearances. Saint-Exupéry also created the book's distinctive watercolor illustrations, which have become inseparable from the story itself.

Despite being older than the permitted age for combat pilots and suffering from numerous physical injuries, Saint-Exupéry insisted on returning to operational flying. In 1943 he joined the Free French Air Force, flying Lockheed P-38 Lightning reconnaissance aircraft on high-risk photographic missions over occupied Europe.

On 31 July 1944, he departed from Corsica on a reconnaissance mission over southern France in preparation for the Allied invasion of Provence. He never returned, and his disappearance became one of the enduring mysteries of the Second World War. For decades numerous theories surrounded his fate. 

In 1998, a fisherman recovered Saint-Exupéry's identification bracelet near Marseille, and in 2000 divers located wreckage identified as his aircraft on the Mediterranean seabed. Although these discoveries confirmed the approximate location of the crash, the precise circumstances of his death remain uncertain.

Saint-Exupéry's principal works include The Aviator, Southern Mail, Night Flight, Wind, Sand and Stars, Flight to Arras, Letter to a Hostage, The Little Prince, and the posthumously published philosophical work Citadel, compiled from his unfinished manuscripts.

Today, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is remembered not only as one of the great pioneers of early aviation but also as a writer whose works transcend generations and cultures. The Little Prince has become one of the most translated and widely read books in history, while his broader body of work continues to inspire readers with its reflections on humanity, responsibility, courage, and the enduring value of compassion.

Download Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Download The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, 
the zest of creating things new.

 Antoine de Saint-Exupery

THE GRANDMA LOOKS FOR THE LILLE PRINSEN IN MALMÖ

Today, The Grandma has been visiting the Swedish city of Malmö, in Skåne. Located 35-40 minutes by train from Copenhagen, The Grandma has come not only to see and get to know the city but also to look for a cultural treasure of incalculable personal value.

The Grandma is passionate about literature and when asked the seemingly impossible question of what her favourite work of fiction is, she has no doubt about choosing The Little Prince, the masterpiece by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. And for this reason, whenever she has the opportunity to be away from home, the challenge is to find a version of this wonder in the language of the place she is visiting, so, while being in Copenhagen and already having the Danish version, she could not resist the temptation to take the train and cross the Øresund Bridge, from Denmark to the Öresund Bridge in Sweden and go in search of this extraordinary treasure and yes, she has been able to do it. 

The visit has been so short that she has not had enough time to really visit the city, so she has put it on his list of upcoming must-sees. In addition, she has taken a short break to watch the Northern Star, who had an important match today, which has not gone well, but from which many lessons can be learned.

Tomorrow morning, she will cross the bridge again towards Kastrup, where she must take the return flight to Barcelona at mid-morning, saying goodbye to these Scandinavian lands that she loves and admires so much. 

Malmö is the third-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm and Gothenburg, and the seventh-largest city in the Nordic region. Located on the Öresund strait on the southwestern coast of Sweden, it is the largest city in Skåne and is the gubernatorial seat of Skåne County. Malmö received its city privileges in 1353.

Malmö is the site of Sweden's only fixed direct link to continental Europe, the Öresund Bridge, completed in 2000. The bridge connects Sweden to Denmark, and carries both road and rail traffic. The Öresund Region, which includes Malmö and Copenhagen, is home to four million people.

The city was one of the earliest and most-industrialised in Scandinavia, and the birthplace of several of Scandinavia's largest industrial groups, such as Kockums, Skanska, and Scania AB. The city has undergone a major transformation in the 21st century, and today, Malmö is characterised by many small and medium-sized companies in biotech, logistics, IT, construction, and real estate markets. It also is home to Malmö University and other higher education facilities.

Malmö contains many historic buildings and parks, and is a commercial centre for the western part of Skåne. It is home to Malmö FF, the Swedish football club with the most Allsvenskan titles, and the only Nordic club to have reached the final of the European Cup. It is also home to women's football club FC Rosengård, the most successful club in the Damallsvenskan.

Malmö has a mild climate for the latitude and, normally, average high temperatures remain above freezing in winter, with prolonged snow cover being rare.

The earliest written mention of Malmö as a city dates from 1275. It is thought to have been founded shortly before that date, as a fortified quay or ferry berth of the Danish Archbishop of Lund, 20 kilometres to the north-east. Its original name was Malmhaug, with alternative spellings, meaning Gravel pile or Ore Hill.

In the 15th century, Malmö became one of Denmark's largest and most visited cities, reaching a population of approximately 5,000 inhabitants. It became the most important city around the Öresund, with the German Hanseatic League frequenting it as a marketplace, and was notable for its flourishing herring fishery. 

In 1437, King Eric of Pomerania (King of Denmark from 1396 to 1439) granted the city's arms: argent with a griffin gules, based on Eric's arms from Pomerania. The griffin's head as a symbol of Malmö extended to the entire province of Skåne from 1660.

Lutheran teachings spread during the 16th century Protestant Reformation, and Malmö became one of the first cities in Scandinavia to fully convert (1527–1529) to this Protestant denomination. 

More information: Malmö Stad

We had spent two months in Malmö, Sweden, 
the place for which God saved all the most beautiful things in nature. 
The greenest grass. Sky the colour of cornflowers. 
Children who seemed born of that landscape, 
their hair spun from white clouds, eyes of cobalt sea.

Martha Hall Kelly

'LE PETIT PRINCE', THE PURSUIT OF TRUE MEANING IN LIFE

The short trip to Lyon is arriving to its end. Claire Fontaine and The Grandma have said goodbye to their friends -the Little Prince, Antoine, the Fox and the Rose- and they are waiting for their plane in Lyon's International Airport, also known as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

 

Claire and The Grandma have an important message:

 

They have been wonderful days where we have seen fascinating places and met lovely people. Thank you to everyone for your help in this search. To those who have hosted us, to those who have transported us up and down, to those who have made a place for us among the most amazing and kind supporters, and to all those who have dedicated a moment of your time to leave us a message.

Thanks to your invaluable help in finding our beloved Northern Star (Impressive, Spectacular, Enchanting) who we had been looking for and who we finally found in this beautiful city.

As our Little Prince told us: 'For some, who are travellers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. The stars are lit so that everyone can one day find their own'.

 

We have found our Northern Star and we can assure she shines strongly. She is fine, happy and full of energy, and we know she will be one of the brightest stars on our firmament, because she already is.

 

Ancient cultures thought that the Northern Star gives hope and stability, and that it serves as a beacon of hope during difficult times. It  reminds us that constancy exists even in chaos. It is a symbol of higher wisdom and purpose in dark times.

 

The stars are points of contact with the supernatural. According to Greco-Roman mythology, the giant Argos had a hundred eyes and always had half of them open. Hera (Juno) ordered him to watch over Io, who was being pursued by her husband Zeus (Jupiter), but the god ordered Hermes (Mercury) to cut off his head. Then Hera placed the hundred eyes of Argos on the peacock's tail. Thus, the stars are considered the eyes of the night or the watchful gaze of God.

A group of stars can represent a spiritual army that fights against darkness. The Perseids, a shower of stars or tears of Saint Lawrence, is a phenomenon that can be observed at the end of summer. Now, if we consider an isolated star or a galaxy, it often takes on the value of a guide like the Star of Bethlehem, the Milky Way or the Northern Star. 

 

We trust in our Northern Star, and we will return to see her as times as we could.

 

Download The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 

Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, vicomte de Saint-Exupéry (29 June 1900-31 July 1944), known simply as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, was a French writer, poet, journalist and aviator.

Born in Lyon to an aristocratic family, Saint-Exupéry trained as a commercial pilot in the early 1920s, working airmail routes across Europe, Africa, and South America. Between 1926 and 1939, four of his literary works were published: the short story The Aviator, novels Southern Mail and Night Flight, and the memoir Wind, Sand and Stars. 

Saint-Exupéry joined the French Air Force for World War II and flew reconnaissance missions until France's armistice with Germany in 1940. After being demobilised by the Air Force, Saint-Exupéry lived in exile in the United States between 1941 and 1943 and helped persuade it to enter the war. During this time, his works Flight to Arras and The Little Prince were published.

Saint-Exupéry returned to combat by joining the Free French Air Force in 1943, despite being past the maximum age for a war pilot and in declining health.

On 31 July 1944, during a reconnaissance mission over Corsica, Saint-Exupéry's plane disappeared: it is presumed to have crashed. Debris from the wreckage was discovered near Marseille in 2000, but the cause of the crash remains unknown.

More information: The National WWII Museum-New Orleans 

Le Petit Prince, The Little Prince in English, is a novella written and illustrated by French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It was first published in English and French in the United States by Reynal & Hitchcock in April 1943 and was published posthumously in France following liberation; Saint-Exupéry's works had been banned by the Vichy Regime. 

The story follows a young prince who visits various planets, including Earth, and addresses themes of loneliness, friendship, love, and loss. Despite its style as a children's book, The Little Prince makes observations about life, adults, and human nature.

The Little Prince became Saint-Exupéry's most successful work, selling an estimated 140 million copies worldwide, which makes it one of the best-selling in history. The book has been translated into over 505 different languages and dialects worldwide, being the second most translated work ever published, trailing only the Bible. The Little Prince has been adapted to numerous art forms and media, including audio recordings, radio plays, live stage, film, cinema television, ballet, and opera.

The story of The Little Prince is recalled in a sombre, measured tone by the pilot-narrator, in memory of his small friend, a memorial to the prince -not just to the prince, but also to the time the prince and the narrator had together. The Little Prince was created when Saint-Exupéry was an ex-patriate and distraught about what was going on in his country and in the world. According to one analysis, the story of the Little Prince features a lot of fantastical, unrealistic elements.... You can't ride a flock of birds to another planet... The fantasy of the Little Prince works because the logic of the story is based on the imagination of children, rather than the strict realism of adults.

An exquisite literary perfectionist, akin to the 19th century French poet Stéphane Mallarmé, Saint-Exupéry produced draft pages covered with fine lines of handwriting, much of it painstakingly crossed out, with one word left standing where there were a hundred words, one sentence substitut[ing] for a page... He worked long hours with great concentration. 

According to the author himself, it was extremely difficult to start his creative writing processes. The French author frequently wrote at night, usually starting at about 11 p.m. accompanied by a tray of strong black coffee. 

A native speaker of French, Saint-Exupéry was never able to achieve anything more than haltingly poor English. Adèle Breaux, his young Northport English tutor to whom he later dedicated a writing (For Miss Adèle Breaux, who so gently guided me in the mysteries of the English language), related her experiences with her famous student as Saint-Exupéry in America, 1942–1943: A Memoir, published in 1971.

Saint-Exupéry's prodigious writings and studies of literature sometimes gripped him, and on occasion he continued his readings of literary works until moments before take-off on solitary military reconnaissance flights, as he was adept at both reading and writing while flying. 

Saint-Exupéry frequently flew with a lined carnet (notebook) during his long, solo flights, and some of his philosophical writings were created during such periods when he could reflect on the world below him, becoming 'enmeshed in a search for ideals which he translated into fable and parable'.

In April 2017, The Little Prince became the world's most translated non-religious book, with translations into 300 languages. This number had risen to 600 by November 2024.

More information: Medium

Pour les uns qui voyagent, les étoiles sont des guides. 

Pour d’autres elles ne sont rien que de petites lumières.

Les étoiles sont éclairées pour que 

chacun puisse un jour retrouver la sienne.

 

 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

THE ASTRONAUT, THE WISE, THE ROBOT & THE GRANDMA

Old memories in Eramprunyà Castle, Gavà

Today, The Grandma has visited Eramprunyà Castle again. She enjoyed her last visit some days ago and she has wanted to return. The Grandma has had a meeting with some friends from Gavà and Begues and she has also met three new friends, Ю́рий aka Iuri, Myrddin aka Merlin and Johnny 5.

Ю́рий is a Russian pilot and cosmonaut who became the first human to journey into outer space; Myrddin is an enchanter featured in Arthurian legend and medieval Welsh poetry and Johnny 5 is an American robot from Astoria, Oregon.

Perhaps thanks to the environment, perhaps thanks to her new friends, The Grandma has remembered one of the most beautiful masterpieces in literature of all times, The Little Prince written by Antoine de Saint-Eixupéry, a wonderful novel that talks about friendship, feelings, knowledge and experiences, summing up, it talks about life.

The Little Prince is an incredible novel that must be read slowly enjoying its literature and its drawings and understanding its meaning, a deep reflexion about human relationships.

It has been a great pleasure to visit Eramprunyà Castle again and meet old and new friends. The Grandma has got amazing memories of this experience and she is very sure she is going to return very soon.

As The Little Prince said, It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important. It is the time we have dedicated to learn new things, that makes this new knowledge so important and this time has been a fantastic experience. Thanks to all Gavà Team.

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, in Russian Ю́рий Алексе́евич Гага́рин (9 March 1934-27 March 1968) was a Soviet Air Forces pilot and cosmonaut who became the first human to journey into outer space, achieving a major milestone in the Space Race; his capsule Vostok 1 completed one orbit of Earth on 12 April 1961. 

Ю́рий Алексе́евич Гага́рин

Gagarin became an international celebrity and was awarded many medals and titles, including Hero of the Soviet Union, his nation's highest honour.

Vostok 1 was Gagarin's only spaceflight but he served as the backup crew to the Soyuz 1 mission, which ended in a fatal crash, killing his friend and fellow cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. Gagarin later served as the deputy training director of the Cosmonaut Training Centre, which was subsequently named after him.

Gagarin died in 1968 when the MiG-15 training jet he was piloting crashed. The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale awards the Yuri A. Gagarin Gold Medal in his honour.

More information: SISTER

Merlin, in Welsh Myrddin, is a legendary figure best known as an enchanter or wizard featured in Arthurian legend and medieval Welsh poetry. The standard depiction of the character first appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, written c. 1136, and is based on an amalgamation of previous historical and legendary figures.

Myrddin

Geoffrey combined existing stories of Myrddin Wyllt or Merlinus Caledonensis, a North Brythonic prophet and madman with no connection to King Arthur, with tales of the Romano-British war leader Ambrosius Aurelianus to form the composite figure he called Merlin Ambrosius, in Welsh Myrddin Emrys. Geoffrey's rendering of the character was immediately popular, especially in Wales. Later writers expanded the account to produce a fuller image. Merlin's traditional biography casts him as a cambion: born of a mortal woman, sired by an incubus, the non-human from whom he inherits his supernatural powers and abilities.

Merlin matures to an ascendant sagehood and engineers the birth of Arthur through magic and intrigue. Later authors have Merlin serve as the king's advisor and mentor to the knights until he is bewitched and forever sealed or killed by the Lady of the Lake. He is popularly said to be buried in the magical forest of Brocéliande.

More information: ITV

Number 5 or the name chosen by Johnny 5, is a fictional character from the movie Short Circuit (1986) and Short Circuit 2 (1988).

Johnny 5

The character was created by the writers Brent Maddock and S.S. Wilson. His voice is played by actor Tim Blaney in his original version.

It is a robot originally created for military purposes, after being suddenly gifted with consciousness after being struck by lightning. Therefore, it is considered alive: it has emotions and is autonomous.

Short Circuit is a 1986 US comic science fiction film directed by John Badham and written by S. S. Wilson and Brent Maddock.

The film's plot centers upon an experimental military robot that is struck by lightning and gains a more humanlike intelligence, with which it embarks to explore its new state.

Short Circuit stars Ally Sheedy, Steve Guttenberg, Fisher Stevens, Austin Pendleton and G. W. Bailey, with Tim Blaney as the voice of the robot named Johnny 5. A sequel, Short Circuit 2, was released in 1988.

More information: Johnny-Five

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.

Antoine de Saint-Eixupéry

THE JONES: THE ESSENTIAL IS INVISIBLE TO THE EYES

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

Download The Little Prince (English Version)

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.

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.

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.

Download Le Petit Prince (Original French Version)

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.

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

ROSE IS A ROSE IS A ROSE IS A ROSE

The Grandma is still in Panama. The weather is fine and she continues with her business. 

BBC - Get that Job

Today, she's gone to an interesting conference about Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and his best seller The Little Prince.Here, she attaches some information about it:

The Little Prince, first published in 1943, is a novella, the most famous work of the French aristocrat, writer, poet, and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944).

The Little Prince is a poetic tale, with watercolour illustrations by the author, in which a pilot stranded in the desert meets a young prince fallen to Earth from a tiny asteroid. The story is philosophical and includes social criticism, remarking on the strangeness of the adult world. It was written during a period when Saint-Exupéry fled to North America subsequent to the Fall of France during the Second World War, witnessed first-hand by the author and captured in his memoir Flight to Arras.

The adult fable, according to one review, is actually "...an allegory of Saint-Exupéry's own life—his search for childhood certainties and interior peace, his mysticism, his belief in human courage and brotherhood, and his deep love for his wife Consuelo but also an allusion to the tortured nature of their relationship”.

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose

Loveliness extreme.

Extra gaiters,

Loveliness extreme.

Sweetest ice-cream.

Pages ages page ages page ages.

Gertrude Stein

FIRST STOP: NAPLES AND SURROUNDINGS

Charles Dickens

Today, The Holmes have started a new book: Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and have played a little with The Little Prince and his memo.

After talking about the importance of Sant Boi de Llobregat along the history, they’ve listened to a new story about the relation between Via Rubricatus (the Llobregat River) and Via Augusta (the Roman way). Nothing is closed and different theories are accepted nowadays.

Finally, they’ve worked together in the elaboration of an Italian tour. The family is going to travel around this wonderful country with the company of their two horses. Tonight, they’ve arrived to Naples where The Grandma has lots of friends. It will be an intensive week.

By the way, The Grandma is excited because tonight is aired the second part of The X Files season premiere episode. Again, she is with her heroes: Fox Mulder & Dana Scully. Welcome again, friends!

The most important thing in life is to stop saying 'I wish'

and start saying 'I will.'

Consider nothing impossible,

then treat possibilities as probabilities.

Charles Dickens

EVA & THE PET PROJECT 01/2015

The Pet Project 01/2015

Last Friday, we decided to go to Venice to spend the weekend and joy the Venetian Carnival. Before this, we talked about social movements and its affection in cities like Barcelona and we created tales inspired in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince.

Eva explained us the future accommodation of our pets in Downton Abbey and all The Collins Family was exciting with the proposal.

During this weekend, The Collins Family is enjoying Venetian culture and tomorrow this evening they’re flying to London where they will stay some days in a hotel meanwhile the workers refurbish Downton Abbey and finish the last works.

Who would have thought from the top of the Coliseum,
that the Roman Empire was not eternal.

Urban proverb