On the night of July 31, 1944, fighter pilot Saint-Exupéry took off for action against enemy German aircraft and has since disappeared. A German pilot reported a French reconnaissance plane going up in flames over the sea. Years of searching with sophisticated sonar equipment were unsuccessful in locating the lost plane. Saint-Exupéry, the pilot, writer, author of the beloved book “ The Little Prince ,” disappeared without a trace.
In early June 2000, 56 years after his crash, the plane of the great pilot was found near the island of Friol south of Toulon, FranceIt was an emotional moment for the entire country, mourning the loss of a senior member of its people who had not come to terms with his disappearance and had not stopped searching for him.
France held its breath.
The Little Prince was born from Consuelo's great fire.
Saint-Exupéry was born on June 29, 1900, in the city of Lyon in southern France, to a noble family whose many sons were intellectuals and scientists. His childhood was spent playing in the open fields and drawing various mechanical devices that excited his imagination, especially those related to aviation, a dream he fulfilled during his military service.
During his military service, he began publishing books about his experiences as a spy pilot who photographed the movements of the German army under the guise of a postal pilot between France and its protectorates in North Africa. As part of his role, he also acted as a diplomat to free kidnapped French citizens who were being tortured by their Moorish captors in the Sahara Desert. Gradually, the scope of his flight routes expanded to Toulouse and Buenos Aires, where he carried the love of his life: Consuelo Sunsa del Sanvadel from El Salvador, to whom he proposed marriage during a flight over the Andes.
From 'Memories of the Rose' (Hoch. Carmel), - (Isn't She the Spoiled Rose) – a book that Consuelo wrote after his death: Always in their moments of peace and happiness, Saint-Exupéry would ask her to tell the stories of El Salvador, about her childhood days...
“Tell me the story of the bees,” he would ask her, just as the little prince asked: “Draw me a picture…”
But Saint-Exupéry was a wanderer at heart. Airlines that opened later, along with his advancement as a pilot and journalist, opened up the world to him. The formula of the 'little woman' waiting for him at home while he carried out his adventures around the world suited him. Shortly after their marriage, their relationship ran aground.
Decades after he perished in his plane, Consuelo would publish in her book 'Memories of the Rose': "Saint-Exupéry's strange existential situation forces him into an emotional wandering that finds no outlet and release except in one-man night flights, or in the obsessive desire to fight for his homeland. In a great challenge to death, in this state of resistance that allows him to be a martyr, he assuages his emotional failure. The action, the connections of evil, the honesty, the patriotism that is radicalized into heroism, the flight that is considered a sublime image of a newly found purity, all these are intermediate stations and bridges that free him from the emotional prison in which he is always bound. Consuelo's memoirs make this pathetic and painful journey of search clear.
Consuelo said that Saint-Exupéry would tell her that she was superior to all others, he would even tell her that she was his comfort, his star and the light of the house. That the divided, abandoned Consuelo was necessary to him. One is how many lovers he had, how many sources of inspiration, well-known in the public who showered him with gifts, who guaranteed his career as a writer, who flattered him and sometimes truly and sincerely loved him, Consuelo is still rooted without being uprooted.
When I'm among the stars, and I see a light in the distance, and I don't know if it's starlight or a lantern on the ground... I tell myself that it's my little Consuelo calling me to tell me stories...
Saint-Exupéry chose the rose as a model of love, because true love sometimes stings. The perfection of true things lies in their imperfections. “There is nothing more complete than a broken heart.” (Rabbi Nachman of Breslov).
Consuelo carries this childhood within her and is the one who saves her in the most difficult moments: Saint-Exupéry's betrayals, which appear in the book 'The Little Prince' in the role of the Roses:
You are beautiful… but my rose is more important than all of you because it is the only one I watered every day… Absences are accompanied by uncertainty, plane crashes, and ultimately its disappearance…
And despite all this, she wrote to him on the eve of his death, at the end of June 1944:
You are within me like the vegetation is on the earth. I love you, you, my treasure, you, my world.
And also in what he replied to her:
It's so soothing to be intertwined like two trees in the forest, both swaying in the same strong winds. To soak up the sun and the moon and the evening birds together. For a lifetime.
('Memories of the Rose' was filmed in Carmel).
That's why Consuelo is always needed, called for help, in whom he ultimately trusts, she is the one who knows how to look after him. She is the only one who didn't dream dreams of fame and publicity for him: she only longed to live with him in a small house in the heart of Africa, where he would have peace and could write. After all, she was the one who always asked him to write, to guard against all nocturnal temptations, and even went so far as to lock him in the study that she had taken the trouble to arrange for him, with the order that he not leave until he had finished writing his quota of pages!
Saint-Exupéry does her a favor, reveals to her that he has often dreamed of writing under her wing, her birdlike warmth gently protecting him… “Your bird language and the charming trembling in it…” In the great White House in America, he completed his masterpiece, “The Little Prince.” Happy days were dedicated to painting, to posing friends as models, to rewriting the story borrowed from his own, to recreating all the motifs that woven his character. “The Little Prince” was born from Consuelo’s great fire, he finally admitted…
Saint-Exupéry needed Consuelo's 'Memories of the Rose' to resurrect himself in a different way, to seem more human. These memories bring him closer to us, he suddenly becomes more moving, more real and more affectionate. Write to me, write to me, he asked her on his forty-fourth birthday, a few weeks before his death, “Every now and then [the mail] arrives and spring blooms in my heart.” ('Memories of the Rose', ed. Carmel).
Saint-Exupéry the Pilot
Forced landings, the crash of his plane, and his and his fellow pilots' ability to survive in impossible situations made him a famous hero and created a great demand for his articles in the press, along with the publication of his books and his winning of prestigious awards. At the same time, he registered patents in his name for various mechanical inventions that are used in airplanes to this day.
In this way of describing superhuman survival – such as walking in the hot desert for five days without drinking water until reaching dangerous states of hallucination – he activated his readers, tense with worry and anxious for each new piece of information about the adventurer risking himself for humanity. From now on, the famous pilot was, for his readers, like a trapeze artist without a safety net.
At the age of 39, with a body shattered by numerous plane crashes, despite the attempts of his friends and commander to prevent him, Saint-Exupéry was assigned as a fighter pilot in the French Air Force. His mission was to monitor the movements of the German army. His plane was attacked by the Germans, but he did not stop fighting until after his plane was damaged. In this way, he conveyed the message that he had decided to sacrifice himself for his country.
In light of articles he published condemning the war on the defeat of France, parts of which had already been plundered by the Germans, Saint-Exupéry understood how dangerous the situation was in his country and in Europe in general. Like the Little Prince who asks questions, like the child who is able to see the hidden and beyond things: who sees an elephant inside a snake, a sheep inside a box, Saint-Exupéry understood long before others the danger of fascism that was about to crush his beloved homeland. In the chapter “The Echo,” the Little Prince says, “A strange desert country and its people are unimaginative… They repeat everything they are told…” He understood that in order to fight against the Nazis, he had to flee France and join the American Air Force as a fighter pilot, which had joined the war against the Germans.
'The Little Prince' is not an innocent children's book. Its opposition to war is already evident from the cover, with the 'tricolor' in the colors of the French flag.
After the fall of the 'Maginot Line' (by the German invasion through the 'Ardennes') which was supposed to protect France, Saint-Exupéry published on all US radio stations broadcasting in French and in the press a call for 'Reconciliation for Mobilization' for all French citizens, those on the right (collaborators with the Vichy regime) and those on the left (Gaulists) to unite for one goal: to defeat the Germans. (The Vichy people published his name as a senior member of their government, thus tarnishing his name as a collaborator with the Germans. His denials did not help).
Is there an echo here of unimaginative people who repeat everything they are told? After all, someone who repeats everything they are told without investigating what the truth is, does not distinguish between a weed and a good plant, and therefore is potentially dangerous! And if these were not 'people who repeat everything they are told,' would they be able to investigate what the truth is, by asking: 'Is a weed an external threat? Or, a threat from a monster that exists within each of us?' From his place of exile, he published the book 'War Pilot' and shortly after, 'The Little Prince', which he refused to publish under the Vichy government.
Like 'The Little Prince', the book 'Letter to a White Hostage' is dedicated to the revered thinker, soulmate and spiritual mentor of Saint-Exupéry, the Jew Léon Werth. The book 'The Little Prince' is written in codes, like a cipher, apparently out of caution to prevent the exposure of Léon Werth and his hiding place.
On June 22 at 4 a.m., German soldiers passed through the Arc de Triomphe in Paris . The city that fell to them without a shot was emptied of 10 million inhabitants within a week. The convoys of displaced persons traveled south by car, on foot, on bicycles, in carts southward, to areas that had not yet been conquered. From the top of his plane, St. Exupéry saw the convoys that were bombed by German planes along with entire villages that were set on fire. He knew that Leon Werth and his family were also escaping in these convoys.
In parallel with his activities as a fighter pilot, Saint-Exupéry continued to publish articles in the world press condemning the war. In these articles, he emphasized the responsibility of every human being towards others. In the book, this is expressed in the words of the fox to the Little Prince:
A person is never responsible for the well-being of the one he has tamed…
But he meant the responsibility of every human being towards every human being.
In his travels among stars and nebulae, the little prince seeks to discover the meaning of existence. To discover what is truth. To be aware, to discover in advance what is a good plant and what is a foolish plant that must be uprooted as soon as it sprouts from the ground. "Draw me a sheep," the little prince asks the pilot. The latter draws him a sheep. The little prince is not satisfied: "This sheep looks sick." The pilot draws again. The little prince is not satisfied: "This is not a sheep, it is a goat." The pilot draws a sheep for the third time. The little prince also rules out the "very, very old one." The pilot, hurrying to repair his damaged plane, draws a box with three holes in it. "This is just a box. The sheep that I asked for is inside." Then the little prince is satisfied.
Because the sheep is likened to the truth hidden from our eyes. It is in the dark. It must be revealed slowly, through hard work. 'Because the truly important thing is hidden from sight.' As the fox reveals later in the journey to the little prince before their separation.
The various characters in the book The Little Prince and their meaning
In the book "The Little Prince," characters appear who behave strangely. The Little Prince asks us not to believe what we see, but to always investigate what the truth is: is the character before us real or fake? And this investigation is also connected to the image of the seemingly innocent sprouts, but if we do not investigate what the truth is, there is a danger that sprouts that seem innocent are not, but rather dangerous, because after they emerge from the ground, we may no longer be able to control them. The same is true of the following characters:
The businessman is asked by the Little Prince what is the point of the stars? He has to ask it three times because he is not answered. The businessman: 'I buy stars to be rich, so that I can buy more stars.' But the Little Prince does not give up and asks a third time: 'And what will you do with them, with all these stars?' And in essence he asks 'What is your sheep? What is your truth? What is love?'
And the businessman's answer: "I don't do anything with them. I write their number on a note and lock it in a bank drawer."
Emotion, which is the most real thing in man, is erased in favor of a false need for admiration of the environment, for power, for wealth, all in order to obtain an alternative satisfaction for his need for love. All the wealth in the world will not satisfy his hunger because this is a false need. Why is such a person dangerous and destructive to society? What makes him a baobab?
The flashlight that follows instructions without questioning them. Is he an echo of 'people who repeat everything they are told without checking the truth?' Why is he dangerous? What makes him a baobab?
The drunk is the only one aware of his condition. The only one who doesn't pretend. He is ashamed of being unable to deal with reality. An echo of 'people who repeat everything they are told.' Why is he dangerous? Why is even he, the passive one, a baobab?
In the braggart's world there are no humans. To the extent that they exist, they are tools for satisfying his desire to be admired. When there are no admirers around, he will invent them in his imagination. Through the unreal, one can only achieve unreal satisfaction. Illusions and hallucinations.
These characters create a profile of a hedonistic, decadent society that has abandoned spiritual values and human rights. A society of dangerous baobabs. A destructive society that takes no responsibility for its existence or for the future generation.
An exceptional case is the brave fox who embarks on a journey of self-discovery in a chaotic world. The fox seeks the secret of happiness in developing the ability to love. And here, on the seam line, a wonderful, true friendship is created.
The caution with which the Little Prince and the Fox approach each other is one of the most poetic expressions of “What is love?”
In a chaotic world where Europe is being destroyed by the baobab trees, on the seam line between life and destruction, a wonderful friendship and a true dialogue are created despite everything.
It is as if this illustration was taken from the essence of the turbulent married life of Saint-Exupéry and Consuelo. The scarf and tail tied in a Gordian knot create the feeling that the fox, in a running momentum, will immediately exit the illustration while its tail will lengthen and lengthen to infinity.
The illustration illustrates how external and meaningless the separation is compared to the eternal vibration that connects them.
Inspired by Michelangelo's famous painting in the Sistine Chapel: separated hands, a state of 'touching but not touching', of 'almost' that maintains constant tension... or inspired by the synapses that transmit information between nerve cells when there is no contact between them, but rather the transmitting cell emits information into a space from which the receiving cell receives it.
Saint-Exupéry places his hope in a future generation that has not yet been corrupted, still true to its conscience, to its feelings, a generation that is still free from sycophants. In the chapter "The Direction of the Trains": "Only children know the secret of happiness. They invest their souls in caring for a doll made of rags, and if they take it out of their hands, they cry."
The Little Prince becomes a work of art and a show
My love for 'The Little Prince' led me to a long-term study of the author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The deeper I delved, the more I felt that there was more to this than a beautiful fairy tale. I read in the author's other books about his experiences as a fighter pilot who fought against the Nazis. I read many books about the Holocaust and World War II, along with articles in the written and electronic press, and many visits to museums commemorating the Holocaust in Israel and around the world. Stifled words began to bubble up from the written lines of 'The Little Prince'. In addition to hints about the author's experiences as a fighter pilot, the fairy tale describes dangerous figures who dragged Europe from disaster to disaster.
'The Little Prince' was dedicated to the author's soulmate and spiritual mentor, the revered Jewish thinker Leon Werth. The book is essentially a loving letter of concern for his well-being, written in hidden codes like a cipher so as not to reveal the identity of the Jew hiding from the terror of the Nazis.
In a chaotic world, The Little Prince offers options for a healthier life in a civilized society.
We should listen to the child who is gifted with the ability to see beyond the visible,
We should listen to him, to the child who sees an elephant inside a snake, a sheep inside a box...
A significant portion of the insights were revealed to me during the process of composing her work, "Draw Me a Sheep."
The work was performed and recorded at the 'Etnachta' concert by the 'Li-Ron' choir, conducted by Ronit Shapira, and other top-notch artists. 'Draw Me a Sheep' was published in a luxurious booklet in seven languages, featuring new original illustrations by Inbal Leitner, a graduate of Bezalel. The booklet contains a CD of the work's performance in Hebrew by the 'Li-Ron' choir, conducted by Ronit Shapira. In light of the acclaim the CD received worldwide and its nomination for a Grammy Award, I created 'Draw Me a Sheep' as an audiovisual performance that combines sound and screen arts through video art, documentary-art pieces from World War II and the Holocaust, and animated films accompanied by her direction.
The show presents 'The Little Prince' in a way that makes it clear that it is not an innocent children's book, but rather a protest against a society that has given up on spiritual values and human rights and resolves conflicts through wars.
The film-show “Draw Me a Sheep” was successfully staged at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque, Haifa Cinematheque, “Alma” Zichron Yaacov, the “Enav” Center in Tel Aviv, “Beit Hayotzer” ACUM Hangar 22 Tel Aviv Port and Baid Hasmona.
There will be 2 performances in July:
Friday 13.7 at 15:00 PM Klor Hall, Kfar Blum – “The Voice of Music in the Upper Galilee” Festival
Price: 40 NIS. Tickets 04-6816481 Link
Tel Aviv Cinematheque, 2 Sprinzak St. Tuesday, July 17.7.2018, 19 at 00:XNUMX PM
On sale from mid-June for 45 NIS by calling *6876 or on the Cinematheque website. Free for Cinematheque subscribers.
A few words about the author
Sara Shoham, born in Israel, graduated from the Rubin Academy of Music at Tel Aviv University in conducting, piano and composition. She has won, among other things, the Czech Government Prize for her work in Hebrew, Arabic and English, And They Will Learn War No More, the prize at the International Competition “Florilage” in France for her work “Beware! Weeds” to lyrics by Saint-Exupéry, and the prize at the International Competition “Spoor” in Belgium for her work in Hebrew, Arabic and Latin, “Speak the Truth!” to verses from Zechariah, Isaiah and Psalms. She has also won the Philharmonic Orchestra Prize – for her work “Prayer” to lyrics by Pinchas Sade, the prize at the International Competition “IBLA” for her work “She Gave a Fork and She Gave a Spoon” to lyrics by Nurit Zarhi, the Prime Minister’s Prize for Composers 2002, 2014, the ACUM Prize for Lifetime Achievement and other awards. Her works constitute a musical documentation of the experiences of life in Israel and incorporate contemporary artistic discourse rooted in Israeli multiculturalism, with its myriad linguistic, musical, and ethnic identities.
More on the subject
Very interesting,
You gave us a fascinating conversation at dinner.
Very happy to hear 🙂
Thank you very much for the enriching and enlightening article.
Fascinating article
Thank you very much. Even though I know the author's work in depth, I read additional insights here. I was educated. ☺️
Reply Thank you very much Sarah for the eye-opening article. You have taught me a lot. And it is very important for me to come to the show you created, to purchase the CD please contact me 0549987009