Exceptional and unknown draft of The Little Prince, sold in 2012
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944) was a French pilot and writer. He wrote The Little Prince in 1943 in New York.
According to French auction house Artcurial, lot 384 is an unpublished and unknown draft of the novella. The manuscript, composed of two leaves, with an estimated value of around €40,000, was sold at the outstanding price of €385,000 (13 018 796 TWD) to an anonymous French collector on May 16, 2012.
While Saint-Exupery manuscripts are rare, those of The Little Prince, the bestselling and most-translated French book in the world since 1943, are extremely rare.
The second leaf of the manuscript is completely original. In the published version, the little prince meets the snake first. In this version, his first encounter is with a crossword enthusiast who is looking for a “six-letter word”.
My paper: A Treatise on the Unpublished Manuscript of The Little Prince Discovered in 2012
IAFOR Publication on June 7, 2023
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince. Lot 384 - Feuillet 2
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince. Lot 384 - Leaf 2
安托萬·迪·聖-修伯里, 《小王子》, 拍品 384 - 葉子 2
« Où sont les hommes ? se disait donc le petit prince tandis qu’il voyageait. »
“Where are the men? said the little prince to himself as he was traveling.”
「人在哪裡？小王子邊旅行邊喃喃自語。」
Il rencontra le premier d’entre eux sur une route.
He met the first of them on a road.
他在路上遇到了他們中的第一個。
« Ah ! Se dit-il, je vais savoir ce que l’on pense sur la vie dans cette planète-ci, se dit-il. Voilà peut-être un ambassadeur du genre humain… »
“Ah! he said to himself, I am going to find out what they think about life on this planet, he said. That may be an ambassador of mankind...”
「啊！我要知道人們對這個星球上的生命有什麼看法，他對自己說。也許這是人類的大使... 」
– Bonjour, lui dit-il avec gaîté.
– Hello, he said gaily.
– 「你好，」他高興地說。
– Bonjour, dit l’homme.
– Hello, said the man.
– 「你好，」那人說。
– Que fais-tu ? dit le petit prince.
– What are you doing? said the little prince.
– 「你在做什麼？」小王子說。
– Je suis très occupé, dit l’homme.
– I am very busy, said the man.
– 「我很忙，」那人說。
« Bien sûr qu’il est très occupé, se dit le petit prince, il tient une si grande planète. Il y a tant à faire. Et il n’osait presque pas le déranger. »
“Of course he is very busy, said the little prince to himself, he takes care of such a large planet. There is so much to do. And he scarcely dared disturb him.”
「他當然很忙，小王子心想，他正在照顧這麼大的星球。有很多事情要做。而且他幾乎不敢打擾他。」
– Peut-être puis-je t’aider, lui dit-il cependant : le petit prince eut aimé être utile.
– Perhaps I can help you, he nevertheless said aloud: The little prince enjoyed being helpful.
– 「也許我能幫你，」他卻說，小王子喜歡幫忙。
– Peut-être, lui dit l’homme… Voilà trois jours que je travaille sans réussir. Je cherche un mot de six lettres qui commence par un G et qui signifie ‘gargarisme’.
– Perhaps, said the man [...]. I have been working for three days without success. I am looking for a six-letter word that starts with G that means ‘gargling’.
– 「也許吧，」那人說。我已經工作了三天，但沒有成功。我正在尋找一個以 G 開頭並代表「漱口」的六個字母的單詞。」
– Gargarisme, dit le petit prince.
– Gargling, said the little prince.
– 「漱口」小王子說。
– Gargarisme, dit l’homme.
– Gargling, said the man.
– 「漱口」那人說。
Vocabulary
Tant : so much 這麼多 (tant à + infinitive)
Un ambassadeur/une ambassadrice : ambassador 大使
Gargarisme : Gargling, mouthwash 漱口
Déranger : to disturb 打擾
Tenir : to hold 拿, to take care of 照顧
Analysis
Gargarisme
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Gargarisme: mouthwash. There is no answer at the end of the text and the reader is left guessing.
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Theory: Because The Little Prince contains numerous allusions to WWII and the French defeat, it is plausible that the word Saint-Exupéry was thinking about is guerre (war), which would not be a synonym, but an abstract concept.
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A manuscript titled La guerre was written by Saint-Exupéry around 1940.
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In French, to gargle something [se gargariser; figurative. Savourer ses propres propos avec vanité (to savor one’s own words with vanity)] can also mean “to be proud of oneself, or of something”. This pride can be compared to a nationalism which, in 1939-1940, unleashed the conflicts in Europe which we know of.
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Saint-Exupéry resumed flying and on July 31 1944, after taking off in an unarmed P-38 from Corsica, he vanished over the Mediterranean. His plane crashed during the reconnaissance mission and disappeared. In 1998, Jean-Claude Bianco found Saint-Exupéry’s identity bracelet near Marseille and in 2000, Luc Vanrell the remains of a Lockheed P-38 Lightning. The remnants of Saint-Exupéry’s aircraft were recovered in 2003. Ironically, The Little Prince was banned in France during the war, not only by the Germans and Vichy Regime, but also by the partisans of de Gaulle and Free France because Saint-Exupéry refused to support any of them
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Operation Dragoon (initially Operation Anvil) was the code name for the landing operation of the Allied invasion of Provence (Southern France) on 15 August 1944. Although initially designed to be executed in conjunction with Operation Overlord, the Allied landing in Normandy, a lack of available resources led to a cancellation of the second landing. By July 1944 the landing was reconsidered, as the clogged-up ports in Normandy did not have the capacity to adequately supply the Allied forces. Concurrently, the High Command of the French Liberation Army pushed for a revival of the operation that would include large numbers of French troops. As a result, the operation was finally approved in July to be executed in August. Hindered by Allied air supremacy and a large-scale uprising by the French Resistance, the weak German forces were swiftly defeated.
Homme
In the published version, chapter XVII, the little prince says to the snake: « Où sont les hommes ? » (p. 60). Woods’ English translation is “Where are the men?” (p. 40).
Expressions
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Un homme-grenouille : frogman, diver
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Un homme-sandwich : Sign holder, human billboard
Culture
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The Treatise on Man (French: L’Homme) is an unfinished treatise by René Descartes written in the 1630s and published posthumously, firstly in 1662 in Latin, then in 1664 in French.
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2022 Discovery of a Latin manuscript of L’homme.
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Rousseau: L’Inégalité Parmi Les Hommes - Inequality Among Mankind (1755).
Grammar
The imperfect tense is used to describe states of being and habitual actions in the past. It also has several idiomatic uses (+ if). It is generally used for general descriptions of past events or actions without a specific endpoint in time (Feelings, emotions, mental actions, or physical sensations; Habits or things people did frequently). Story telling. Specific time in the past in which the narrative takes place.
Il pleuvait. It was raining.
La ville était plus petite quand j’étais jeune. The city was smaller when I was young.
Quand je vivais en Allemagne, j’avais toujours très froid. When I lived in Germany, I was always very cold.
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Le passé antérieur 先過去時 Past anterior
“le petit prince eut aimé être utile” (the little prince enjoyed being helpful). The French past anterior is a tense reserved for formal, written French – mainly literature, but also history and journalism. It is usually preceded by a conjunction: après que, aussitôt que, dès que, lorsque, quand. In English, this tense corresponds closely to the past perfect, which in other words describes the past of the past.
Example:
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« Lorsque j'eus fait vingt mètres, je m'arrêtai. » Once I had gone twenty meters, I stopped. (Marcel Pagnol, La Gloire de mon père, 1957; My Father’s Glory)
References
Artcurial (2012). Vente Livres et manuscrits anciens & modernes - Lot 384 Antoine de SA Saint-Exupéry Le Petit Prince. Retrieved May 25, 2023 from https://www.artcurial.com/fr/lot-antoine-de-saint-exupery-le-petit-prince-2130-384
Preply (2021). Mapped: The Most Translated Books in Every Country. Retrieved April 25, 2023 from https://preply.com/en/d/most-translated-books--lp
Saint-Exupéry, A. (1998). Le Petit Prince, Paris: Folio Junior, Gallimard.
Saint-Exupéry, A. (1943). The Little Prince. Translated by Katherine Woods (1st ed.). New York: Reynal & Hitchcock.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Dragoon
https://www.linguee.fr/francais-anglais/search?source=auto&query=Ambassadeur
https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/tenir https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/gargarisme
https://www.wordreference.com/fren/Tant
https://www.deepl.com/translator?il=fr
https://www.lalanguefrancaise.com/articles/les-regles-de-la-ponctuation-en-francais#les-tirets
Pinyin: https://www.chineseconverter.com/en/convert/chinese-to-pinyin
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944)
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is a French writer and a war hero. Born in 1900, he had his first plane flight in 1912. In 1921, he began his military service and later became a pilot. He published several books, including his first novel, Southern Mail in 1929, and Night Flight in 1931. During World War II, he published Wind, Sand and Stars in 1939, Flight to Arras in 1942, and The Little Prince in 1943. Saint-Exupéry resumed flying and on July 31 1944, after taking off in an unarmed P-38 from Corsica, he vanished over the Mediterranean. The Little Prince is ranked the most translated book in the world with 382 translations (Preply, 2021). Saint-Exupéry wrote the novella in the US, in exile, between June and November 1942.
According to this website, the novella has been translated into 570 languages and dialects: https://www.petit-prince-collection.com/lang/traducteurs.php
In 2013, English singer Lily Allen released a cover version of "Somewhere Only We Know" used for the trailer of The Little Prince (2015).
Aude Gagnier - J'ai dans le cœur https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ_IVxK-3dk
Aude Gagnier
Video on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/100085063285588/videos/221773724361190/?notif_id=1708256731737797