Talk:The Little Prince/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Trivia Erased

Someone erased most of the trivia. Could put back? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.14.39.113 (talk) 23:47, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Random comments

Hello, is it relevant to have the first section dedicated to the "place of writing"? There is already a "Saint-Exupéry wrote it while living in the United States" in the first sentence of this article. This seems to be rather a trivial fact and I was wondering if it deserves as much place (w/ picture, etc). Regards. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sensi.fr (talk • contribs) 02:04, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

ok so ive never done this before but i have to ask this question it says in the article that "He also got Leonardo Di Vinci to make the covers for his book". in 1943....leonardo Di Vinci died in 1519... does anyone else see something wrong with this statement...?

76.254.40.80 (talk) 18:25, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

fr:Discuter:Antoine de Saint-Exupery#Le Petit Prince Gangleri 05:43, 2004 Oct 27 (UTC)

I've never used a talk page before, so I don't know if this is where this goes or not. The article currently contains the line "It is often used as a beginner's book for foreign language students.It is interesting to note that Saint-Exupery drew all the illustrations for the Little Prince himself, with a water-color paintbrush clenched firmly between his buttocks." I'm inclined to think that this is untrue, but I don't want to remove it because, well, you never know. --Angelmnemosyne 03:23, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

"with a water-color paintbrush clenched firmly between his buttocks." I am inclined to think this is untrue as well (at least partly). I have seen it used (the original text) in the introductory French classes in my high school, but I wouldn't generalize based on that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.231.147.176 (talk) 23:54, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Should the vain also be mentioned in the list of characters? Comrade-HW 02:45, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I added the "two extra main points". I believe those are commonly seen as the three main points of the book as they are reitterated very often throughout the book and are also spoken at the same time by the fox. --Sasha Bakale 19:42, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

The article is missing an important element: the Turkish astronomer. The author lets us know of the symbolic way his story is to be understood, thus requiring the use of a specific place in space: the Asteroid B612, so as to be taken seriously. The asteroid was, according to the story, discovered by a Turkish astronomer who presented his discovery to the French Academy of Science, but was not taken seriously because of his oriental outfit. Year later the Turkish astronomer repeated the demonstration, this time in western clothing, and was praised and accepted.

It is a key element in the story: who "grown ups" require certain protocol to accept ideas. A good editor or writer should add that part of the story to the description of the plot in the article.

rafvrab (talk) 17:04, 3 April 2008 (UTC) 13:03, 03 April 2008 (UTC)

Introductory section, paragraph 2 reads "To date it has sold more than 50 million copies worldwide, putting it at number 3 on the most printed books list, just behind the Bible and "Gone With the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell." Besides being a bit of a shocker to read, it's blatently at odds with its reference, the Wikipedia list of Best selling books.

My first post... hope it gets to somebody who feels qualified to make the edit!

E2k8 (talk) 02:30, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

yes, it's funny how this article insists on the location of the writing... Seems like "Yes, he was french, but his most successful book was written in the United States of America! God bless America!"...

-Anonymous —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.236.17.107 (talk) 00:13, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Umm... it just lists the location. How does it "insist" anything? TheStickMan^[✆Talk] 00:32, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

The Opera

The Little Prince is now performed by the New York City Opera Company. It consists of all the characters of the true book, but with 32 children added...they play stars and orphans. Outstandingly said1!! What a sweet interpretation.

The Little Prince is being performed VERY soon by the San Francisco Opera Company with Cal Performances. I think that should be added on... it is true! Go to the SF opera page for more info.

Who is the Rose?

My perception from reading this book is that it is a suicide-threatening arrow of Exupery's designed to penetrate the breast of a former lover (the Rose) and break off below the fletch. Does this have any credence? Who is the Rose meant to be in Exupery's life? - Julian Assange?

This is something only an 'adult' would think. -FeralCats

Only an adult would read this wiki page -Asal — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.73.109.212 (talk) 05:21, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

St. Exupery said the Rose was his wife, with whom he had a stormy and often-absent relationship. I believe she has also written a memoir acknowledging this. Vince

His wife, Consuelo De Sant-Exupery, wrote a memoir, but it was not found until after her death. Entitled "The Tale of the Rose, The Love Story Behind the Little Prince," it is a good read and may provide insight into his fictional works. His mistress also a published a book about Exupery, but I'm not sure what it is called. Any thoughts on adding his wife to the 'inspirations' section?

Novel or novella?

Is The Little Prince long enough to be considered a novel? It's about 90 pages, which would make it a novella. I'll change it to that, unless anyone objects.-Ian Morrison

One of the main points missed

No mention of the differences between the children's view and that of the "grown-ups", which were being underlined by the author throughout the book, was in the article. I tried to introduce it into the lead section, but I didn't go far enough for the detailed description. It seems, that much more work is necessary on this issue. Cmapm 12:37, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

What the lecture of the book teaches us

Re IMPORTANT. Every reader of the article will be convinced that the authors have not only read the book but have clearly understood it. Especially, the moral at the end when the little prince says: Et aucune grande personne ne comprendra jamais que ça a tellement d'importance!
What Saint-Exupéry is telling us is that if you have a child, you should never pay attention to what IT, the child, thinks is important. Who wants to think about whether the sheep ate the flower or not? Important is only what YOU think is important. This is the right way to teach.
So far, the American Wikipedia has internalized this important lesson. Not as well as its great Forepicture, the German Wikipedia, of course, but well enough. Let us hope this will never be forgotten: It is of no importance what any reader of Wikipedia thinks. What could an outsider know about the twin horrors of POV and ORIGINAL RESEARCH? How could he be the judge of what is an excellent aticle, what is quality, what is a subject for discussion, what is the function of a commentary, etc etc? Important is only the opinion of the editing community, i.e. the Autoren and, above all, the Administratoren.--BZ(Bruno Zollinger) 08:59, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Re MISUNDERSTANDING. Le langage est source de malentendus, the fox tells the Little Prince. And that is also what mathematics tells us. Words can always be misunderstood in a thousand different ways, but they can be correctly understood in only one way. Which means that the chances of success of any communication that relies on words are practically nil. Strange man, that Saint-Exupéry. A very long fairy tale, tens of thousands of words just to tell us precisely that words will NOT do the trick? Every child knows this. A child learns every single day that grown-ups "just don't get it". No matter what he says and how.--BZ(Bruno Zollinger) 08:57, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Snake

I removed your comment about the snake for two reasons. The lesser of the two was that it was conjectural and not based off of any referenced source. The main reason I removed it was because I looked at the Cerastes and it mentioned that their venom is not particularly potent. b_cubed 20:37, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Pop Culture

Moby has a music video for the song Natural Blues, titled The Little Idiot, named after The Little Prince. I think it should be included in the pop culture section, since it obviously is a pop culture reference. smithjacob 00:26, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

xkcd referenced it today. http://xkcd.com/618/ Jarus (talk) 06:05, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

In reply to the above 2 comments, the article doesn't have a pop-culture-refs section anymore. As a well-loved work its influence is wide. But including unreferenced passing allusions, mentions, people quoting lines, copy sightings, is impractical; it overburdens the article. There were over 90 bulleted items—which was very sad. A great many weren't significant in context of the book overall. About half were in the pop culture section, the rest in the adaptations section, with considerable overlap. Many significant bulleted items, like information on translations, belonged elsewhere in the article; this was fixed. There's now a sub article for listing adaptations, with a small amount of well-referenced notable examples here to introduce and link to the sub article. –Whitehorse1 14:40, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Tout petit la planète

Reviewing the lyrics to the song 'Tout petit la planète' by Plastic Bertrand (quick link: http://www.paroles.net/chansons/22797.htm), it seems very much to be about Le Petit Prince. Even at first glance it draws similarities, between the title of the song and the prince often repeating "Chez moi, c'est tout petit" (Where I come from is very small). Seeing an airplane for the first time and calling it a mushroom, meeting strange grownups that the speaker finds absurd, and possibly other parallels I've missed. (I'm only familiar with the French versions of either source, and I'm a little rusty on Le Petit Prince's vocab) Would someone more experienced than I in editing Wikipedia articles make mention of this in the Pop Culture section? Or if I've made some grave mistake in my comparison, please let me know! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 4.239.186.62 (talk) 00:13, 5 May 2007 (UTC).

It is very common in French to say "le monde est petit" (i.e. the world is small). For example, you hear it when two friends or acquaintance meet in by coincidence in a place where neither of them usually goes to. "Le monde est petit" (and by extension "la planète est petite") is a very common French saying. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.45.191.193 (talk) 08:45, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Why only give Irene Testot-Ferry's version?

It is very strange that Katherine Woods' translation is not mentioned during the entire article, even though it appeared before the French original, and that the box at the top gives only Irene Testot-Ferry as the translator. Besides the famous Wood translation and that of Testot-Ferry, there are actually two other translations of this book into English (by Howard and Cuffe).

Bathrobe 08:02, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I've changed it to Katherine Woods. The fact that the above comment has been completely ignored suggests to me that Wikipedia is dying.

Bathrobe 06:05, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Friends becoming into sheep?!

This is how the English translation goes:

I should have liked to begin this story in the fashion of the fairy-tales. I should have like to say: "Once upon a time there was a little prince who lived on a planet that was scarcely any bigger than himself, and who had need of a sheep . . ." (Chapter 4)

The funny thing is that the French original and the German translation both write "friend" instead of "sheep":

J'aurais aimé commencer cette histoire à la façon des contes de fées. J'aurais aimé dire:

"Il était une fois un petit prince qui habitait une planète à peine plus grande que lui, et qui avait besoin d'un ami..."

Viel lieber hätte ich diese Geschichte begonnen wie ein Märchen. Am liebsten hätte ich so angefangen:

Es war einmal ein kleiner Prinz, der wohnte auf einem Planeten, der kaum größer war als er selbst, und er brauchte einen Freund...

I doubt if this change in the text is really justified... Adam78 23:01, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

This is a mistake in the translation by Katherine Wood. Other translations get it right.

Bathrobe 02:28, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

In this case the link to the English translation should be changed, I think, to a version that doesn't have this mistake. Do you know if the Testot-Ferry, the Howard, or the Cuffe translation is available online? Adam78 10:10, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

The Woods translation, despite the error that you've picked up, is accepted as the classic translation of The Little Prince, the one that everyone knows. I believe it actually appeared before the French one did. It would be fine to list the various translations, but it would be a mistake to pick out one of the other three as 'standard'. For better or for worse, Woods is the 'standard' translation. The Testot-Ferry translation is very similar (almost too similar) to Woods. The Howard translation has been criticised quite a lot for losing the poetic language of Woods' translation (for example, the translation of 'spring of water' as 'water fountain').

Bathrobe 00:13, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

"Orginial" language

Was the book originally published in English or French? DHN 05:07, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Take a look at this web page: [1]

Also this web page from the same site: [2]

This suggests that (1) the very first edition was published in the US and not in France and (2) the English version might have preceded the French -- but it is not conclusive Bathrobe 06:48, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Somebody has put Reynal & Hitchcock as the publisher of The Little Prince. Given that Gallimard is universally recognised as having the rights to the book, this seems to be unjustified, even if Reynal & Hitchcock did first publish the book back in 1943. Bathrobe 02:16, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Comment: numerous sources provide the exact date in 1943 of its first publication, in English, in the United States, which was followed one week later by a printing in French, again in the United States. That Gallimard had some 'legal' rights to the writings of Saint-Ex due to their contract with him doesn't change the fact that Reynal & Hitchcock published it first, in both English and French, in the United States in April 1943. Both companies ironed out their respective claims to Saint-Ex's works in court litigation around 1947 (?), but I haven't seen any description of the terms of settlement, which would be good to include in this Wikipedia article. Can anyone find that document in the French or American legal systems? Best: HarryZilber (talk) 16:07, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

The original language of a book is the one in which it was written, and in this case it's french. The english version is only a translation, therefore writing "english and french" in the infobox as the language of this work is completely misleading, especially when the article's introduction doesn't state anywhere what the original language of this book is. No other wikipedia version does this, nor does any trustable source. Once-but-never-again (talk) 17:06, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Rachel Marsden addition

Hi. Rachel Marsden is a controversial figure. The following edit should be referenced to a reliable source that identifies what play, what award and when it was performed. Quote: "*Political commentator Rachel Marsden composed a song about the Petit Prince which was performed in an award-winning play in Saint Jean sur Richelieu, Quebec." Canuckle 20:06, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Having noticed that Wikipedia has deleted the main Rachel Marsden entry, I'm also taking this opportunity to delete the unsourced reference here, as per Canuckle's comments above. 206.248.161.214 (talk) 20:40, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

External Links

I've cleaned up some external links but there are still 3 websites doing the same thing (list all the editions/translations of the book). Which one should we keep (or should we remove them all)? --antilived^{T | C | G} 10:43, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi, This is Patrick Tourreau (from http://www.patoche.org/lepetitprince/) The answer to your question is: it depends ;-) First, all those websites are great, usefull to the collectors' community and full of passion. Second because they are all a bit different and focus on a different aspect of the Little Prince.

Unless I am wrong, the 2 first ones (Jaume's and Gerhard's, http://www.elpetitprincep.eu/index.html and http://www.petit-prince.at/collection.htm) contain the list of the books they actually have in their (impressive) collections. What I tried to do (and what I am trying to do when I can) is to update my list (http://www.patoche.org/lepetitprince/gallima.htm) with everyone's books, to get a complete list of what exists in the world.

So is my site better ? No, first because so far, it is only "synchronized" with Gerhard's site (it was up-to-date in march 2008), and I am a bit behind Jaume. Second because there will always be mistakes in it, I can't prevent it and it is always good to cross references.

A little conclusion: MICHAEL's! Once again, I may be wrong, and I exchange enough with Jaume and Gerhard for them to see no offense, but I think that the broadest online collection is Michael's : http://www.fotodesignerin.de/prinz/Le%20Petit%20Prince%20-%20langues.html. Many, Many books, Many languages.

So over all, if a choice was to be made in keeping only one link, I would put Michael's. But I think that we'll have to work a bit to build an entire Wikipedia section for the translations!

By the way, as an answer to a few emails I get every year from students: NO, I won't read the book for you, answer your literature questions and do your homework for you. Read the book. And enjoy :)

Patrick Tourreau

A little update (April 2014): websites are changing and collections are moving. Jean-Marc (http://www.petit-prince-collection.com/) is now curing one of the most impressive collection. And it's in English too. So if we had to choose only one reference, I'll go for this one. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.225.214.42 (talk) 19:31, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Katherine Woods

Hello,

I am looking for the date of birth and death (if she died) of Katherine Woods. Any idea? Yann (talk) 11:27, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I think the little prince is a great book... Although it is written for children, the content touches anyone of any age. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.125.155.3 (talk) 14:54, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

While your question was posted a while ago, an answer might help others; plus, you're still active onsite. It took a while to find out. According to a Corsair search (online catalog tool) on the Pierpont Morgan Library website (part of The Morgan Library & Museum, NY), holders of an autographed manuscript of the book ... The late Katherine Woods, translator, was born in 1886. She died, in 1968. Her legacy lives on. –Whitehorse1 14:40, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Textbook

When I was a student at Bayside High School, I noticed that students studying fourth-year French had a version of Le Petit Prince as a textbook.

I think that a section of the main article could be written about this textbook version. I myself only went up to third-year French, so I never studied from it. Josh-Levin@ieee.org (talk) 13:12, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Parody

I'm not sure how many times this book has been parodied, but here's one recent one: xkcd comic, "Asteroid". davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 19:47, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Over the years there've been many cultural references, both parody and pastiche. The article was recently pruned of many pop culture items, with key adaptations spun off into a daughter list-article. The comic you mention was also highlighted in an earlier thread, above. It is interesting, though doesn't belong in the article. –Whitehorse1 16:27, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Reverting publication change without prejudice

I'm reverting the recent publication change from Reynal & Hitchcock back to Gallimard the per Talk:The Little Prince#"Orginial" language above. I do so without prejudice: There was not much discussion 2 years ago and it's hard to tell how strong the consensus was then or if the consensus today would be the same. I've invited the editor to restart the discussion here. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:48, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Since Reynal & Hitchcock published in 1943 and Gallimard in 1945, you cannot both say "publication date 1943" and "publisher Gallimard". 213.84.53.62 (talk) 19:49, 23 July 2010 (UTC)