We all crossed the path of the “Little Prince” one day, the blond boy who wanted us to draw a sheep for him.
Since its publication, first on the sly in 1943 in the United States and then officially on April 6, 1946 in Paris, the poetic tale of Antoine de Saint Exupéry has been a phenomenal success and has entered our memories, both intimate and collective. .
Not just in France.
Behind the Bible and the Koran, the book is the most translated in the world, with 400 official versions.
In the record books, it is also the best-selling French work on the planet, with more than 200 million copies.
And it is not over since five million still flow each year ...
To celebrate these 75 years, the Antoine de Saint Exupéry Foundation will punctuate the year 2021 with tributes and events: minting of an anniversary coin by the Monnaie de Paris, printing of a stamp, many new publications in bookstores, creation of a world day of the “Little Prince” to raise environmental awareness… Above all, the child who loved sunsets so much will have the right to enter the museum for the first time: it will be from November 18, 2021 to 6 March 2022, at Decorative Arts in Paris, for a major exhibition where the original manuscript, never shown in France, will be presented.
In the meantime, here are some surprising anecdotes about the book and its author.
Because if the work is famous, it still has some surprises in store ...
Walt Disney refused to adapt it.
When the book comes out in the USA, Orson Welles, who is only 27, falls in love with the story and dreams of adapting it.
He then imagines mixing real images and animation.
For this part, he hopes to convince Walt Disney.
A meeting between the two men is organized in Mickey's studios.
It will be short: the creator of "Snow White" quickly spurns the young man who is too sure of himself.
"There is no room in this office for two geniuses", would have let go ironically the master of the cartoon.
The writer Antoine de Saint Exupéry.
A fox inspired by a real fennec.
In "the Little Prince", the fox plays an essential role in the initiation of the young boy, during his stay on Earth.
To imagine this character, Saint Exupéry would have been inspired by a real meeting.
In 1926, the aviator writer provided the postal link between France and Morocco.
He is based at Cape Juby, in the middle of the desert.
There, often alone, he adopts and tames a fennec.
Who he will think about while writing his tale ...
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Three new drawings of the "Little Prince" found in Switzerland
But who is Leon Werth, to whom the book is dedicated?
Unclassifiable writer, anti-militarist, Léon Werth, almost forgotten today, meets Saint Exupéry in 1931. The two men bond with a deep friendship and never stop seeing and writing to each other.
In 1943, while writing his book, the writer worried about his Jewish friend who remained in France.
Ironically, the latter survived the world conflict unlike Saint Exupéry, whose plane disappeared at sea in 1944.
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Saint Exupéry failed to illustrate his tale.
When the book was being edited, it was one of his friends, Bernard Lamotte, who was approached to deliver the illustrations for the “Little Prince”.
But his line is ultimately deemed too realistic.
* -Exupéry's mistress suggests that he do it himself.
Obviously since the writer has been used to scribbling for years on the tablecloths of coffee tables a little boy who already looks a lot like the “Little Prince”… Another funny anecdote: for years, in the French edition, the hero wears a blue cape… although it was initially green.
An error corrected only in 1999.
Saint Exupéry is written well without a hyphen.
Yes… The writer, on these signatures and his business cards, has always written his name without a hyphen.
According to the association of friends of the author, he was even very picky on this point during his lifetime.
Posterity and publishers unfortunately got the better of this desire.
Including in the Pleiade and in dictionaries, his name is now systematically spelled "Saint-Exupéry".