The Sahara
Though the story of the Little Prince and his voyages among the planets is clearly fiction, Saint-Exupéry’s own experiences as a pilot helped inspire that tale. The plane crash that begins the story, through which the narrator meets the title character, mirrors a real mishap that left the author stranded in the Sahara in the mid-1930s, while on his way from Paris to Saigon on an airmail run. While waiting to be rescued in the desert, he kept himself company with his musings, and later spun the incident into his delightful children’s tale, The Little Prince. He ended up walking many miles in the desert before being rescued by a passing Bedouin. He described his ordeal in the 1939 book: Wind, Sand and Stars.
“You, Bedouin of Libya who saved our lives, though you will dwell forever in my memory yet I shall never be able to recapture your features. You are Humanity and your face comes into my mind simply as man incarnate. You, our beloved fellowman, did not know who we might be, and yet you recognized us without fail. And I, in my turn, shall recognize you in the faces of all mankind. You came towards me in an aureole of charity and magnanimity bearing the gift of water. All my friends and all my enemies marched towards me in your person. It did not seem to me that you were rescuing me: rather did it seem that you were forgiving me. And I felt I had no enemy left in all the world.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars
The Sahara
Though the story of the Little Prince and his voyages among the planets is clearly fiction, Saint-Exupéry’s own experiences as a pilot helped inspire that tale. The plane crash that begins the story, through which the narrator meets the title character, mirrors a real mishap that left the author stranded in the Sahara in the mid-1930s, while on his way from Paris to Saigon on an airmail run. While waiting to be rescued in the desert, he kept himself company with his musings, and later spun the incident into his delightful children’s tale, The Little Prince. He ended up walking many miles in the desert before being rescued by a passing Bedouin. He described his ordeal in the 1939 book: Wind, Sand and Stars.
“You, Bedouin of Libya who saved our lives, though you will dwell forever in my memory yet I shall never be able to recapture your features. You are Humanity and your face comes into my mind simply as man incarnate. You, our beloved fellowman, did not know who we might be, and yet you recognized us without fail. And I, in my turn, shall recognize you in the faces of all mankind. You came towards me in an aureole of charity and magnanimity bearing the gift of water. All my friends and all my enemies marched towards me in your person. It did not seem to me that you were rescuing me: rather did it seem that you were forgiving me. And I felt I had no enemy left in all the world.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars