These industrious efforts produced many hundreds of poems, of which a certain number are good—it is hard for me, as it was always hard for him, to choose among them. In his case, it is probably best to read a fairly large number of poems, most of which are short and deceptively simple. His poetic styles were varied; he was constantly experimenting with new styles and could write in almost any meter. His subjects were equally varied. He especially liked animals, all animals, and wrote fine poems about them. For example, “The Animals”:
So cunningly they walk the world,
So decently they lay them down,
Who but their maker sees how pride
And modesty in them are one?
He wrote about other natural things; “Former Barn Lot” was a good example:
Once there was a fence here,
And the grass came and tried,
Leaning from the pasture
To get inside.
But colt feet trampled it,
Turning it brown;
Until the farmer moved
And the fence fell down.
Then any bird saw,
Under the wire,
Grass nibbling inward
Like green fire.
He wrote about people, those whom he knew and loved, and also about people he had not known but still loved—those he called “My Great Friends,” for example Hamlet, Achilles, Don Quixote.
He wrote about death, his own personal, physical death and also the death of the world. He was acutely, painfully aware that for the first time in history human anger and folly could destroy the home of man. In a well-known poem, “So Fair a World It Was,” he expressed his fears about this:
So fair a world it was,
So far away in the dark,
the dark Yet lighted, oh, so well, so welclass="underline" Water and land,
So clear so sweet;
So fair, it should have been forever.
He expressed another aspect of the same fear in what has become probably his best-known poem, in which he played with the notion that his private world and the world at large are much the same thing. He called the poem, simply, “O World”:
O world, my friend, my foe,
My deep dark stranger, doubtless Unthinkable to know;
My many and my one,
Created when I was and doomed to go Back into the same sun;
Mark Van Doren published some fifty books, of which more than twenty were collections of his poems. In 1967 he issued a small volume called 100 Poems, which is a good introduction to his work. It does not contain poems from his two later books of poetry, That Shining Place (1969) and Good Morning: Last Poems (1973). The latter includes poems written during his last decade of life; these show no diminution in power and charm. He died in Cornwall in 1972.
ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY
1900–1944
The Little Prince
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was born into an impoverished family of French aristocrats in Lyons in 1900. His real life began in 1922, when he received his pilot’s license; from that time on he was only really happy when he was behind the controls of an airplane. He flew—often (and preferably) alone—over much of the world, helping to inaugurate airmail routes over North Africa, the south Atlantic, and South America. He was forced several times to crash-land the small, undependable planes that were the lot of airmen of those days, and once he and his plane were not found for many days; as he lay, badly hurt, on the burning Sahara sands he began to have delusions. Perhaps these were, after all, the source and inspiration of The Little Prince.
It was his last book, but there were others before it; the only other thing that Saint-Exupéry liked to do besides flying was to write about flying. Two of his best are Vol de Nuit (Night Flight, 1931) and Terre des Hommes (Wind, Sand, and Stars, 1939). These works share a quality that no one else, perhaps, has ever brought to the subject of flight: as you read the sound of the engine seems to die away, and you are suspended in midair, the Earth far below and almost forgotten, alone with yourself in a novel element dreamed of by man forever but never before conquered.
Saint-Exupéry joined the French Air Force as soon as World War II broke out in 1939; when France fell he escaped to the United States and there, in 1943, wrote The Little Prince.
A pilot is downed upon the sand. His plane has crashed; he is trying to repair it. Hot, thirsty, hungry, he sees a very small person, dressed like a prince, walking toward him. The small person speaks, the pilot responds, and they are soon friends. The prince tells many stories about his adventures, and they are the main substance of the book.
He has journeyed from his own planet, the little Prince explains, which although it is a very small one is also very important to him, because of a threat that the planet suffers. On his small planet seeds of the giant baobab tree have taken root, and the trees have grown so large that they are likely to split the planet in half. This would not be such a tragedy, the Prince admits, except that also on his planet there grows a single rose, beautiful and proud and red, and he, the little Prince, is deeply in love with her. He must save her, and he has come all the way to Earth to find a way.
The pilot lies in the sun, exhausted, and sometimes he doesn’t pay attention. “You must pay attention,” the Prince says, “otherwise I will not come to see you anymore. Whenever I come to you, you too must be there, so that I can grow used to you.” The pilot nods. “That is right,” he agrees.
Once, the little Prince says, he saw a fox in an orchard. The fox was fascinated by the Prince’s golden hair, and he came to see him the next day. But the Prince was not to be seen. When the fox came again he chastised the little Prince. “You must tame me,” he explained, “by always being there when I expect you. I will come every day at four o’clock, and you will be there every day at four o’clock, and we will be fast friends.” The little Prince remembers that the rose had tamed him in the same way, and so he tames the fox. It is indeed how friends are made.
Finally, the little Prince must depart and the pilot, too, for he has managed to repair his plane. The pilot will go back to such civilization as the world still affords, and the little Prince will try to return to his small planet and to his rose. It is a difficult journey and there is only one way to go on it and that perilous; the little Prince may not make it, after all. There is a way to know whether the little Prince succeeds in reaching his rose, but I am afraid that is for you to discover when you read the book.
You may agree with the pilot in thinking that the question is more important than any other question in the world. And you will ever after look upon the stars in a different way.