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Puer aeternus

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Puer aeternus ( Latin for 'eternal boy'; female: puella aeterna ; sometimes shortened to puer and puella ) in mythology is a child-god who is eternally young. In the analytical psychology of Carl Jung , the term is used to describe an older person whose emotional life has remained at an adolescent level, which is also known as " Peter Pan syndrome ", a more recent pop-psychology label. In Jung's conception, the puer typically leads a "provisional life" due to the fear of being caught in a situation from which it might not be possible to escape. The puer covets independence and freedom, opposes boundaries and limits and tends to find any restriction intolerable.

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122-523: The phrase puer aeternus comes from Metamorphoses , an epic work by the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC – c.  17 AD ) dealing with Greek and Roman myths. In the poem, Ovid addresses the child-god Iacchus as " puer aeternus " and praises him for his role in the Eleusinian mysteries . Iacchus is later identified with the gods Dionysus and Eros . The puer is a god of vegetation and resurrection;

244-457: A "negative" aspect. The "positive" side of the puer appears as the Divine Child who symbolizes newness, potential for growth, hope for the future. He also foreshadows the hero that he sometimes becomes (e.g. Heracles ). The "negative" side is the child-man who refuses to grow up and meet the challenges of life head-on, waiting instead for his ship to come in and solve all his problems. "For

366-724: A 22-room mansion in Asharoken that overlooked Long Island Sound . The author-aviator initially complained, "I wanted a hut, and it's the Palace of Versailles ." As the weeks wore on, the author became invested in his project and the home would become "a haven for writing, the best place I have ever had anywhere in my life." He devoted himself to the book on mostly midnight shifts, usually starting at about 11 pm, fueled by helpings of scrambled eggs on English muffins, gin and tonics, Coca-Colas, cigarettes and numerous visits by friends and expatriates who dropped in to see their famous countryman. One of

488-574: A Hostage ) and Le Petit Prince ( The Little Prince ), and referred to Werth in three more of his works. At the beginning of the Second World War while writing The Little Prince , Saint-Exupéry lived in his downtown New York City apartment, thinking of his native France and his friends. Werth spent the war unobtrusively in Saint-Amour , his village in the Jura , a mountainous region near Switzerland where he

610-451: A boy like the prince. The story of The Little Prince is recalled in a sombre, measured tone by the pilot-narrator, in memory of his small friend, "a memorial to the prince—not just to the prince, but also to the time the prince and the narrator had together." The Little Prince was created when Saint-Exupéry was "an ex-patriate and distraught about what was going on in his country and in the world." According to one analysis, "the story of

732-493: A child, the narrator shows them a picture depicting a boa constrictor that has eaten an elephant. The adults always reply that the picture depicts a hat, and so he knows to only talk of "reasonable" things to them, rather than the fanciful. The narrator becomes an aircraft pilot, and one day, his plane crashes in the Sahara desert, far from civilization. The narrator must fix his air plane before his supply of water runs out. Here, he

854-694: A collection of translations and responses to the poem, entitled After Ovid: New Metamorphoses , was produced by numerous contributors in emulation of the process of the Garth volume. One of the most famous translations of the Metamorphoses published in France dates back to 1557. Published under the title La Métamorphose d'Ovide figurée (The Illustrated Metamorphosis of Ovid) by the Maison Tournes (1542–1567) in Lyon , it

976-404: A continuing and decisive influence on European literature as Ovid's Metamorphoses . The emergence of French, English, and Italian national literatures in the late Middle Ages simply cannot be fully understood without taking into account the effect of this extraordinary poem. ... The only rival we have in our tradition which we can find to match the pervasiveness of the literary influence of

1098-502: A declaration that everything except his poetry—even Rome—must give way to change: And now, my work is done, which neither Jove Nor flame nor sword nor gnawing time can fade. That day, which governs only my poor frame, May come at will to end my unfixed life, But in my better and immortal part I shall be borne beyond the lofty stars And never will my name be washed away. Where Roman power prevails, I shall be read; And so, in fame and on through every age (If bards foretell

1220-429: A figure representing the future psychological development of human beings. That higher and 'complete' ( teleios ) man is begotten by the 'unknown' father and born from Wisdom, and it is he who, in the figure of the puer aeternus —' vultu mutabilis albus et ater '—represents our totality, which transcends consciousness. It was this boy into whom Faust had to change, abandoning his inflated onesidedness which saw

1342-453: A hero. Apollo comes in for particular ridicule as Ovid shows how irrational love can confound the god out of reason . The work as a whole inverts the accepted order, elevating humans and human passions while making the gods and their desires and conquests objects of low humor. The Metamorphoses ends with an epilogue (Book XV.871–879), one of only two surviving Latin epics to do so (the other being Statius ' Thebaid ). The ending acts as

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1464-399: A hundred manuscripts and was informed of many others through correspondence. Collaborative editorial effort has been investigating the various manuscripts of the Metamorphoses , some forty-five complete texts or substantial fragments, all deriving from a Gallic archetype. The result of several centuries of critical reading is that the poet's meaning is firmly established on the basis of

1586-520: A hundred words, one sentence substitut[ing] for a page..." He worked "long hours with great concentration." According to the author himself, it was extremely difficult to start his creative writing processes. Biographer Paul Webster wrote of the aviator-author's style: "Behind Saint-Exupéry's quest for perfection was a laborious process of editing and rewriting which reduced original drafts by as much as two-thirds." The French author frequently wrote at night, usually starting at about 11 p.m. accompanied by

1708-449: A key factor in military confrontations between nations. Saint-Exupéry met Léon Werth (1878–1955), a writer and art critic, in 1931. Werth soon became Saint-Exupery's closest friend outside of his Aeropostale associates. Werth was an anarchist, a leftist Bolshevik supporter of Jewish descent , twenty-two years older than Saint-Exupéry. Saint-Exupéry dedicated two books to him, Lettre à un otage  [ fr ] ( Letter to

1830-476: A large dining table. It also allowed him to alternately work on his writings and then on his sketches and watercolours for hours at a time, moving his armchair and paint easel from the library towards the parlor one room at a time in search of sunlight. His meditative view of sunsets at the Bevin House were incorporated in the book, where the prince visits a small planet with 43 daily sunsets, a planet where all that

1952-409: A majority of its stories do not originate with Ovid himself, but with such writers as Hesiod and Homer , for others the poem is their sole source. The influence of the poem on the works of Geoffrey Chaucer is extensive. In The Canterbury Tales , the story of Coronis and Phoebus Apollo (Book II 531–632) is adapted to form the basis for The Manciple's Tale . The story of Midas (Book XI 174–193)

2074-624: A mark on his contemporaries. These illustrations contributed to the celebration of the Ovidian texts in their hedonistic dimension. In this respect, Panofsky speaks of "extraordinarily influential woodcuts" and the American art historian Rensselaer W. Lee describes the work as "a major event in the history of art". In the Musée des Beaux-arts et des fabrics in Lyon, it is possible to observe wooden panels reproducing

2196-448: A missing six letter word: "I am looking for a six-letter word that starts with G that means 'gargling' ", he says. Saint-Exupéry's text does not say what the word is, but experts believe it could be "guerre" (or "war"). The novella thus takes a more politicized tack with an anti-war sentiment, as 'to gargle' in French is an informal reference to 'honour', which the author may have viewed as

2318-497: A new rose is born in a garden, all gardeners rejoice. They isolate the rose, tend it, foster it. But there is no gardener for men. This little Mozart will be shaped like the rest by the common stamping machine.... This little Mozart is condemned. Upon the outbreak of the Second World War , a laureate of several of France's highest literary awards and a successful pioneering aviator prior to the war, Saint-Exupéry initially flew with

2440-496: A prison." When the subject is a female, the Latin term is puella aeterna , imaged in mythology as the Kore (Greek for 'maiden'). One might also speak of a puer animus when describing the masculine side of the female psyche, or a puella anima when speaking of a man's inner feminine component. Carl Jung wrote a paper on the puer aeternus , titled "The Psychology of

2562-584: A reconnaissance squadron as a reserve military pilot in the Armée de l'Air (French Air Force). After France's defeat in 1940 and its armistice with Germany , he and Consuelo fled Occupied France and sojourned in North America, with Saint-Exupéry first arriving by himself at the very end of December 1940. His intention for the visit was to convince the United States to quickly enter the war against Nazi Germany and

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2684-505: A sleeping] couple. Between the man and the woman a child had hollowed himself out a place and fallen asleep. He turned in his slumber, and in the dim lamplight I saw his face. What an adorable face! A golden fruit had been born of these two peasants..... This is a musician's face, I told myself. This is the child Mozart. This is a life full of beautiful promise. Little princes in legends are not different from this. Protected, sheltered, cultivated, what could not this child become? When by mutation

2806-562: A special correspondent for Paris-Soir , the author described traveling from France to the Soviet Union by train. Late at night, during the trip, he ventured from his first-class accommodation into the third-class carriages, where he came upon large groups of Polish families huddled together, returning to their homeland. His commentary not only described a diminutive prince but also touched on several other themes Saint-Exupéry incorporated into various philosophical writings: I sat down [facing

2928-424: A tray of strong black coffee. In 1942 Saint-Exupéry related to his American English teacher, Adèle Breaux, that at such a time of night he felt "free" and able to concentrate, "writing for hours without feeling tired or sleepy", until he instantaneously dozed off. He would wake up later, in daylight, still at his desk, with his head on his arms. Saint-Exupéry stated it was the only way he could work, as once he started

3050-499: A well, saving them. The narrator later finds the prince talking to the snake, discussing his return home and his desire to see his rose again, worrying that she has been left to fend for herself. The prince bids a farewell to the narrator and states that if it looks as though he has died, it is only because his body was too heavy to take with him to his planet. The prince warns the narrator not to watch him leave, as it will upset him. The narrator, realising what will happen, refuses to leave

3172-784: A writing project it became an obsession. A native speaker of French, Saint-Exupéry was never able to achieve anything more than haltingly poor English. Adèle Breaux, his young Northport English tutor to whom he later dedicated a writing ("For Miss Adèle Breaux, who so gently guided me in the mysteries of the English language"), related her experiences with her famous student as Saint-Exupéry in America, 1942–1943: A Memoir , published in 1971. "Saint-Exupéry's prodigious writings and studies of literature sometimes gripped him, and on occasion he continued his readings of literary works until moments before take-off on solitary military reconnaissance flights, as he

3294-404: Is a unifying theme amongst the episodes of the Metamorphoses . Ovid raises its significance explicitly in the opening lines of the poem: In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas / corpora; ("I intend to speak of forms changed into new entities;"). Accompanying this theme is often violence, inflicted upon a victim whose transformation becomes part of the natural landscape. This theme amalgamates

3416-503: Is generally considered to meet the criteria for an epic; it is considerably long, relating over 250 narratives across fifteen books; it is composed in dactylic hexameter , the meter of both the ancient Iliad and Odyssey , and the more contemporary epic Aeneid ; and it treats the high literary subject of myth. However, the poem "handles the themes and employs the tone of virtually every species of literature", ranging from epic and elegy to tragedy and pastoral . Commenting on

3538-403: Is greeted by a young boy nicknamed "the little prince." The prince asks the narrator to draw a sheep. The narrator first shows him the picture of the elephant inside the snake, which, to the narrator's surprise, the prince interprets correctly. After three failed attempts at drawing a sheep, the frustrated narrator draws a crate, claiming the sheep is inside. This turns out to be the exact drawing

3660-466: Is interesting that it was written and published before the Nazi movement came into being in 1933, before Hitler was ruminating on his morbid ideas. Bruno Goetz certainly had a prophetic gift about what was coming, and ... his book anticipates the whole Nazi problem, throwing light upon it from the angle of the puer aeternus ". Now or Neverland is a 1998 book written by Jungian analyst Ann Yeoman dealing with

3782-550: Is needed to watch a sunset "is move your chair a few steps." The original 140-page autograph manuscript of The Little Prince , along with various drafts and trial drawings, were acquired from the author's close friend Silvia Hamilton in 1968 by curator Herbert Cahoon of the Pierpont Morgan Library (now The Morgan Library & Museum ) in Manhattan , New York City. It is the only known surviving handwritten draft of

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3904-467: Is reborn...as well as to Mercury/Hermes, psychopomp and messenger of the gods who moves freely between the divine and human realms, and, of course, to the great goat-god Pan [....] In early performances of Barrie's play, Peter Pan appeared on stage with both pipes and a live goat. Such undisguised references to the chthonic , often lascivious and far from childlike goat-god were, not surprisingly, soon excised from both play and novel." Peter Pan syndrome

4026-508: Is referred to and appears—though much altered—in The Wife of Bath's Tale . The story of Ceyx and Alcyone (from Book IX) is adapted by Chaucer in his poem The Book of the Duchess , written to commemorate the death of Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster and wife of John of Gaunt . The Metamorphoses was also a considerable influence on William Shakespeare . His Romeo and Juliet is influenced by

4148-526: Is the popular psychology concept of an adult who is socially immature. The category is an informal one invoked by laypeople and some psychology professionals in popular psychology. It is not listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders , and is not recognized by the American Psychiatric Association as a specific mental disorder . Psychologist Dan Kiley popularized

4270-499: Is the result of a collaboration between the publisher Jean de Tournes and Bernard Salomon , an important 16th-century engraver. The publication is edited octavo format and presents Ovid's texts accompanied by 178 engraved illustrations. In the years 1540–1550, the spread of contemporary translations led to a true race to publish the ancient poet's texts among the city of Lyon's various publishers. Therefore, Jean de Tournes faced fierce competition, which also published new editions of

4392-404: Is unique and special, as she is the one he loves. The novella's iconic phrase, "One sees clearly only with the heart" is believed to have been suggested by Reinhardt. The fearsome, grasping baobab trees, researchers have contended, were meant to represent Nazism attempting to destroy the planet. The little prince's reassurance to the pilot that the prince's body is only an empty shell resembles

4514-605: Is used within the play to enable Titus to interpret his daughter's story. Most of Prospero's renunciative speech in Act V of The Tempest is taken word-for-word from a speech by Medea in Book VII of the Metamorphoses . Among other English writers for whom the Metamorphoses was an inspiration are John Milton —who made use of it in Paradise Lost , considered his magnum opus , and evidently knew it well —and Edmund Spenser . In Italy,

4636-404: The puer aeternus in the form of Peter Pan , one of the most well-known examples of the concept in the modern era. The book is a psychological overview of the eternal boy archetype, from its ancient roots to contemporary experience, including a detailed interpretation of J. M. Barrie 's popular 1904 play and 1911 novel . Mythologically, Peter Pan is linked to [...] the young god who dies and

4758-513: The Axis forces , and he soon became one of the expatriate voices of the French Resistance . In the midst of personal upheavals and failing health, he produced almost half of the writings for which he would be remembered, including a tender tale of loneliness, friendship, love and loss, in the form of a young prince visiting Earth. An earlier memoir by the author recounted his aviation experiences in

4880-533: The C.G. Jung Institute, Zurich , during the Winter Semester, 1959–1960. In the first eight of twelve lectures, von Franz illustrates the theme of the puer aeternus by examining the story of The Little Prince from the book of the same name by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry . The remaining four lectures are devoted to a study of a German novel by Bruno Goetz , Das Reich ohne Raum ('The Kingdom Without Space'), first published in 1919. Of this novel von Franz says: It

5002-453: The Hellenistic tradition , which is first represented by Boios ' Ornithogonia —a now- fragmentary poem of collected myths about the metamorphoses of humans into birds. There are three examples of Metamorphoses by later Hellenistic writers, but little is known of their contents. The Heteroioumena by Nicander of Colophon is better known, and clearly an influence on the poem: 21 of

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5124-508: The Library of Congress in Washington D.C. , USA. A digital copy is available on Gallica . It would also appear that a copy has been auctioned at Sotheby's . The 1557 edition published by Jean de Tournes features 178 engravings by Bernard Salomon accompanying Ovid's text. The format is emblematic of the collaboration between Tournes and Salomon, which has existed since their association in

5246-405: The Metamorphoses ' enduring popularity from its first publication (around the time of Ovid's exile in 8 AD) no manuscript survives from antiquity. From the 9th and 10th centuries there are only fragments of the poem; it is only from the 11th century onwards that complete manuscripts, of varying value, have been passed down. The poem retained its popularity throughout late antiquity and

5368-400: The Metamorphoses after this period was comparatively limited in its achievement; the Garth volume continued to be printed into the 1800s, and had "no real rivals throughout the nineteenth century". Around the later half of the 20th century a greater number of translations appeared as literary translation underwent a revival. This trend has continued into the twenty-first century. In 1994,

5490-650: The Metamorphoses before working on his engravings, which nevertheless display a remarkable originality. In the book Bernard Salomon. Illustrateur lyonnais , Peter Sharratt states that the plates in this edition, along with that of the Bible illustrated by the painter in 1557, are Salomon's works that most emphasise the illustrative process based on "a mixture of memories". Among the earlier editions consulted by Salomon, one in particular stands out: Metamorphoseos Vulgare , published in Venice in 1497. The latter shows similarities in

5612-455: The Metamorphoses did not suffer the ignominious fate of the Medea , no ancient scholia on the poem survive (although they did exist in antiquity ), and the earliest complete manuscript is very late, dating from the 11th century. Influential in the course of the poem's manuscript tradition is the 17th-century Dutch scholar Nikolaes Heinsius . During the years 1640–52, Heinsius collated more than

5734-562: The Metamorphoses in his Tales from Ovid , published in 1997. In 1998, Mary Zimmerman 's stage adaptation Metamorphoses premiered at the Lookingglass Theatre , and the following year there was an adaptation of Tales from Ovid by the Royal Shakespeare Company . In the early 21st century, the poem continues to inspire and be retold through books, films and plays. A series of works inspired by Ovid's book through

5856-532: The Metamorphoses is perhaps (and I stress perhaps) the Old Testament and the works of Shakespeare . — Ian Johnston The Metamorphoses has exerted a considerable influence on literature and the arts, particularly of the West ; scholar A. D. Melville says that "It may be doubted whether any poem has had so great an influence on the literature and art of Western civilization as the Metamorphoses ." Although

5978-497: The Metamorphoses , inspired by ancient Greek and Roman mythologies, which were reunited in the Titian exhibition at The National Gallery in 2020. Other famous works inspired by the Metamorphoses include Pieter Brueghel 's painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus and Gian Lorenzo Bernini 's sculpture Apollo and Daphne . The Metamorphoses also permeated the theory of art during

6100-435: The Metamorphoses . He published the first two books of Ovid in 1456, a version that was followed by an illustrated reprint in 1549. His main competitor was Guillaume Roville , who published the texts illustrated by Pierre Eskrich in 1550 and again in 1551. In 1553, Roville published the first three books with a translation by Barthélémy Aneau , which followed the translation of the first two books by Clément Marot . However,

6222-451: The Nile Delta . Both miraculously survived the crash, only to face rapid dehydration in the intense desert heat. Their maps were primitive and ambiguous. Lost among the sand dunes with a few grapes, a thermos of coffee, a single orange, and some wine, the pair had only one day's worth of liquid. They both began to see mirages , which were quickly followed by more vivid hallucinations . By

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6344-603: The Renaissance . There was a resurgence of attention to Ovid's work near the end of the 20th century. The Metamorphoses continues to inspire and be retold through various media. Numerous English translations of the work have been made, the first by William Caxton in 1480. Ovid's relation to the Hellenistic poets was similar to the attitude of the Hellenistic poets themselves to their predecessors: he demonstrated that he had read their versions ... but that he could still treat

6466-469: The Roman poet Ovid . It is considered his magnum opus . The poem chronicles the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar in a mythico-historical framework comprising over 250 myths, 15 books, and 11,995 lines. Although it meets some of the criteria for an epic , the poem defies simple genre classification because of its varying themes and tones. Ovid took inspiration from

6588-477: The best-selling in history. The book has been translated into over 505 different languages and dialects worldwide, being the second most translated work ever published, trailing only the Bible . The Little Prince has been adapted to numerous art forms and media, including audio recordings, radio plays, live stage, film, television, ballet, and opera. As a test to determine if grownups are as enlightened as

6710-448: The 1557 version published by Maison Tournes remains the version that enjoys the greatest fortune, as testified by historiographical mentions. The 16th-century editions of the Metamorphoses constitute a radical change in the way myths are perceived. In previous centuries, the verses of the ancient poet had been read above all in function of their moralising impact, whereas from the 16th century onwards their aesthetic and hedonistic quality

6832-424: The 30,000 word manuscript, accompanied by small illustrations and sketches, to approximately half its original length. The story, the curator added, was created when he was "an ex-patriate and distraught about what was going on in his country and in the world." The large white Second French Empire -style mansion, hidden behind tall trees, afforded the writer a multitude of work environments, but he usually wrote at

6954-695: The Child Archetype", contained in Part IV of The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Collected Works, Vol. 9i). The hero-child aspect and his relationship to the Great Mother is dealt with in chapters 4 and 5 of Part Two of Symbols of Transformation (CW, vol. 5). In his essay " Answer to Job " (also included in Psychology and Religion: West and East ) Jung refers to the puer aeternus as

7076-602: The Little Prince features a lot of fantastical, unrealistic elements.... You can't ride a flock of birds to another planet... The fantasy of the Little Prince works because the logic of the story is based on the imagination of children, rather than the strict realism of adults." An exquisite literary perfectionist , akin to the 19th century French poet Stéphane Mallarmé , Saint-Exupéry produced draft pages "covered with fine lines of handwriting, much of it painstakingly crossed out, with one word left standing where there were

7198-493: The Middle Ages, and is represented by an extremely high number of surviving manuscripts (more than 400); the earliest of these are three fragmentary copies containing portions of Books 1–3, dating to the 9th century. But the poem's immense popularity in antiquity and the Middle Ages belies the struggle for survival it faced in late antiquity. The Metamorphoses was preserved through the Roman period of Christianization . Though

7320-463: The Peter Pan syndrome in his 1983 book, The Peter Pan Syndrome: Men Who Have Never Grown Up . His next book, The Wendy Dilemma (1984), advises women romantically involved with "Peter Pans" how to improve their relationships. Metamorphoses The Metamorphoses ( Latin : Metamorphōsēs , from Ancient Greek : μεταμορφώσεις : "Transformations") is a Latin narrative poem from 8 CE by

7442-569: The Renaissance and the Baroque style, with its idea of transformation and the relation of the myths of Pygmalion and Narcissus to the role of the artist. Though Ovid was popular for many centuries, interest in his work began to wane after the Renaissance, and his influence on 19th-century writers was minimal. Towards the end of the 20th century his work began to be appreciated once more. Ted Hughes collected together and retold twenty-four passages from

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7564-607: The Sahara, and he is thought to have drawn on the same experiences as plot elements in The Little Prince . He wrote and illustrated the manuscript during the summer and fall of 1942. Although greeted warmly by French-speaking Americans and by fellow expatriates who had preceded him in New York, his 27-month stay would be marred by health problems and racked with periods of severe stress and marital strife. These included partisan attacks on

7686-723: The Saint-Exupérys lived in two penthouse apartments on Central Park South , then, at the Delamater-Bevin Mansion in Asharoken , Long Island , and still later, a rented brownstone on Beekman Place , again in New York City. The couple also stayed in Quebec for five weeks during the late spring of 1942, where they met a precocious eight-year-old boy with blond curly hair, Thomas, the son of philosopher Charles De Koninck, with whom

7808-495: The Saint-Exupérys resided. During an earlier visit to Long Island in August 1939, Saint-Exupéry had also met Land Morrow Lindbergh, the young, golden-haired son of the pioneering American aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh . After returning to the US from his Quebec speaking tour, Saint-Exupéry was pressed to work on a children's book by Elizabeth Reynal, one of

7930-461: The air, Saint-Exupéry, along with his copilot-navigator André Prévot, crashed in the Sahara desert. They were attempting to break the speed record for a Paris -to- Saigon flight in a then-popular type of air race called a raid , that had a prize of 150,000  francs . Their plane was a Caudron C-630 Simoun , and the crash site is thought to have been near to the Wadi Natrun valley, close to

8052-488: The author occasionally telephoning friends at 2:00 a.m. to solicit opinions on his newly written passages. Many pages and illustrations were cut from the finished work as he sought to maintain a sense of ambiguity to the story's theme and messages. Included among the deletions in its 17th chapter were references to locales in New York, such as the Rockefeller Center and Long Island . Other deleted pages described

8174-502: The author's neutral stance towards supporters of both ardent French Gaullist and Vichy France . Saint-Exupéry's American translator (the author spoke poor English) wrote: "He was restless and unhappy in exile, seeing no way to fight again for his country and refusing to take part in the political quarrels that set Frenchman against Frenchman." However, the period was to be both a "dark but productive time" during which he created three important works. Between January 1941 and April 1943,

8296-430: The author-aviator on his inspiration for the child character, Saint-Exupéry told him that one day he looked down on what he thought was a blank sheet and saw a small childlike figure: "I asked him who he was", he replied. "I'm the Little Prince" was the reply. One of Saint-Exupéry's earliest literary references to a small prince is to be found in his second news dispatch from Moscow , dated 14 May 1935. In his writings as

8418-462: The beginning of printing, and traces a path through the history of publishing. William Caxton produced the first translation of the text on 22 April 1480; set in prose, it is a literal rendering of a French translation known as the Ovide Moralisé . In 1567, Arthur Golding published a translation of the poem that would become highly influential, the version read by Shakespeare and Spenser. It

8540-443: The centenary celebration of the author's birth, with major exhibitions of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 's literary works. Physically, the manuscript's onion skin media has become brittle and subject to damage. Saint-Exupéry's handwriting is described as being doctor-like, verging on indecipherable. The story's keynote aphorism , On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux ("One sees clearly only with

8662-426: The complete work. The manuscript's pages include large amounts of the author's prose that was struck-through and therefore not published as part of the first edition. In addition to the manuscript, several watercolour illustrations by the author are also held by the museum. They were not part of the first edition. The institution has marked both the 50th and 70th anniversaries of the novella's publication, along with

8784-622: The composition of some episodes, such as the 'Creation of the World' and ' Apollo and Daphne '. In drawing his figures, Salomon also used Bellifontaine's canon, which testifies to his early years as a painter. Among other works, he created some frescoes in Lyon, for which he drew inspiration from his recent work in Fontainebleau . Better known in his lifetime for his work as a painter, Salomon's work in La Métamorphose d'Ovide figurée nevertheless left

8906-431: The deeds of a human hero , it leaps from story to story with little connection. The recurring theme, as with nearly all of Ovid's work, is love—be it personal love or love personified in the figure of Amor ( Cupid ). Indeed, the other Roman gods are repeatedly perplexed, humiliated, and made ridiculous by Amor , an otherwise relatively minor god of the pantheon , who is the closest thing this putative mock-epic has to

9028-459: The devil only outside. Christ's 'Except ye become as little children' prefigures this change, for in them the opposites lie close together; but what is meant is the boy who is born from the maturity of the adult man, and not the unconscious child we would like to remain." The Problem of the Puer Aeternus is a book based on a series of lectures that Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz gave at

9150-523: The genre debate, Karl Galinsky has opined that "... it would be misguided to pin the label of any genre on the Metamorphoses ". The Metamorphoses is comprehensive in its chronology, recounting the creation of the world to the death of Julius Caesar , which had occurred only a year before Ovid's birth; it has been compared to works of universal history , which became important in the 1st century BCE. In spite of its apparently unbroken chronology, scholar Brooks Otis has identified four divisions in

9272-536: The genre of metamorphosis poetry. Although some of the Metamorphoses derives from earlier treatment of the same myths, Ovid diverged significantly from all of his models. The Metamorphoses is one of the most influential works in Western culture . It has inspired such authors as Dante Alighieri , Giovanni Boccaccio , Geoffrey Chaucer , and William Shakespeare . Numerous episodes from the poem have been depicted in works of sculpture, painting, and music, especially during

9394-423: The god of divine youth, such as Tammuz , Attis , and Adonis . Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung developed a school of thought called analytical psychology , distinguishing it from the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939). In analytical psychology (or "Jungian psychology"), the puer aeternus is an example of what Jung considered an archetype , one of the "primordial, structural elements of

9516-453: The heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye") was reworded and rewritten some 15 times before achieving its final phrasing. Saint-Exupéry also used a Dictaphone recorder to produce oral drafts for his typist. His initial 30,000-word working manuscript was distilled to less than half its original size through laborious editing sessions. Multiple versions of its many pages were created and its prose then polished over several drafts, with

9638-462: The highest mountain he had ever seen, the prince hoped to see the whole of Earth, thus finding the people; however, he saw only the desolate landscape. When the prince called out, his echo answered him, which he interpreted as the voice of someone boring who only repeats words. The prince encountered a row of rosebushes, becoming downcast at having once thought that his rose was unique and thinking she had lied about being unique. He began to feel that he

9760-410: The human psyche." The shadow of the puer is the senex (Latin for 'old man'), associated with the god Cronus —disciplined, controlled, responsible, rational, ordered. Conversely, the shadow of the senex is the puer , related to Hermes or Dionysus —unbounded instinct, disorder, intoxication, whimsy. Like all archetypes, the puer is bipolar, exhibiting both a "positive" and

9882-430: The key themes of the Metamorphoses . Scholars have found it difficult to place the Metamorphoses in a genre. The poem has been considered as an epic or a type of epic (for example, an anti-epic or mock-epic); a Kollektivgedicht that pulls together a series of examples in miniature form, such as the epyllion ; a sampling of one genre after another; or simply a narrative that refuses categorization. The poem

10004-479: The last words of Antoine's dying younger brother François, who told the author, from his deathbed: "Don't worry. I'm all right. I can't help it. It's my body". Many researchers believe that the prince's kindhearted, but petulant and vain, Rose was inspired by Saint-Exupéry's Salvadoran wife Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry , with the small home planet being inspired by El Salvador where he crashed and stayed to recover while being within view of 3 volcanoes, one of which

10126-461: The little prince has been suggested as Land Morrow Lindbergh, the young, golden-haired son of fellow aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh , whom he met during an overnight stay at their Long Island home in 1939. Some have seen the prince as a Christ figure, as the child is sin-free and "believes in a life after death", subsequently returning to his personal heaven. When Life photojournalist John Phillips questioned

10248-550: The manuscript being completed in October. Although the book was started in his Central Park South penthouse, Saint-Exupéry soon found New York City's noise and sweltering summer heat too uncomfortable to work in and so Consuelo was dispatched to find improved accommodations. After spending some time at an unsuitable clapboard country house in Westport , Connecticut, they found Bevin House,

10370-525: The manuscript tradition or restored by conjecture where the tradition is deficient. There are two modern critical editions: William S. Anderson's, first published in 1977 in the Teubner series, and R. J. Tarrant 's, published in 2004 by the Oxford Clarendon Press. The full appearance of the Metamorphoses in English translation (sections had appeared in the works of Chaucer and Gower ) coincides with

10492-487: The mid-1540s: the pages are developed centred around a title, an engraving with an octosyllabic stanza and a neat border. The 178 engravings were not made all at once for the full text, but originate from a reissue of the first two books in 1549. In 1546, Jean de Tournes published a first, non-illustrated version of the first two books of the Metamorphoses , for which Bernard Salomon prepared twenty-two initial engravings. Salomon examined several earlier illustrated editions of

10614-461: The model of Salomon's engravings for Ovid's Metamorphoses of 1557. The Little Prince The Little Prince (French: Le Petit Prince , pronounced [lə p(ə)ti pʁɛ̃s] ) is a novella written and illustrated by French writer and military pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry . It was first published in English and French in the United States by Reynal & Hitchcock in April 1943 and

10736-794: The moralizing of the Metamorphoses had been with the aspirations of the 14th and 15th centuries". The work was republished in French in 1564 and 1583, although it had already been published in Italian by Gabriel Simeoni in 1559 with some additional engravings. Some copies from 1557 are today held in public collections, namely the National Library of France , the Municipal Library of Lyon, the Brandeis University Library in Waltham (MA) and

10858-527: The much-explored opposition between the hunter and the hunted and the thematic tension between art and nature. There is a great variety among the types of transformations that take place: from human to inanimate objects (Nileus), constellations (Ariadne's Crown), animals (Perdix), and plants (Daphne, Baucis and Philemon); from animals (ants) and fungi (mushrooms) to human; from one sex to another (hyenas); and from one colour to another (pebbles). The metamorphoses themselves are often located metatextually within

10980-411: The myths in his own way. — Karl Galinsky Ovid's decision to make myth the primary subject of the Metamorphoses was influenced by Alexandrian poetry . In that tradition myth functioned as a vehicle for moral reflection or insight, yet Ovid approached it as an "object of play and artful manipulation". The model for a collection of metamorphosis myths was found in the metamorphosis poetry of

11102-453: The narrative: Ovid works his way through his subject matter, often in an apparently arbitrary fashion, by jumping from one transformation tale to another, sometimes retelling what had come to be seen as central events in the world of Greek mythology and sometimes straying in odd directions. It begins with the ritual "invocation of the muse ", and makes use of traditional epithets and circumlocutions . But instead of following and extolling

11224-453: The poem was an influence on Giovanni Boccaccio (the story of Pyramus and Thisbe appears in his poem L'Amorosa Fiammetta ) and Dante . During the Renaissance and Baroque periods, mythological subjects were frequently depicted in art. The Metamorphoses was the greatest source of these narratives, such that the term "Ovidian" in this context is synonymous for mythological, in spite of some frequently represented myths not being found in

11346-425: The poem, through grammatical or narratorial transformations. At other times, transformations are developed into humour or absurdity, such that, slowly, "the reader realizes he is being had", or the very nature of transformation is questioned or subverted. This phenomenon is merely one aspect of Ovid's extensive use of illusion and disguise. No work from classical antiquity, either Greek or Roman , has exerted such

11468-458: The prince wanted. Over the course of days, while the narrator attempts to repair his plane, the prince recounts his life story. He used to live on a house-sized asteroid known as "B 612" on Earth. The asteroid has three minuscule volcanoes (two active, and one dormant or extinct ) and various plants. The prince used to clean the volcanoes and weed unwanted seeds and sprigs that infested his soil, pulling out baobab trees that were constantly on

11590-533: The prince's character and appearance from his own self as a youth, as during his early years friends and family called him le Roi-Soleil ("the Sun King") because of his golden curly hair. The author had also met a precocious eight-year-old with curly blond hair while he was residing with a family in Quebec City in 1942, Thomas De Koninck , the son of philosopher Charles De Koninck . Another possible inspiration for

11712-440: The prince's side. The prince says that the narrator only need look at the stars to think of the prince's laughter, and that it will seem as if all the stars are laughing. The prince then walks away and allows the snake to bite him, falling down. The next morning, the narrator cannot find the prince's body. Managing to repair his aeroplane, he leaves the desert. The narrator requests to be contacted by anyone in that area encountering

11834-407: The prince's vegetarian diet and the garden on his home asteroid that included beans, radishes, potatoes and tomatoes, but which lacked fruit trees that might have overwhelmed the prince's planetoid. Deleted chapters discussed visits to other asteroids occupied by a retailer brimming with marketing phrases, and an inventor whose creation could produce any object desired at a touch of its controls. Likely

11956-472: The result of the ongoing war in Europe weighing on Saint-Exupéry's shoulders, the author produced a sombre three-page epilogue lamenting "On one star someone has lost a friend, on another someone is ill, on another someone is at war...", with the story's pilot-narrator noting of The Prince: "he sees all that. . . . For him, the night is hopeless. And for me, his friend, the night is also hopeless." The draft epilogue

12078-501: The rose, the prince also began to feel that she was taking advantage of him and resolved to leave the planet to explore the rest of the universe. Upon saying their goodbyes, the rose apologised for failing to show that she loved him. She wished him well and turned down his desire to leave her in the glass globe, saying she would protect herself. The prince laments that he did not understand how to love his rose while being with her. The prince has since visited six other planets, each of which

12200-524: The same myths. This material was of varying quality and comprehensiveness; while some of it was "finely worked", in other cases Ovid may have been working from limited material. In the case of an oft-used myth such as that of Io in Book I, which was the subject of literary adaptation as early as the 5th century BCE, and as recently as a generation prior to his own, Ovid reorganises and innovates existing material in order to foreground his favoured topics and to embody

12322-415: The second and third days, they were so dehydrated that they stopped sweating altogether. Finally, on the fourth day, a Bedouin on a camel discovered them and administered a native rehydration treatment, which saved Saint-Exupéry's and Prévot's lives. In the novella, the fox, believed to be modelled after the author's intimate New York City friend, Silvia Hamilton Reinhardt, tells the prince that his rose

12444-451: The stories from this work are treated in the Metamorphoses . However, in a way that was typical for writers of the period, Ovid diverged significantly from his models. The Metamorphoses was longer than any previous collection of metamorphosis myths (Nicander's work consisted of probably four or five books) and positioned itself within a historical framework. Some of the Metamorphoses derives from earlier literary and poetic treatment of

12566-409: The story of Pyramus and Thisbe ( Metamorphoses Book IV); and, in A Midsummer Night's Dream , a band of amateur actors performs a play about Pyramus and Thisbe. Shakespeare's early erotic poem Venus and Adonis expands on the myth in Book X of the Metamorphoses . In Titus Andronicus , the story of Lavinia's rape is drawn from Tereus ' rape of Philomela , and the text of the Metamorphoses

12688-438: The time being one is doing this or that... it is not yet what is really wanted, and there is always the fantasy that sometime in the future the real thing will come about.... The one thing dreaded throughout by such a type of man is to be bound to anything whatever." "Common symptoms of puer psychology are dreams of an imprisonment and similar imagery: chains, bars, cages, entrapment, bondage. Life itself...is experienced as

12810-546: The tragedy of Diana and Actaeon have been produced by French-based collective LFKs and his film/theatre director, writer and visual artist Jean-Michel Bruyere, including the interactive 360° audiovisual installation Si poteris narrare, licet ("if you are able to speak of it, then you may do so") in 2002, 600 shorts and "medium" film from which 22,000 sequences have been used in the 3D 360° audiovisual installation La Dispersion du Fils from 2008 to 2016 as well as an outdoor performance, "Une Brutalité pastorale" (2000). In spite of

12932-419: The truth at all), I'll live. The different genres and divisions in the narrative allow the Metamorphoses to display a wide range of themes. Scholar Stephen M. Wheeler notes that "metamorphosis, mutability, love, violence, artistry, and power are just some of the unifying themes that critics have proposed over the years". In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas / corpora; Metamorphosis or transformation

13054-411: The verge of overrunning the surface. The prince wants a sheep to eat the undesirable plants, but worries it will also eat plants with thorns. The prince met a rose that grew on the asteroid. The rose exaggerated ailments to have the prince care for her. The prince made a screen and glass globe to protect her from the cold and wind, watered her, and kept the caterpillars off. Despite falling in love with

13176-468: The visitors was his wife's Swiss writer paramour Denis de Rougemont , who also modeled for a painting of the Little Prince lying on his stomach, feet and arms extended up in the air. De Rougemont would later help Consuelo write her autobiography, The Tale of the Rose , as well as write his own biography of Saint-Exupéry. While the author's personal life was frequently chaotic, his creative process while writing

13298-507: The wives of his US publisher, Reynal & Hitchcock . The French wife of Eugene Reynal had closely observed Saint-Exupéry for several months, and noting his ill health and high stress levels, she suggested to him that working on a children's story would help. The author wrote and illustrated The Little Prince at various locations in New York City but principally in the Long Island north-shore community of Asharoken in mid-to-late 1942, with

13420-408: The work. Many of the stories from the Metamorphoses have been the subject of paintings and sculptures, particularly during this period. Some of the most well-known paintings by Titian depict scenes from the poem, including Diana and Callisto , Diana and Actaeon , and Death of Actaeon . These works form part of Titian's " poesie " , a collection of seven paintings derived in part from

13542-486: The world below him, becoming 'enmeshed in a search for ideals which he translated into fable and parable'." In The Little Prince , its narrator, the pilot, talks of being stranded in the desert beside his crashed aircraft. The account clearly drew on Saint-Exupéry's own experience in the Sahara, an ordeal described in detail in his 1939 memoir Wind, Sand and Stars (original French: Terre des hommes ). On 30 December 1935, at 2.45am, after 19 hours and 44 minutes in

13664-440: Was Ilamatepec , also known as The Santa Ana Volcano. Despite a tumultuous marriage, Saint-Exupéry kept Consuelo close to his heart and portrayed her as the prince's rose, whom he tenderly protects with a wind screen and places under a glass dome on his tiny planet. Saint-Exupéry's infidelity and the doubts of his marriage are symbolized by the vast field of roses the prince encounters during his visit to Earth. This interpretation

13786-588: Was adept at both reading and writing while flying. Taking off with an open book balanced on his leg, his ground crew would fear his mission would quickly end after contacting something 'very hard'. On one flight, to the chagrin of colleagues awaiting his arrival, he circled the Tunis airport for an hour so that he could finish reading a novel. Saint-Exupéry frequently flew with a lined carnet (notebook) during his long, solo flights, and some of his philosophical writings were created during such periods when he could reflect on

13908-449: Was also omitted from the novella's printing. In April 2012 a Parisian auction house announced the discovery of two previously unknown draft manuscript pages that included new text. In the newly discovered material the Prince meets his first Earthling after his arrival. The person he meets is an "ambassador of the human spirit". The ambassador is too busy to talk, saying he is searching for

14030-451: Was described by biographer Paul Webster who stated she was "the muse to whom Saint-Exupéry poured out his soul in copious letters ... Consuelo was the rose in The Little Prince . "I should have judged her by her acts and not by her words", says the prince. "She wrapped herself around me and enlightened me. I should never have fled. I should have guessed at the tenderness behind her poor ruses." Saint-Exupéry probably has drawn inspiration for

14152-455: Was disciplined. Christine Nelson, curator of literary and historical manuscripts at the Morgan Library and Museum which had obtained Saint-Exupéry's original manuscript in 1968, stated: "On the one hand, he had a clear vision for the shape, tone, and message of the story. On the other hand, he was ruthless about chopping out entire passages that just weren't quite right", eventually distilling

14274-625: Was exalted. The literary context of the time, marked by the birth of the Pléiade , is indicative of this taste for the beauty of poetry. "The disappearance of the Ars Amatoria and the Remedia amoris marks the end of a Gothic era in Ovidian publishing, just as the publication in 1557 of the Métamorphose figurée marks the appropriation by the Renaissance of a work that is as much in line with its tastes as

14396-411: Was inhabited by one adult. They include: Since the prince landed in a desert, he believed that Earth was uninhabited. He then met a snake that claimed to have the power to return him to his home, if he ever wished that. The prince next met a flower, who said she had only seen a few men in that part of the world, and they had no roots, letting the wind blow them around and living hard lives. After climbing

14518-416: Was not a great prince, as his planet contained only three tiny volcanoes and a flower he now thought of as common. He started weeping, until a fox came along. The fox desired to be tamed and taught the prince how to tame him. By being tamed, something goes from being ordinary and just like all the others to being special and unique. From the fox, the prince learns that his rose was indeed special because she

14640-575: Was published posthumously in France following liberation ; Saint-Exupéry's works had been banned by the Vichy Regime . The story follows a young prince who visits various planets, including Earth, and addresses themes of loneliness, friendship, love, and loss. Despite its style as a children's book, The Little Prince makes observations about life, adults, and human nature. The Little Prince became Saint-Exupéry's most successful work, selling an estimated 140 million copies worldwide, which makes it one of

14762-448: Was the object of the prince's love and time; he had "tamed" her, and now she was more precious than all of the other roses. Upon their departing, the fox says that important things can only be seen with the heart, not the eyes. The prince then met two people from Earth: Eight days after the plane crash, the narrator and the prince are dying of thirst. The prince becomes morose and longs to return home and see his flower. The prince finds

14884-625: Was written in rhyming couplets of iambic heptameter . The next significant translation was by George Sandys , produced from 1621 to 1626, which set the poem in heroic couplets , a metre that would subsequently become dominant in vernacular English epic and in English translations. In 1717, a translation appeared from Samuel Garth bringing together work "by the most eminent hands": primarily John Dryden , but several stories by Joseph Addison , one by Alexander Pope , and contributions from Tate , Gay , Congreve , and Rowe , as well as those of eleven others including Garth himself. Translation of

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