Yeah, I don't care so much about that. It's just that everytime I hear anything about that book, I am compelled to recount these immediate facts (yes, even though I very well may have discussed some or all of them on Nik's Notes in the past):
* We were forced to read/translate this book every Friday in French III in high school. We hate, hate, hated it for reasons I cannot really recall. I only remember the visceral reactions to Petit Prince day.
* There is something in that book called "mouton." A mouton is either a sheep or a pig; I'm not sure which one because every. single. time it was my turn to translate that word, I got it wrong. And here I am...still can't remember (I'm betting on sheep??).
* Our French III teacher was not very...shall we say, traditional? She wore perhaps the worst clothes of all time and cursed at us almost daily. And yes, we totally loved her and her hot husband who had a tatoo that he showed us on fieldtrip day. She was like a high school student's dream in that she was a teacher who basically never graduated from college and liked to be on "our level."
* So. One day we hid the books. One book we hid in her desk. One book we hid somewhere I can't remember. One book we hid in the ceiling tile - apparently this was some vintage/antique version that belonged to someone special, and she called us "little bastards" when she finally found it - but it was in the nicest possible way, I swear (that didn't stop one member of our class from reporting her anyway, but that girl also stole the title of French Club President from me, so I'd prefer not to speak about her here).
* We watched a claymation video of the book. I think the director was on serious drugs. Come to think of it, we all agreed that the author of the book was doing heavy hallucinogens at the time he wrote the book as well.
* Does anyone remember what this book is actually about? I think I'll forever hate it, just in principle, but I figure it can't hurt to know the story either.
UPDATE: We need to have a French III reunion immediately. I just learned from the Le Petit Prince Wikipedia page that...
"In 1997, Jean-Pierre Davids wrote a sort-of sequel named Le petit prince retrouvé ('The Little Prince Returns'). In this version, the narrator is a shipwrecked man who encounters the Little Prince on a lone island; the Prince has returned to find help against a tiger who threatens his sheep."
Um, I think we might need to read that ; ) Oh, and HOLLA - it was totally a sheep, ya'll!
7 comments:
Oh geez. Le Petit Prince. I have the same feelings and memories about it as you do... and I really don't remember what it was about. Two things I do remember:
- We tricked Ms. Bois by telling her that one of the students got called to the office (regarding her cussing at us) when she was really just hiding in the bathroom. I can't remember who was doing the hiding - do you?
- The story has something to do with hunters because we kept translating the word for hunter as shoes. It's really really close, like chaussers or something.
Ugh! It's a shame that I will always hate this book. It might actually be good, but I'll never know because the thought of it is unbearable.
I have to admit that I was sometimes really annoyed by our teacher's non-traditional ways. I know, I know. . . I'm a complete bore. But every once in a while I really wanted her to just act like a grown-up. (I'll admit I had some great fun in there, too, though.) Her husband was indeed yummy. . . I do remember that.
Remember the day she cried? Did she get called to the office?
I think that La Petit Prince has some great dreamy metaphorical meeting for a lot of people. But I have no recollection of what it's actually about...but I feel slightly nauseated just looking at that photo...
OMG - did she cry? I think maybe she did cry, and we all made girl-who-told feel really bad (even though, as Megs and I discussed via email, girl-who-told didn't mean to tell, but her mom found out and reported teacher).
Was this also the year we watched Robert and Mireille (and Mireille never wore a bra)? Or was that French II? Because if it was indeed, French III, then I'm with Jenn that I sometimes wanted teacher to actually teach since I didn't learn anything in that class except how to say "Qui est la?" (as in, "Who's there" said Little Red Riding Hood to the Wolf)
OMG, Mireille and her no bra wearing self. Ugh.
I couldn't resist. Here's amazon's description. I almost couldn't read it all because a) it's really long and b) it was painful to remember, with lots of 'oh. yeah.'. If you must, read on:
(I'm getting Niki a copy as a late graduation gift. hee hee!)
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry first published The Little Prince in 1943, only a year before his Lockheed P-38 vanished over the Mediterranean during a reconnaissance mission. More than a half century later, this fable of love and loneliness has lost none of its power. The narrator is a downed pilot in the Sahara Desert, frantically trying to repair his wrecked plane. His efforts are interrupted one day by the apparition of a little, well, prince, who asks him to draw a sheep. "In the face of an overpowering mystery, you don't dare disobey," the narrator recalls. "Absurd as it seemed, a thousand miles from all inhabited regions and in danger of death, I took a scrap of paper and a pen out of my pocket." And so begins their dialogue, which stretches the narrator's imagination in all sorts of surprising, childlike directions.
The Little Prince describes his journey from planet to planet, each tiny world populated by a single adult. It's a wonderfully inventive sequence, which evokes not only the great fairy tales but also such monuments of postmodern whimsy as Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. And despite his tone of gentle bemusement, Saint-Exupéry pulls off some fine satiric touches, too. There's the king, for example, who commands the Little Prince to function as a one-man (or one-boy) judiciary:
I have good reason to believe that there is an old rat living somewhere on my planet. I hear him at night. You could judge that old rat. From time to time you will condemn him to death. That way his life will depend on your justice. But you'll pardon him each time for economy's sake. There's only one rat.
The author pokes similar fun at a businessman, a geographer, and a lamplighter, all of whom signify some futile aspect of adult existence. Yet his tale is ultimately a tender one--a heartfelt exposition of sadness and solitude, which never turns into Peter Pan-style treacle. Such delicacy of tone can present real headaches for a translator, and in her 1943 translation, Katherine Woods sometimes wandered off the mark, giving the text a slightly wooden or didactic accent. Happily, Richard Howard (who did a fine nip-and-tuck job on Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma in 1999) has streamlined and simplified to wonderful effect. The result is a new and improved version of an indestructible classic, which also restores the original artwork to full color. "Trying to be witty," we're told at one point, "leads to lying, more or less." But Saint-Exupéry's drawings offer a handy rebuttal: they're fresh, funny, and like the book itself, rigorously truthful. --James Marcus --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
"Nothing is perfect," sighed the fox.
But he came back to his idea.
"My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the colour of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat..."
The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.
"Please-- tame me!" he said.
"I want to, very much," the little prince replied. "But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand."
"One only understands the things that one tames," said the fox. "Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me..."
"What must I do, to tame you?" asked the little prince.
"You must be very patient," replied the fox. "First you will sit down at a little distance from me-- like that-- in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day..."
The next day the little prince came back.
"It would have been better to come back at the same hour," said the fox. "If, for example, you come at four o'clock in the afternoon, then at three o'clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the hour advances. At four o'clock, I shall already be worrying and jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am! But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you... One must observe the proper rites..."
"What is a rite?" asked the little prince.
"Those also are actions too often neglected," said the fox. "They are what make one day different from other days, one hour from other hours. There is a rite, for example, among my hunters. Every Thursday they dance with the village girls. So Thursday is a wonderful day for me! I can take a walk as far as the vineyards. But if the hunters danced at just any time, every day would be like every other day, and I should never have any vacation at all."
So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near--
"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."
"It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you..."
"Yes, that is so," said the fox.
"But now you are going to cry!" said the little prince.
"Yes, that is so," said the fox.
"Then it has done you no good at all!"
"It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields." And then he added:
"Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret."
----Be loved the book Little Price..
Niki.. this is the part of little price that i like.
When i see something gold or something very soft, i think about your hair..the time when i cut your hair in Blienda's house. :-)
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