Saturday, February 2, 2008

The Little Prince

I love this book
"The Little Prince" by Antoine De Saint-Exupery.

My favourite chapter is the story of the fox who asks to be tamed by a friend: Little Prince.

It says "
You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed". And says that "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye"

You can listen to the opera that comes from this book here:
http://www.lepetitprince.com/en/REVERB/opera_uk.php

Read this little part:


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."

The little prince went away,
to look again at the roses.
"You are not at all like my rose," he said.
"As yet you are nothing.
No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one.
You are like my fox when I first knew him.
He was only a fox
like a hundred thousand other foxes.
But I have made a friend,
and now he is unique in all the world."
And the roses were very much embarrassed.
"You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on.
"One could not die for you.
To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think
that my rose looked just like you
--the rose that belongs to me.
But in herself alone she is more important
than all the hundreds of you
other roses: because it is she that I have watered;
because it is she
that I have put under the glass globe;
because it is for her
that I have killed the caterpillars
(except the two or three we saved
to become butterflies);
because it is she that I have listened to,
when she grumbled,
or boasted,
or even sometimes when she said nothing.
Because she is MY rose."

Friday, January 11, 2008

Alone



From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

Edgar Allan Poe