The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

When I was a little girl, my father gave me the book. For some reason I did not read it. Or read it half-heartedly. It was only later, when I met my husband and raised my son that I discovered the power and beauty of this little book.

I won't tell you the story in too much detail for most of you must surely have already read it. A pilot is forced to land in the middle of the desert and meets what seems to be a little boy.

The little boy is, at first, a little annoying but his tales soon engross the pilot and us.

The little person is from an asteroid and was forced to leave his home where he could watch several sunsets in one day because a rose he cared for was tormenting him. One might take that as a way of expressing the pains of love. Or why not just enjoy it as a charming little nothing.

There are many other things of far greater worth in this book and some of those, for me, are the characters the Little Prince meets as he travels through space.

In Chapter 4, the pilot, who has a great many things to say about grown-ups (more accurately "The big people"), has the following to say

On making his discovery, the astronomer had presented it to the International Astronomical Congress, in a great demonstration. But he was in Turkish costume, and so nobody would believe what he said.

Grown-ups are like that . . .
Fortunately, however, for the reputation of Asteroid B-612, a Turkish dictator made a law that his subjects, under pain of death, should change to European costume. So in 1920 the astronomer gave his demonstration all over again, dressed with impressive style and elegance. And this time everybody accepted his report.

If I have told you these details about the asteroid, and made a note of its number for you, it is on account of the grown-ups and their ways. When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you,

"What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?"

 Instead, they demand: 

"How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?" 

Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him.

If you were to say to the grown-ups:

"I saw a beautiful house made of rosy brick, with geraniums in the windows and doves on the roof,"

 they would not be able to get any idea of that house at all. You would have to say to them: 

"I saw a house that cost $20,000." 

Then they would exclaim: 

"Oh, what a pretty house that is!"

Well, I have to confess that a great many people are, sadly, exactly like that and that is, perhaps, why I find people who do not seem to want to read this book.

A lady told me her children did not want to read this book. Perhaps our children have also become grown-ups. A tragedy, indeed!

The character in Chapter 10 is my favourite. He is a King.

The Unbearable Lightness of Ernest & Celestine

     What kid wouldn’t enjoy an animated film? Yet, somewhere along the way, I lost touch with them. I was kind of hesitant when I watched Ernest and Celestine. 

     Would I get bored? Have these things lost their magic for me?

     I don’t remember when I saw my first cartoon film. Mary Poppins had some animation going on and I adored that movie. 

     My actual memories of cartoon and animated films begin in my mid twenties when I saw The Jungle Book with my husband when we were dating.

    The real pleasure began as my son entered the cartoon years and we both waded through huge amounts of Tom and Jerry and Daffy Duck and the romantic skunk among to name but a few out of innumerable other Disney offerings.

    In my mid-fifties now, my tastes in cinema seem to have undergone a sea change. In many ways I'm joyfully treading down the garden path to a second childhood.

    And then, along the way, I began to access the Alliance Francaise resources in a couple of the cities where we moved to, when my husband changed jobs. French animation is a whole new story!

     It is also with the French that I came to realise that the graphic novel for the adult exists.

     Nothing in the world of English comics and cartoon films prepared me for what the French offered! It was at once shocking, irreverent and exquisite. An explosion of the mind and senses.

     Ernest & Celestine will be an excellent way to enter the enchanted realm of French animated cinema. 

The Tale In a world where mice live underground, albeit in a world as charming as that of the hobbits, where a mouse’s greatest ambition must always be to scale the heights of a profession as dentist, where bears live above the ground and despise mice, fate throws together a certain defiant little mouse and a lazy and disreputable bear.

    While I was still trapped in Hollywood animation, we used to ooh and aah at the skill and realism of the animations -how almost real they have become! While it is true that art almost perfectly imitating life can often inspire awe, artistic representation fulfils many functions and the art of faithfully imitating the so-called real can rob it of its diverse and rich mechanisms and goals. 

    Ernest & Celestine is not simply all about the story. Your mouth will fall open, your eyes will pop out of your head at the sheer zen experience of the craft. 
There is one outstanding sequence with music and brush strokes - playful and exquisitely enchanting. 

Animating Ernest & Celestine from The Creators Project on Vimeo.

Based on the lovely children's books by Gabrielle Vincent, with a screenplay by noted novelist Daniel Pennac ("Cabot-Caboche"), this lively and larcenous tale is softened by its watercolor pastiche and minimalist animation. A magically understated mash-up, "Ernest & Celestine" has a comforting storybook effect and proves a refreshing departure in an age of high-tech, hyperkinetic animation set to soaring pop ballads, as entertaining as they can be. 

All over the world, throughout the ages, human beings have tussled with the Us and Them. What culture is without a story of love doomed because the lovers belonged to warring clans or something of the sort? 

"Ernest and Celestine" is the coziest movie you'll likely see all year. Every frame is suffused with a fireplace kind of warmth that, for me at least, cast an immediate spell that didn't let up. ... it's the overall integrity of the movie, directed by Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar, and Benjamin Rattar, adapting Belgian children's books by Gabrielle Vincent, that's key to its charm for children of all ages 

     Do beg for, buy or borrow the DVD to find out and to enjoy a most exquisite piece of animated cinema. 
    
   The story will hold you spellbound as it moves above and below ground, weaving its gentle wizardry over your blasé heart.

Speak, Friend, And Enter

I’ve just finished typing out Chapter XVII of my father’s novel, The Being and the Becoming. Here, the protagonist asks a swami why he meets with certain experiences. The sage answers

Like the creatures that trouble you and have come to you; like sweetness, bitterness. Things come to you: You recognise them; know them. Seems to me, they come to become known by you. Shall we say that all things happen, biggest thing that happens seems to be ‘knowing’.

There is more in that chapter, in the next one, indeed, in the whole book about all this. Having provided you with the link, I shall say no more and leave you to discover for yourself.

Talking Tolkien It must have been somewhere in the mid-sixties that my father returned from somewhere, perhaps the US, with a set of books in a box: Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. I hadn’t learned to read yet but, everyday, he would tell us the story. As I sat in his lap and listened, I was enthralled by the characters. Later, when I’d learned to read, re-reading the Hobbit and the Trilogy became an yearly ritual. When I married, I introduced my partner to this world and, of course, when our son was born, we read aloud from it, and many other books, to the little boy, right from his infancy. By the time he could read, he also became a pilgrim, reading the books many times over. Alas, by the time the film was released, we lost our addiction. Perhaps it was the film that did it.

The Short of the Long of It Briefly, Tolkien created an imaginary world, peopled by various entities. The protagonists are called Hobbits, short human like beings with fur under their feet, who live in cute houses under the ground.

One of these goes on an adventure with some dwarves (nothing remotely like the ones Snow White hob nobbed with!) during which he finds a ring which makes him invisible. This is, basically, the story of The Hobbit.

This book is followed by The Trilogy: The Lord of the Rings, which has three parts.

In The Fellowship of the Ring, Gandalf the Grey, a wizard (again, nothing like your Disney characters!) forces Bilbo, the Hobbit who found the ring, to give it to his nephew, Frodo. The first part of this book focusses on Frodo’s journey to an elven retreat. Note that Tolkien’s elves have less than little in common with your childhood storybook ones.

It is in the second part of the book that things heat up.  Chased by Ring Wraiths and wolves, the travelers have to reach the mines of Moria. Long ago, a dwarf who had traveled with Bilbo left his land to locate and re-work these mines. This underground world has a secret door and our heroes have to find the password to open it.

While I hope that you will read and relish all these books, my post is about something my father once told me.

Often, in life, we encounter situations which simply refuse to be overcome. We are, as it were, shut out of the solution. In tune with what Surya writes in chapter XVII of The Being and The Becoming, Tolkien’s password to open the door to the mines is, very simply: 

Speak, friend, and enter

All they had to do was to utter the word “Friend”!

He also used to tell me a story where Krishna and some of his friends or cousins had to keep watch all night, by turns, in a dark forest, known to be infested with a demon. Each of them, except Krishna, had their turn and encountered the demon who beat them all black and blue as they accosted it with rough abuses and threats.

When it was Krishna’s turn, he spoke to the demon courteously and invited it to sit down at the fire. As he spoke the demon shrank and disappeared.

As with many things in life, the approach is, sometimes, the opposite of that which seems the most likely path to a solution.

Another story is from The Garden of Live Flowers, in Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll. The more Alice tries to walk towards the house, the farther she gets! It is only when she walks in the opposite direction that she reaches it finally.

When a problem besets us, we want to best it. We wrestle with it. Perhaps, if we could find a way to look at this thing, which is tormenting us, in a friendly light, we might find a way out. Or a way to use that very situation to our advantage.

I really have no idea - so, I’m off to lie down for 15 minutes (by my timer) and be friendly with some of my inner demons: Alright, let’s be friends. I’m not going to push you away. Let me listen to you. Let me hear you out.