The Little Prince (1)

The Little Prince (1)

  Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories From Nature, about the primeval forest.

  It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal. Here is a copy of the drawing.



  In the book it said : " Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole. without chewing it. After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the six months that they need for digestion. "

  I pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle.
  And after some work with a colored pencil I successed in making my first drawing.
  My Drawing Number One. It looked like this.

 

(1/３０以上 未定)

遅くなりまして申し訳ありません。

邦題「星の王子さま」
アントワーヌ・マリー・ジャン＝バティスト・ロジェ・ド・サン＝テグジュペリ
（Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint-Exupéry
(1900.6生－1944.7没)

長いのと英訳が必要ですので、少し連続しないかもしれませんが、名作を。
途中で他の物語も入る予定です。

The Little Prince (2)

The Little Prince (2)

  I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing frightened them.

  But they answered : " Frighten ?  Why should anyone be frightened by a hat ? "

  My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant.

 But since the grown-ups were not able to understand it, I made another drawing: I drew the inside of the boa constrictor, so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. They always need to have things explained.

  My drawing Number Two looked like this :



  This time, The grown-ups ' response was to advise me to lay aside my drawing of boa constrictors, whether from the inside or outside, and devote myself instead to geography, history, arithmetic and grammer.

  That is why , at the age of six, I gave up what might have been a magnificent career as a painter.

(2/30~) 

The Little Prince (3)

The Little Prince (3)

  I had been disheartened by the failure of my Drawing Number One and my Drawing Number Two.
  Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for childrens to be always and forever explaining things to them.

   So then I chose another profession, and learned to pilot airplanes. I have flown a little over all parts of the world ; and it is ture that geography has been very useful to me.

  At first grance, I can distinguish China from Amazona. If one gets lost in the night, such knowledge is valuable.

  In the course of this life I have had a great manyencounters with a great many people who have been concerned with matters of consequence. 

  I have lived a great deal among grown-ups.
  I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn't much improved my opinion of them.

(3/30~)

The Little Prince (3)

The Little Prince (3)

  I had been disheartened by the failure of my Drawing Number One and my Drawing Number Two.
  Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for childrens to be always and forever explaining things to them.

   So then I chose another profession, and learned to pilot airplanes. I have flown a little over all parts of the world ; and it is ture that geography has been very useful to me.

  At first grance, I can distinguish China from Amazona. If one gets lost in the night, such knowledge is valuable.

  In the course of this life I have had a great manyencounters with a great many people who have been concerned with matters of consequence. 

  I have lived a great deal among grown-ups.
  I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn't much improved my opinion of them.

(3/30~)

The Little Prince (4)

The Little Prince (4)

  Whenever I met one of them who seemed to me at all clearsighted, I tried the experimen of showing him my Dwawing Number One, which I have always kept.

  I would try to find out, so, if this was a person of true understanding.

  But whoever it was, he, or she, would always say:
  " That is a hat. "

  Then I would never talk to that person about boa constrictors, or primeval forests, or stars.
  I would bring myself down to his level. I would talk to him about bridge, and golf, and politics, and neckties.

  And the grown-ups would be greatly pleased to have met such a sensible man.  



　　　　　　　　Ⅱ

　　So I lived my life alone, without anyone that I could really talk to, until I had an accident with my plane in the Desert of Sahara, six years ago.


(4/30~)

The Little Prince (5)

The Little Prince (5)

  Something was broken in my engine.

  And as I had with me neither a mechanic nor any passengers, I set myself to attempt the difficult repairs all alone.

  It was  a question of life or death for me : I had scarcely enough drinking water to last a week.

  The first night, then, I went to sleep on the sand, a thousand miles from any human habitation. I was more isolated than a shipwrecked sailor on a raft in the middle of the ocean.

  Thus you can imagine my amazement, at sunrise, when I was awakened by an odd little voice.
  
  It said : " If you please ー draw me a sheep ! "

  " What ! "

  " Draw me a sheep ! "

  I jumped to my feet, completely thunderstruck.
  I brinked my eyes hard.

  And I saw a most extraordinary small paerson, who stood there examining me with great seriousness.

(5/30~)

The Little Prince (6)

The Little Prince (6)

  Here you may see the best portrait that, later, I was able to make of him.

  But my drawing is certainly very much less charming than it's model.

  That, however, is not my fault.

  The grown-ups ups discouraged me in my painter'as career when I was six years old and I never learned to draw anything, except boas from the outside and boas from the inside.

  Now I stared at this sudden apparition with my eyes fairy starting out I'd my head in astonishments

  Remembers I had crashed in the desert a thousand miles from any inhabited regions

  And yet my little man seemed neither to be straying uncertainly among the sands, nor to be fainting from fatigue or hunger or thirst or fears

  Nothing about hi gave any suggestion of a child lost in the middle of the desert, a thousand miles away from any human habitation.

(6/30~)

The Little Prince (7)

The Little Prince (7)

  When at least I was able to speak, I said to him :
  " But ― what are you doing here ? "

  And in asnswer he repeated, very slowly, as if he were speaking of a matter of great consequence :
  " If you please ー draw me a sheep. . . "

  When a mystery is too overpowering, one dare not disobey.

  Absurd as it might seem to me, a thousand miles from any human habitation and in danger of death, I took out of my pocket a sheet of paper and my fountain pen.

  But then I remembered how my studies had been concentrated on geography, history, airthmetic, and grammer, and I told the little chap ( a little crossly, too ) that I did not know how to draw.

  He answered me :
  " That doesn't matter. Draw me a sheep. . ."

  But I had never drawn a sheep.
  So I drew for him one of the two pictures  I had drawn so often.
  It was that of hte boa constrictor from the outside.  And I was astonished to hear the little fellow greet with it.

  " No, no, no ! I do not want an elephant inside a boa constrictor. A boa constrictor is a very dangerous creature, and an elephant is very cumbersome. Where I live, everything is very small. What I need is a sheep. Draw me a sheep. "

(7/30~) 

The Little Prince (8)

The Little Prince (8)

  So then I made a drawing.



  He looked at it carefully, then he said :
  " No. This sheep is already very sickly. Make me another. "

  So I mad another drawing.



  My friend smiled gently and indulgently.

  " You see yourself, " he said, " that this is not a sheep. This is a ram. I has horns. "

  So then I did my drawing over once more.



  But it was rejected too, just like the others.

  " This one is too old. I want a sheep that will live along time. "

  By this time my patience was exhausted, because I was in a hurry to start taking my engine apart. So I tossed off this drawing.

  And I threw out an explanation with it.

  " This is only his box. The sheep you asked for is inside. "



(8/30~)

The Little Prince (9)

The Little Prince (9)

  I was very surprised to see a light break over the face of my young judge:
  " That is exactry the way I wanted it ! Do you think that this sheep will have to have a great deal of grass ? "

  " Why ? "

  " Because where I live everything is very small. . ."

  " There will surely be enough grass for him, " I said.
  " It is a very small sheep that I have given you. "

  He vent  his head over the drawing :
  " Not so small that — Look ! He has gone to sleep. . ."

  And that is how I made the acquintance of the little Prince.



   　　Ⅲ 

　Ｉt took me a long time to learn where he came from.

  The little prince , who asked me so many questions, never seemed to hear the ones Iasked him.

  It was from words dropped by chance that, little by little, everything was  revealed to me.

(9/30~)
東京不在のため、昨日、予約投稿に失敗しました。

申し訳ありません。明日以降は、努力しますので、宜しくお願い申し上げます。

The Little Prince (10)

The Little Prince (10)

  The first time he saw my airplane, for instance ( I shall not draw my airplane ; that would be much too complicated for me ), he asked me :

  " What is that object ? "

  " That is not an object. It flies. It is an airplane. It is my airplane. "

  And I was proud to have him learn that I could fly.

  He cried outs then : 

  " What ! You dropped down from the sky ? "

  " Yes,  " I answered, modestly.

  " Oh ! That is funny ! "

  And the little prince broke into a lovely peal of laughter, which irritated me very much.

  I like my misfortunes to be taken seriously.

  Then he added :

  " So you, too, come from the sky ! Which is your planet ? "

(10/30~)

The Little Prince (11)

The Little Prince (11)

  At that moment I caught a gleam of light in the impenetrable mystery of his presence ; and I demanded, abruptly :

  " Do you come from another planet ? "

  But he did noreply. He tossed his head gently, without taking his eyes from my plane :

  " It is true that on that you can't have come from very far away. . ."

  And he sank into a reveries which lasted a long time.

  Then, taking my sheep out of his pocket, he buried himself in the contemplation of his treasure.

(11/30~)

The Little Prince (12)

The Little Prince (12)

  YOU CAN IMAGIN how my curiosity was aroused by this half-confidence about the " other planets. "

  I made a great efforts, therefore, to find out more on this subject.

  " My little man, where do you come from ?What is this 'where I lives ' of which you speak ? Where do you want to take yoursheep ? "

  After a reflective silence he answered : 

  " The thing that is so good about the box you have given me is that at night he can use it as his house. "

  " That is sol And if you are good I will give you a string, too, so that you can tie him during the day, and a post to tie him to. "

  But the little prince seemed shocked by this offer :

  " Tie him ! What a queer idea ! "

  " But if you don't tie him, " I said, " he will wander off somewhere, and get lost. "

  My friend broke into another peal of laughter :

  " But where do you think he would go ? "

  " Anywhere. Straight ahead of him. "

  Then the little prince said, earnestly :

  " That doesn't matter. Where I live, everything is so small ! "

  And, with perhaps a hint of sadness, he added :

  " Straight ahead of him, nobody can go very far. . ."

(12/30~)

The Little Prince (13)

The Little Prince (13)

        Ⅳ

  I had thus learned a second fact of great importance : this was that the planet the little prince came from was scarcely any larger than a house.

  But that did not really surprise me much.

  I knew very well that in addition to the great planets ー such as the Earth, Jupiter, Marsh Venus ー to which we have given names, there are also hundreds of others, some of which are so small that one has a hard time seeing them through the telescope.

  When an astronomer discovers one of these he does not give it a name, but only a number.

  He might call it, for example, " Asteroid 325."

  I have serious to believe that the planet from which the little prince came is the asteroid known as B-612.

(13/30~)

The Little Prince (14)

The Little Prince (14)

  This asteroid has only once been seen through the telescpope.

  That was by a Turkish astronomers in 1909.

  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 deaths should change to European costume.

  So in 1920 the astronomer gave his demonstration all overt 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 ups and their ways.

  Grown-ups love figures.

  When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters.

  They never say to your " What does his voice sound kike ? 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.

(14/30~)

The Little Prince (15)

The Little Prince (15)

  If you were to say to the grown-ups : " I saw a beautiful house made of soy 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 : " Ohm what a pretty house that is ! "

  Just so, you might say to them : " The proof that the little prince existed is that he was charming, that he laughed, and that he was looking for a sheep.

  If anybody wants a sheep, that he exists. " 

  And what good would it do to tell them that ?  They would shrug their shoulders, and treat you like a child.

  But if you said to them : " The planet he came from is Asteroid B-612, " then they would be convinced, and leave you in peace from their questions.

(15/30~)

The Little Prince (16)

The little Prince (16)

  They are like that.

  One must not hold it against them.
  Children should always show great forbearance toward grown-ups people.

  But certainly, for us who understand life, figures are a matter of indifference. I should have liked to began this story in the fashion of the fairy-tales.

  I should have liked to say : " Once upon a time there was a little prince who lived on a planet that was scar any bigger than himself, and who had need of a sheep. . . "

  To those who understand life, that would have given a much greater air of truth to my story.

  For I do not want anyone to read my book carelesssly.
  I have suffered too much grief in setting down these memories.

  Six years have already passed since my friend went away frrom me, with his sheep. If I try to describe him here, it is to make sure that I shall not forgot him.

  To forget a friend is sad.
  Not everyone has had a friend. And I forget him, I may become like the grown-ups who are no longer interested in anything but figures. . .

(16/30~)
遅くなり申し訳ありません。
帰京しましたので、明日からしばらくはきちんと出せると思います。 

The Little Prince (17)

The Little Prince (17)

  It is for that purpose, again, that I have bought a box of paints and some pencils.

  It is hard to take up drawing again at my age, when I have never made my pictures except those of the boa cobstrictor from the outside and the boa constrictor from the sinside, since I was six yers old.

 I shall certainly try to make my portraits as true  to life as possible.

  But I am not at all sure of successs.
  One drawing goes along all right, and another has no resemblance to its subject. I make some errors, too, in the little prince's height : in one place he is too tall and in another too short.

  And I feel some doubts about the color of his costume.

  So I fumble along as best I can, now good, now bad, and I hope generally fair-to-middling.

  In certain more important details I shall make mistakes, also.

  But that is something that will not be my fault. 
  My friend never explained anything to me. He thought, perhaps, that I was like himself. But I, alas, do not know how to see sheep through the walls of boxes.

  Perhaps I am a little like the grown-ups.
  I have had to grow old.

(17/30~)  

The Little Prince (18)

The Little Prince (18)

  　　Ⅴ

　　As each day passed I would learn, in our talk, something about the little prince's planet, his departure from it, his journey.

  The infomation would come very slowly, as it might chance to fall from his thoughts.
  It was in this way that I heard, on the third day, about the catastrophe of the baobabs.

  This time, once more, I had the sheep to thank for it.
  For the little prince asked me abruptly ー as if seized by a grave doubt － " It is true, isn't it, that sheep eat little bushes ? "

 " Yes, that is true. "

 " Ah ! I am glad ! "

  I did not understand why it was so important  that sheep should eat little bushes. But the little prince added :
  " Then it follows that they also eat baobabs ? "

  I pointed out to the little prince that baobabs were not little bushes, but, on the contrary, trees as big as castle ; and that even and that even if he took a whole herd of elephants away with him, the herd would not eat up one single baobab.

(18/30~) 　　

The Little Prince (19)

The Little Prince (19)

  The idea of the herd of elephants made the little prince laugh.

  " We would have to put them one on top of the other, " he said.

  But he mede a wise comment.
  " Before they grow so big, the baobabs start out by being little. "

  " That is strictly correct, " I said. " But why do you want the sheep to eat the little baobabs ? "

  He answered me at once, " Oh, come, come ! ", as if he were speaking of something that was self-evident.

  And I was obliged to make a great mental effort to solve this problem, without any assistance.

(19/30~)
予約投稿に失敗しました。申し訳ありません。
明日は16時に出ると思います。

  

The Little Prince (20)

The Little Prince (20)

  Indeed, as I learned, there were on the planet where the little prince lived  ー as on all palnets ― good plants and bad plants.

  In  consequence, there were good seeds from good plants, and bad seeds from bad plants.

  But seeds are invisible.

  They sleep deep in the heart of the earth's darkness, until someone among them is seized with the disire to awaken.

  Then  this little seed will stretch itself and begin ー timidly at first ー to push a charming little sprig inofftensively upward toward the sun.

  If it is only a sprout of radish or the sprig of a rose-bush, one would let it grow wherever it moght wish.

  But when it is a bad plant, one must destory it as soon as possible, the very first instant that one recognizes it.

(20/30~)

The Little Prince (21)

The Little Prince (21)



  Now there were some terrible seeds on the planet that was the home of the little prince ; and these were the seeds of the baobab.

  The soil of that planet was infested with them.

  A baobab is something you will never, never be able toget rid of if you attend to it to late.
  It spreads over the entire planet.
  It bores clear through it with its roots.

  And if the planet is too small, and the baobabs are too many, they split it in pieces. . .

  " It is a question of discipline, " the little prince asid to me later on.
  " When you've finished you own toilet in the morning, then it is time to attend to the toiletof your planet, just so, with the greatest care.

  You must see to it that  you pull up regularly all the baobabs, at the very first moment when they can be distinguished from the rose-bushes which they resemble so closely in their earliest youth.
  It is very tedious work, " the little prince added, " but very easy. 

(21/30~)

The Little Prince (22)

The Little Prince (22)

    And one day he said to me :  You ought to make a beautiful drawing,,so that the children where you live can see exactly how all this is.

  That would be very useful to them if they were to travel some day  Sometimes, " he added, " there is no harm in putting off a piece of work until another day.

  But when it is a matter of baobabs, that always means a catastrophe.

  I knew a plant that was in habited by a lazy man. He neglected three little 

bushes. . . "

  So, as the little prince described it to me, I have made a drawing of that planet.

I do not much like to take the tone of a moralists

  But the danger of the baobabs is so little understood,and such considerable risks would be run by anyone who might get lost on an asteroid, that for once I am breaking through my reserved

  " Children, " I say plainly, " watch out for the baobabs ! "

(22/30~)
番号訂正いたしました。

The Little Prince (23)

The Little Prince (23)

  My friend, like myself, have been skirting this danger for a long time, without ever knowing it ; and so it is for them that I have worked so hard over this drawing.

  The lesson which I pass on by thiss means is worth all the trouble it has cost me.

  Perhaps you will ask me, " Why are there no other drawings in this book as magnificent and impressive as this drawing of the baobabs ? "

  The reply is simple.
  I have tried. But with the others I have not been successful.

 When I made the drawing of the baobabs I was carried beyond myself by the inspiring force of urgent necessity.

(23/30~)  
月曜日12/21より短い新物語併設となる予定です。
一日延びまして、12/22(火)よりとなる見込みです。申し訳ありません。 

The Little Prince (24)

The Little Prince (24)

　　　Ⅵ

  Oh, Litte Prince !
  Bit by bit I came to understand the secrets of your sad little life. . .For a long time you had found your only entertainment in the quiet pleasure of looking at the sunset.



  I learned that new detail on the mornig of the fourth day, when you said to me :
  " I am very fond of sunsets. Come, let us go look at a sunset now. "

  " But we must wait, " I said.

  " Wait ? For what ? "

  " For the sunset. We must wait until it is time. "

  At first you seemed to be very much surprised. And then you laughed to yourself. You said to me :

 " I am always thinking that I am at home ! "
 Just so. Everybody knows that when it is noon in the United States the sun is setting over France.
  If you could fly to France in one minute, you could go straight into the sunset, right from noon.
  Unfortunately, France is too far away for that.
  But on your tiny planet, my little prince, all you need do is move your chair a few steps. You can see the day end and the twilight falling whenever you like. . .
  " One day, " you said to me, " I saw the sunset forty-four times !
  And a little later you added :
  " You know ー one loves the sunset, when one is so sad. . . "

  " Were you so sad, then ? " I asked, " on the day of the forty-four sensets ? "

  But the little prince made no reply.

(24/30~) 

The Little Prince (25)

The Little Prince (25)

    Ⅶ

　　On the fifth day ー again, as always, it was thanks to the sheep ー the secret of the little prince's life was revealed to me.

  Abruptly, without anything to lead up to it, and as if the question had been born of long and silent meditation on his problem, he asked to me :
 " A sheep ー if it eats little bushes, does it eat flowers, too ? "

  " A sheep, " I answered, " eats anything it find in its reach. "

  " Even flowers that have thorns ? "

  " Yes, even flowers that have thorns. "

  " Then the thorns ー what use are they ? "

  I did not know.
  At that moment I was very busy trying to unscrew a bolt that had got stuck in my engine.
  I was very much worried, for it was becoming clear to me that the breakdown of my plane was extremly serious.

  And I had so little drinking water left that I had to fear the worst.

  " The thorns ー what use are they ? "

  The little prince never let go of a question, once he had asked it.

  As for me I was upset over that bolt.

(25/30~) 

The Little Prince (26)

The Little Prince (26)　

のちに、訂正しました(26 改め以降があります)
もうしわけありません。

  If you were to say to the grown-ups : " I saw a beautiful house made of rosy brick, with geraniums in the window 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 ! "

  Just so, you might say to them : " The proof that the little prince existed is that he was charming, that he laughed, and that he ws looking for a sheep. Anybodey wants a sheep, that is a proof that he exists. "

  And what good would it do tell them that ?
  They would shrug shoulders, nd treat you like a child.

(26/30~)  

The Little Prince (27)

The Little Prince (27)

のちに、訂正しました（26）以降があります。
申し訳ありません。

  But if you said to them : " The palnet he came from is Asteroid B-612, " then they would be convinced, and leave you alone in pease from their question.

  They are like that.
  
  One must not hold it against them. Children shoud always show great forbearance toward grown-ups people.

  But certainly, for us who understand life, figures are a matter of indifference.

  I should have liked to begin this story in the fashion of thefairy-tales.
  I should have liked to say : " Once upon a time there was a little prince who lived on a planet that was scarcely any bigger than himself, and who had need of a sheep. . . "

(27/30~)

The Little Prince (28)

The Little Prince (28)

のちに、訂正しました(26)以降があります。
申し訳ありません。


  To those who understand life, that would have given a much greater air of truth to my story.

  For I do not want anyone to read my book carelessly.

  I have suffered too much grief in setting down these memories.

  Six years have already passed since my friend went away from me, with his sheep.

  If I try to describe him here, it is to make sure that I shall not forget him.  To forget a friend is sad. Not everyone has had a friend.
  And if I forget him, I may become like the grown-ups who are no longer interested in anything but figures. . .

  It is for that purpose, again, that I have bought a box of paints and some pencils. It is hard to take up drawing again at my age, when I have never made any pictures except those of boa constrictor from the outside  and the boa constrictor from the inside, since I was six.

(28/30~)
知恵熱のため、齟齬しました。
もうしわけありません。

The Little Prince (26 改)

The Little Prince につき、重大なミスがありました。

(25)までは正しいのですが、(26)以降、
物語が途中混乱してしまいました。申し訳ありません。
若干、熱が出ておりました。
(26)(27)(28)、全面訂正申し上げます。

Ⅶ　(25) 以降より訂正しまして、再度継続させていただきます。

    Ⅶ(再掲　25)

　　On the fifth day ー again, as always, it was thanks to the sheep ー the secret of the little prince's life was revealed to me.

  Abruptly, without anything to lead up to it, and as if the question had been born of long and silent meditation on his problem, he asked to me :
 " A sheep ー if it eats little bushes, does it eat flowers, too ? "

  " A sheep, " I answered, " eats anything it find in its reach. "

  " Even flowers that have thorns ? "

  " Yes, even flowers that have thorns. "

  " Then the thorns ー what use are they ? "

  I did not know.
  At that moment I was very busy trying to unscrew a bolt that had got stuck in my engine.
  I was very much worried, for it was becoming clear to me that the breakdown of my plane was extremly serious.

  And I had so little drinking water left that I had to fear the worst.

  " The thorns ー what use are they ? "

  The little prince never let go of a question, once he had asked it.

  As for me I was upset over that bolt.


☆☆
(26)以降、改めまして、続きます。

The Little Prince (26 改)

  And I answered with the first thing that came into my head :
  " The thorns are of no use at all. Flowers have thorns just for spite ! "

  " Oh ! "

  There was a moment of complete silence.

  Then the little prince flashed back at me, with a kind of resentfulness.
  " I don't believe you ! Flowers are weak creatures. They are naive. They reassure themselves as best they can. They believe that their thorns are terrible weapons. . . "

  I did not answer.

  At this instant I was saying to myself : " If this bolt still won't turn, I am going to knock it out with the hammer. "

(26改/30~)
つながらない物語を途中挿入し、まことに申し訳ありませんでした。
以後、厳重に気を付けます。