<i>The Little Prince</i> of Saint Exupery: A Mourning Work

Antoine de Saint Exupery writes The Little Prince in 1943. He lives in New York with his wife Consuelo. He draws little fellows on table cloths and napkins and his editors suggest him to write a tale for children illustrated by him. The Little Prince is the story of a little fellow coming from an asteroid, who becomes the friend of an aviator who crashed in the desert with his plane just like Saint Exupery. The little fellow dies at the end of the tale, bitten by a snake and returns to his asteroid. I. asked myself like Freud for Gradiva, if Saint Exupery had not lost a brother or a friend in his childhood. Yes he did, like Jensen the author of Gradiva, the story of a young girl who relives in Pompei. The tale of the Little Prince repeats a great friendship of the childhood and is a mourning work. The Little Prince reminds me the Gradiva of Jensen and the link made by Freud between the revival of a young girl in Pompei and the life of the author. The function of writing is to symbolize, to recreate, to repair. In the Little Prince there is also a mourning work.