French museum exhibits manuscript of The Little Prince for first time

The manuscript of The Little Prince travelled from the United States to France for the first time during the week as part of a Parisian exhibition about its legendary author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

"It is incredible to imagine that this monument of French literature, The Little Prince, was written in New York and is now preserved there. We are very fortunate that the Morgan Library has lent it to us to show it to a European public for the first time," Anne Monier Vanryb, curator at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, told RFI.

The pilot-explorer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote the tale about an alien prince and his interstellar travels while in exile in the United States in 1942, having fled France after the German invasion.

He left the US the following year to fight on the North African front, leaving the manuscript with journalist Sylvia Hamilton, who sold it to the Morgan Library & Museum in New York in 1968.

Among the treasures on display in the exhibition A la rencontre du Petit Prince (Meeting the Little Prince) are the original watercolours of the Little Prince's asteroid home and the hero wearing his trademark long coat with red lapels.

Saint-Exupéry disappeared during a mission over the Mediterranean in July 1944, never to know of the worldwide success of his book, which had been published only in the US.

But he had found his voice after being initially reluctant to illustrate the story himself.

The exhibition shows how long the story was in gestation with a letter to his future wife in 1930 in which he shares his idea about a child who discovers a treasure and becomes melancholic.

"Each letter, each of Saint-Exupéry's writings was accompanied by a drawing. It was part of the author's way of expressing himself," said Vanryb.

Visitors see what was left on the cutting-room floor: characters including a snail, a butterfly collector and an old couple that chase him from his home.

There is a discarded opening in which the narrator admits he doesn't know how to draw an airplane.

The exhibition also explains the complicated love story between the writer and his wife Consuelo.

"The tumultuous relationship of Saint-Exupéry and Consuelo is the relationship of the Little Prince and his rose. Antoine and Consuelo met in Argentina. She was from El Salvador, where there are many volcanoes, like on the planet of the Little Prince. There are many autobiographical details in the story," Vanryb added.

► A la rencontre du Petit Prince runs until 26 June at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.