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Good books, old friends

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By Kara Kvasnicka

Tuesday, November 29, -0001

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As tempted as I am to choose one of my favorites — something that it only stands to reason would provide as much comfort, affirmation and pleasure to others as it has done me — it is not my own tastes I am on a mission to gratify.

How foolish and arrogant I would be to expect my literary touchstones to function in the same capacity for anyone else.

No. Rather than risk an averse reaction from a person whose opinions I value, I prefer to keep the books that mean the most to me to myself.

French novelist Antoine de Saint-Exupery said of romantic love: "If your love has no hope of being welcomed do not voice it; for if it be silent it can endure, a guarded flame, within you (The Wisdom of the Sands, 1950)."

That is exactly how I feel about the writings that have struck the deepest chords in me. I am especially protective of The Little Prince (1943), the single story Saint-Exupery penned, ostensibly, but not really, for children.

It was during a semester break from my freshman year of college that I first discovered and fell in love with this timeless classic. An English major, I had second thoughts about continuing my study of "the great books of the western world" upon finding all their separate bits of wisdom distilled into this slim volume.

I was instantly mesmerized by Saint-Exupery's spare, contemplative prose. I immediately recognized as kindred spirits his two main characters — the narrator, a downed pilot in the desert, and the child prince from another planet he meets there.

A fable that relates the lessons on love, life and friendship the prince has learned during his visits to several planets, it has little in the way of plot or character development. Theme and symbolism unadorned, it is all I need. Every chapter contains at least one razor sharp insight I have sought fit to star or underline.

Not having studied them, I can ascribe Saint-Exupery's intuitive reflections on the human condition to no particular school of philosophy. But they seem to express best all I know to be true.

In answer to that ultimate hypothetical question, this quite probably would be the one book I would like to have tucked in my pocket if I were stranded on a desert island. (Sorry. A soccer ball inscribed with the name Wilson would definitely not be enough to sustain me.)

My ultimate authority on genuine "matters of consequence," it is the first place I turn whenever I feel perspective slipping away.

Although my views of grown-ups are a bit more charitable than those of the pilot, I agree with him that children, as yet unburdened by the cares of a world beyond their own imaginations, are much more likely to discern absolute truths.

Grown-ups see with their heads, children with their hearts.

And, as the fox confides to the prince to help him decipher his emotions for that troublesome flower he left behind on his home planet, "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

So, like the pilot, I am only too happy to allow a child — a curious curly, blond-headed boy prince — reveal the universe to me.

Not daring to voice them myself, it is a relief to permit the diminutive sole inhabitant of Asteroid B-612 to ask the questions that might unlock all those secret doors in my soul.

Every man and woman's inner-child, he possesses the naiveté and innocence that justify his earnest inquiries. I do not.

I own many books that can be classified as road maps to a meaningful life. This one is the easiest to unfold.

In just 113 pages, leaving room for several charming penciled illustrations into the bargain, Saint-Exupery manages to cover as many motifs as the bulkiest tome of familiar quotations.

In my constant struggle for self-approval, I have only to remember what the king on a neighboring asteroid taught the prince: "It is much more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself rightly, then you are indeed a man of true wisdom."

On the obligations of friendship, everything the fox has to say rings clear, most notably: "You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed."

When my enthusiasms are rebuffed, the pilot is, as ever, my sage sympathizer: "Children should always show great forbearance toward grown-up people."

Why are my sources of inspiration unique to me? How can I expect anyone to appreciate my dearest fictitious contemporaries and their creators as much as I do? The answers to even the questions Saint-Exupery does not ask us to ponder are implicit in the prince's parting words to the pilot, before returning home to tend his rose
"All men have the stars, but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky… You — you alone — will have the stars as no one else has them …"

I have faith in my closest companions. I am fairly certain they would see in this deceptively simple fairy tale what the future aviator tried in vain to get the grown-ups to see in his first, rudimentary childhood drawing. It is not a hat, but an elephant inside a snake, of course.

However, in my eagerness for understanding, I do not want to make the mistake of projecting more than there is. Something as basic as that has to, serendipitously, just be. Otherwise, it is not meant to be.

It is enough for me to know that The Little Prince would not have remained in print nearly 60 years after its original publication date if it did not continue to resonate with millions of other readers. Missed opportunities must account for why I know none of them by name. Then again, it is rather nice to think of all those anonymous potential soul mates out there, whose paths I might still cross.

Enough of this greeting card gush!

Back to the task at hand. Holiday shopping. Time is running out. My, how enticing those colorful gift cards by the cash registers are starting to look.

Kvasnicka, a former East Village Magazine news editor, has been the magazine's contributing editor and research consultant since 1989. She is the librarian at the Genesee District Library's Goodrich Branch.

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