'The Little Prince's beloved rose claimed, with
pride, that she was 'born at the same time as the sun'. Antoine de
Saint-Exupery,fondly referred to by his brothers and sister, as 'the sun king'
" le
roi soleil" saw the first light of day on 29th June 1900,
shortly after the birth of the 20th century.
In
France, at least, this intrepid test-pilot who many a time risked his life in
the fragile craft of the early 20th century, is considered a
celebrity. The restless, imaginative child grew up to be one of the most
adventurous, most admired aviation poneers of that epoch and one of France's
greatly loved literary figures.
In
1930, Saint-Exupéry met the vivacious, seductive, young Salvadorean-born
beauty, Consuelo, who became his wife and with whom he had a most tempestuous
passionate and dramatically make-and-break love affair, described so vividly by
Consuelo herself in her hidden away story, 'The Tale of the Rose, 'Mémoirs
de la rose', published for the first time in the year 2000, 20 years after
her death, when the manuscript was unearthed from a stored away trunk. After
the publication of this book, it is believed that Consuelo was his 'muse,' the
inspiration for the Little Prince's beloved rose.
In
1944, this fighter for Free France, was reported missing together with his
aircraft somewhere over the Mediterranean, believed to have been shot down by
the Germans.
His
best-loved work, The Little Prince, "Le Petit Prince", was
published that same year.
Mark
Amerasinghe today presents this magical tale as a monodrama adapted and
scripted from his own translation of the original French work together with
slides of the author's own water colour drawings that appear in the text.
Click on the web-link below to see the performance:-
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