L’enfance et l’expérience du vide dans L’Enfant de la haute mer et Le Petit Prince
In 1928, Jules Supervielle published L'Enfant de la haute mer for the first time. This fantasy can be read as one vision of the experience of a void experienced by children who, with the war, knew the absence of parents, the loss of their bearings, and to whom their past life may have appeared...
Saved in:
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | fra |
| Published: |
Association Française de Recherche sur les Livres et les Objets Culturels de l’Enfance (AFRELOCE)
2013-12-01
|
| Series: | Strenae |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/strenae/1090 |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | In 1928, Jules Supervielle published L'Enfant de la haute mer for the first time. This fantasy can be read as one vision of the experience of a void experienced by children who, with the war, knew the absence of parents, the loss of their bearings, and to whom their past life may have appeared as a mirage. This vision seems to be confirmed later by another, more famous story, which also deals with themes of childhood confronting a void—faced with solitude, the futility of adult preoccupations, interaction with nature, supernatural existence, and confrontation with death—this work is The Little Prince, by Saint-Exupéry. These two texts, published in 1928 and 1943, respectively (The Little Prince appeared during the Second World War, but Saint-Exupéry had been thinking about it for several years—the end of Wind, Sand and Stars (1939) foretold it) enter the frame of this interwar period, and problematically, since they seem to want to distance childhood from the reality created by men—with the desert, the high seas—yet bring it back more strongly through an existential confrontation with the Other (absent or present), with oneself (learning, self-discovery through travel, or the impossibility of leaving one's universe), and finally with death, which in both instances is something desired, and also problematically realized. This article studies these two texts in light of their historical moorings, in order to stress the role of the echo, or mirror, that these books became for children in the interwar period, by examining the vision of childhood they put forth—and even the open letter to adults they represented—and also by examining their readership’s reception at the time. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 2109-9081 |