小王子 The Little Prince 第一章

CH 1

When I was six years old, I saw a magnificent picturein a book about the junglecalled

True Stories. Itshowed a boa constrictor swallowing a wild animal. This is what it lookedlike.

In thebook it said: ‘Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewingit. Afterwards they are unable tomove. Then they sleep for six monthswhile they digest.’

That set me thinking about all the things that go on in the jungleand, with a crayon, I did my first drawing.I called it drawing number one. It looked like this:

I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups and asked

if they found it scary.

They answered: ‘What’s scary about a hat?’

But mydrawing was not of a hat. It was a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. So then I drew the insideof the boa, to helpthe grown-ups understand. They always need explanations. This is what mydrawing number two looked like:

SHAPE  MERGEFORMAT 

The grown-ups told me toforget about drawing elephants inside boa constrictors and to concentrate instead on geography, history, arithmetic and grammar. Which iswhy, at the age of six, seeingas my drawing number one andmy drawing number two had been such a disaster, I gave upon a glorious career as an artist. Grown-ups never understand anything on theirown, and it’s nuisance for children to have to keep explaining things over andover again.

So I hadto choose another profession, and I learnedto be a pilot. I flew all around theworld. And it is true that geography came in very handy. I could tell thedifference between China and Arizona at a glance.Which is very useful,if you lose your way at night.

Over the pastyears, I have met lotsof sensible people and spent a lot of time living inthe world of grown-ups. I have seen them at closequarters, which has done nothingto change my opinion of them.

Whenever Imet a grown-up who seemed fairly intelligent, I would test him with my drawingnumber one which I have always kept,to find out if he really wasperceptive. But he would always reply:‘It’s a hat.’ So insteadof talking to him about boa constrictors or the jungle or the stars, I’d comedown to his level and discuss bridge, golf, politics and neckties. And the grown-upwould be delighted to meet such areasonable man.