Serpentine Rhapsody

A comment an artist friend of mine in Texas made recently concerning the importance of integrity in art found me looking for my copy of Antoine de Saint Exupery's gem " Le Petit Prince". This Texas artist's devotion to his art, on good days and bad, somehow drew me like a magnet to the story of the Little Prince. The innocence of the story illustrated with the gentle drawings done by the author himself, re- awoke the poignant melancholy I felt when I read the story for the first time for a middle school assignment when I was 13. The story inflamed my heart and I have hung on to the copy I read then ever since. It has traveled with me from Belgium to Texas, first to TCU in Fort Worth, and then to Austin, for graduate school at UT. Then, after I married, the copy went with me to Washington State. The story lodged itself in my heart and has remained there ever since. Reading the story once more, I now look at it from the point of view of someone trying to break free through writing my stories and poems. The Little Prince was an exile, and so am I , living far away from the continent where I grew up. The heart breaking message of the loss of innocence and meaning in modern life, and more acutely the loss of purpose without the presence of love and friendship, is one that is timeless and doubly touching, because the author takes the position that only children know how to live and love, and only they know what is important. They and the animals who are also still in touch with the soul of existence. That is where the artists come into the picture. It seems that artists are grown ups who refused to surrender their childhood innocence, hence, they refused to let go of what matters most : the ability to enjoy each moment of beauty, and the ability to love. Artists, like children, suffer because they want to show the world the disaster that becomes life when we as adults become numb to the magic of beauty and love. Some artists go mad with the agony of the attempt. I think of Vincent van Gogh. We seem to understand his message now, because now his paintings hang in the most famous museums of the world, and are worth millions of dollars. The Little Prince would be most upset with this hypocrisy. The Little Prince tried to understand the world of the adults, and in the end, it almost cost him the love of his life, his precious Rose. Actually, maybe he never did make it back to his planet. Maybe he never saw his Rose again. Only the serpent knows for sure. The serpent took pity on the Little Prince, but in exchange for that pity the Little Prince sacrificed his soul, just so not to lose his heart. A true artist will die many times over each time he or she must compromise in order to survive, both the world and its vapid capriciousness and their own soul that tries not to be vanquished by the trickeries of the serpents that slither by from time to time. The Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran, in his wondrous book of aphorisms, " Sand and Foam ", says : " All great men have two hearts. One beats, the other tolerates. " It seems the Little Prince too had two hearts. Let's hope one of them got him back to his planet and his Rose. I wish the same for all my artist friends out there, and I wish the same for my soul as well.