What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry The Little Prince, ch. 24 (1943) Translated by Richard Howard
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When and why it was written
- When
- Published in 1943.
- Why
- The narrator and the prince are walking in the desert, out of water, looking for a well.
What it means
The condition is precise: somewhere, hidden. Not a well you have found, and not the absence of one.
Saint-Exupéry had crashed in the Sahara in 1935 and nearly died of thirst. The image is not decorative, and the beauty he is describing is a function of the possibility, not the relief.
Our reading of the passage cited above, not a quotation from a commentary.
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The Little Prince, 1943
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