Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Favorites x 2: An Ending.

Søren Kierkegaard may rightly be looked upon as the Danish little prince. In Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s French tale, we meet a small prince from a planet far away, and a lost pilot. The little prince tells his new friend, “What makes the desert beautiful, is that somewhere it hides a well.” The aviator narrator understood. When he was a child, he heard about a house that held a buried treasure. While the treasure was never found, its secret was enough to make the house magical. The little prince fell asleep in his arms, as he walked through the desert to find water, and the aviator said to himself, again: "What moves me so deeply, about this little prince who is sleeping here, is his loyalty to a flower—the image of a rose that shines through his whole being like the flame of a lamp, even when he is asleep..." The little prince held a hidden devotion to a rose, and a planet and star far away. Even though he had to leave them. Even though he was too young to understand his rose. Søren Kierkegaard, that sad, sweet prince, held a secret devotion for his own rose, his Regine. Even though he had to leave her, causing them both great despair (as well as many sleepless nights). Even though they could not understand each other. (He was too reflective, and she too immediately passionate for that.) The image of Regine shines through his whole published work, like the flame of a lamp that cannot go out.

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