The Little Prince (Lille Prinsen) in Antoine De Saint-Exupéry's children's book leaves his planet because he does not feel loved. He sets off on a journey; life must be better elsewhere. As he travels planet to planet, he discovers that adults get caught up in what they think they must do. They do not really see where they are; they do not really live. He is disappointed by what he finds. The most beautiful lesson he learns from the fox goes right to the heart of the book.
’Det viktigast går inte att uppfatta med ögonen’
’Men ögonen är blinda. Man måste söka med hjärtat.’
(I read the book in Swedish, something I am pretty proud of!) He realizes that to really find life, he must do it through the heart.
Gulliver's Travels, written by Jonathan Swift, is another type of journey. Swift published Gulliver's Travels in 1726. His satirical account exposes England by pulling back the curtain of what the society was and how it worked. He pulls back the curtain by using outrageous language and stories. Swift's accounts of Gulliver's travels to various unknown places give him a tool to describe societies, governments, customs, and values. In each of his travels, Gulliver seems to find the perfect place, yet he is dissatisfied by the end of his stay. Until the last chapter.
Little Prince discovered that he could only find life through his heart. For Gulliver, life could only be found by reason. Gulliver discovered that reason makes us human, and without reason, what are we? (You will find out in the last chapter!) He states:
'Reason alone is sufficient to govern a rational creature.'
'Because no person can disobey reason, without giving up his claim to be a rational creature.'
It is striking that Gulliver learned his lessons the same way that Little Prince learned his lessons, through the heart. Gulliver discovered through the relationships that he developed in his travels other ways of doing, being, and thinking. Reason is what makes us human, and we learn this through the heart.
Living in Sweden has made this lesson poignant for me. Settling into a place completely different from what I have known has changed me in a manner that traveling and reading could not. There are times I crave the safety of the surroundings of what I know. One day as I was reflecting on this, I wrote:
Seeing a city,
One I don't know,
Language unrecognizable,
Maybe the people too.
Sitting from a distance,
Imagining it to be the same,
Entering today with my protection,
Vulnerable, unknown.
Walking through it, not in it.
Somedays I would rather look out the window.
When my book club, Reading i Sverige, first started, I was amazed at what I discovered. I have been in book clubs before, with Americans. Now I was hearing ideas and thoughts different from mine or my American friends. These were from my new friends, who came from different countries. As I listened, my own small world was expanding beyond what I could have imagined. Now I take these experiences for granted, for I understand that I am on a journey with my heart.
These lines from Louise Glück's poem 'Parable of the Dove' are encouraging to me:
Change your form and you will change your nature,
And time does this for us.
· Hexaëmeron (370 AD) by Saint Basil of Caesarea
· The Midnight Library (2020) by Matt Haig
· Job (6th century BCE) tradition ascribes Moses as the author
· Breath (2020) by James Nestor
· Lille Prinsen (1942) Antoin De Saint-Exupéry
· Gulliver's Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift
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