Who Was Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry?
Consuelo Consuelo chérie,
– Excerpt from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s letter to his wife Consuelo
Dépêchez-vous de revenir…
(Consuelo Consuelo darling, hurry back home…)
The Rose in The Little Prince is self-obsessed, vain, and naïve… yet she is the only rose worthy of the Little Prince’s love. So was Consuelo to Antoine. She had the bad habit of not replying to his letters. She would let him down. From the hundreds of letters he sent to his beloved Consuelo during his exile in New York, we can notice that she was an overconfident and proud woman. And we can immediately link her personality to the Rose character.
At the beginning of the 20th century, letters were the most common way of communication. In addition, Antoine loved to draw and the doodles he used to add to his letters are now recognized worldwide. All of the illustrations you can find in The Little Prince today are the original production of the author.
“Life is difficult. But I know well the perils of the sea. I have sailed around the world so much. I have been so thirsty, cold, and afraid. I had so much pain. And then I have marauded so much, jumped off so many walls, stolen so much fruit from the orchards, and walked so much with love under the stars.”
– Excerpt from a letter
Consuelo was born into a family of wealthy landowners in El Salvador. She traveled a lot in her youth, from Latin America to the States and France, where she finally met and married Enrique Gómez Carrillo, one of the greatest Guatemalan writers. You can tell that she had a special affection for writers. Following his death, she moved to Buenos Aires where she met the French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Their turbulent relationship and Consuelo’s bohemian nature caused a great deal of suffering to the author.
“One day, I watched the sun setting forty-four times……You know…when one is so terribly sad, one loves sunsets.”
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Check out Consuelo’s short biography below 👇
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