Hangman Game with Silvia Hamilton
Undated [New York, first semester 1943].
1 f. (150 x 100 mm) in graphite.
Saint-Exupéry pend Silvia Hamilton: a terrible “hanged man” game on which a woman figure, in the same outfit as the Little Prince, sways at the end of a rope.
The author added: “The word to find was SILVIA [crossed out at the first Y, transformed into an i]”.
We apologize for the imperfect translation generated by Deepl for the purposes of the show.
Silvia Hamilton Reinhardt was Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s great New York love: it was to her that he gave, before his departure for North Africa, the original manuscript of the Little Prince (now kept at the Pierpont Morgan Library), as a testimony to the trace she left in this book, written in New York during the months of their relationship. They parted bitterly in 1943, Saint-Exupéry suspecting – with good reason – an affair between Silvia (whom the author spelled “Sylvia” in his letters) and the German-born film director and producer Gottfried Reinhardt, who worked for the Fox studios.
This pencil sketch is probably the first draft, or even the original idea, of another famous, more accomplished drawing, executed in ink and watercolor: it depicts Saint-Exupéry, hanging on his planet, while, on the planet “Fox,” a couple is embracing. This drawing, put back on sale in 2020 (Kâ-Mondo study, June 2020) was one of the many drawings in the 1976 sale (Laurin-Guilloux-Buffetaud-Tailleur, Drouot RG, May 1976); they are the only two to evoke this painful separation in such a tragic way, even though in the preface to the catalog, Silvia Hamilton gave a completely different version: she attributes the author’s sadness to MGM’s decision to withdraw the film Night Flight from circulation. This less romantic interpretation has become the official version of the end of their relationship and of these two drawings of ‘hanged men’: the first, where one is about to be hanged, no doubt because of anger, and the second, where the other hangs himself, no doubt because of despair.
Here Saint-Exupéry draws a second gallows, and two dandelion flowers, emblematic details of his masterpiece. The letters “AEX” – his own initials – are crossed out in the lower right-hand corner: the hanged man to be found is not him, it is her! If the set had been continued, would the second gallows have been named “Gottfried”? Probably!
Silvia Hamilton-Reinhard would later provide precise recollections: “When we met, he told me the story of The Little Prince, which he had not yet begun to write. As he was constantly making wonderful sketches, I suggested that he illustrate the book himself. […] In the spring of 1943, he finally managed to reach North Africa. The conditions he found there made him unhappy, as is indeed described in his last two letters to me. […] The day of his departure was approaching (for North Africa, April 1943). I had a gold identity bracelet made for him. […] I gave it to him on the morning he came to bid me farewell. As he left, he said to me: ‘I would like to give you something splendid, but this is all I have. He placed his old Zeiss Ikon camera and the French manuscript of The Little Prince in my hands’ (Icare, no. 84, 1978).
From the Claude Seignolle collection.
