Literature
-Je suis un renard, dit le renard.
-Viens jouer avec moi, lui proposa le petit prince. Je suis tellement triste…
-Je ne puis pas jouer avec toi, dit le renard. Je ne suis pas apprivoisé.
-Ah ! pardon, fit le petit prince.
Antoine de Saint Exupéry, Le Petit Prince (1943)
The Little Prince is a small novelle by Antoine de Saint Exupéry, published in 1943, which went on to become one of the most best-selling books ever in the world. Reading it is a touching, slightly philosophical, slightly moralistic, and absolutely out of this world experience. The main message of looking beneath the surface to find the true meaning of the things and the meaning of love is interspersed with the emphasis on small wonders of the world, the simple things that are so profoundly different from facts and figures and the matters of consequence, the things that fascinate children for hours but which the adults casually overlook.
One can analyze the book endlessly, discussing the allegories and metaphors of each and every chapter, characters, and scene, but this would be entirely self-defeating, as this is exactly the opposite of what the book asks us to do. By seeing with your heart, rather than the eyes, it tells us to pay attention to what cannot be analyzed, which is exactly what I think all art is about.
One can argue that literature is an example of art which has no special sensory percetion other than the words and sentences which we perceive with our logical mind. I would only agree with that when talking about technical literature. There is no art in a table of dielectric permittivities. However, there are plenty of examples of literature which is art, which is more than the sum of its parts, and The Little Prince is a perfect example of that.