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The Little Prince

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
translated by Richard Howard

Harcourt, 1943, 2000
$18.00 hardcover ($8.00 trade paper)
86 pages

"Please . . . draw me a sheep."

In the middle of the desert a child approaches a stranded pilot with this request. Little by little, the pilot pieces together the story of the little prince . . . How he lives on Asteroid B-612 with three volcanoes (two active, one extinct, but you never know) and a beautiful rose . . . How he has met the most unusual people since leaving his small planet: a king, a lamplighter, a snake, a fox, and now the pilot himself. The little prince learns from all of them, sometimes things they don't even know themselves, but it is the fox who teaches the little prince his most important secret:

"One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes."

In turn, our pilot learns all this; and like the fox, he is desolate when the little prince must leave. But the little prince makes him this gift: "When you look up at the sky at night, since I'll be living on one of them, since I'll be laughing on one of them, for you it'll be as if all the stars are laughing. You'll have stars that can laugh!".

In honor of the hundredth anniversary of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's birth (1900-1944) Harcourt has released a new English translation by Richard Howard of The Little Prince. Personally, I think the earlier translation by Kathleen Woods that we've been reading for the past fifty years had held up reasonably well, but this new translation by Richard Howard is also very nice.

The differences between the two are subtle, mostly minor: neither better nor worse, just different. Howard himself observes in his "translator's note" that "Time reveals all translation to be paraphrase . . . ." In some places his new wording is smoother, less awkward or more lyrical (Howard is also a poet). Elsewhere, phrasing now reflects an admittedly more modern sensibility. Still others are enigmatic: what Woods called a "giddy goose" in 1943 Howard translates as "a beetle," and only reference to Saint-Exupéry's original French would suggest which might be more accurate. In one place I actually prefer Woods' translation, who introduced the little prince with this imperious request: "If you please -- draw me a sheep!"

Harcourt has also improved the reproduction of the artwork, ensuring that color and detail match Saint-Exupéry's original drawings and watercolors as closely as possible. The differences here between this new edition and some of the older editions are quite noticeable.

But the beauty, the simplicity of The Little Prince remain unchanged. Its story speaks to the eternal child in all of us, no matter how grown-up we are.

Reviewed by Wendy Morris. © 2000 by Wendy Morris.

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