Night Flight

By Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Fasten your seatbelt to experience the spectacle and solitude of flying high in the Andes in this novel from the author of The Little Prince.

No writer has equaled Saint-Exupéry in describing the perilous and poetic experience of flying, in submission to what he calls “those damn elemental divinities—night, day, mountain, sea and storm.” In this gripping, beautifully written novel inspired by his experience as a pilot in South America, he tells of the brave men who pilot night mail planes from Patagonia, Chile, and Paraguay to Argentina in the early days of commercial aviation. They are impelled to perform their routine acts of heroism by a steely chief named Rivière, whose extraordinary character is revealed through the dramatic events of a single night.

Preface by André Gide. Translated by Stuart Gilbert.

“The book stands out by reason of the quality of its style, the beauty of the passages in which flight is described better than it ever has been before, but more especially because of the emotions of the men of heroic mold.”—André Maurois, Saturday Review

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 20, 1974
• ISBN: 9780547542799

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944), born in Lyons, France, is one of the world’s best loved and widest read writers. His timeless fable, The Little Prince, has sold more than 100 million copies and has been translated into nearly every language. His pilot’s memoir, Wind, Sand and Stars, won the National Book Award and was named the #1 adventure book of all time by Outside magazine and was ranked #3 on National Geographic Adventure’s list of all-time-best exploration books. His other books include Night Flight; Southern Mail; and Airman's Odyssey. A pilot at twenty-six, he was a pioneer of commercial aviation and flew in the Spanish Civil War and World War II. In 1944, while flying a reconnaissance mission for his French air squadron, he disappeared over the Mediterranean.  Stacy Schiff is the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of several bestselling biographies and historical works including, most recently, The Witches: Salem, 1692. In 2018 she was named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture. Awarded a 2006 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she was inducted into the Academy in 2019. Schiff has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Los Angeles Times, among many other publications. She lives in New York City.

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Contents

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Title Page

Contents

Copyright

Preface

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

XXI

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XXIII

About the Author

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Copyright 1932 by Harcourt, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [e-mail] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

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Published by arrangement with Editions Gallimard

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de, 1900–1944.

Night flight.

(A Harvest book)

Reprint of the translation of Vol de nuit, originally published by Reynal & Hitchcock, New York.

I. Title.

PZ3.S137Ni10 [PQ2637.A274] 843'.9'12 73-16016

ISBN 978-0-15-665605-4

eISBN 978-0-547-54279-9

v5.0620

Preface

The sine qua non for the air-line companies was to compete in speed with all other systems of transport. In the course of this book Rivière, that leader to the manner born, sums up the issues. It is a matter of life and death for us; for the lead we gain by day on ships and railways is lost each night. This night service—much criticized at the start but subsequently, once the experimental stage was over, accepted as a practical proposition—still involved at the time of this narrative considerable risks. For to the impalpable perils of all air routes and their manifold surprises accrued the night’s dark treachery. I hasten to add that, great though these risks still are, they are growing daily less, for each successive trip facilitates and improves the prospects of the next one. Aviation, like the exploration of uncharted lands, has its early heroic age and Night Flight, which describes the tragic adventure of one of these pioneers of the air sounds naturally enough the authentic epic note.

The hero of Night Flight, though human through and through, rises to superhuman heights of valor. The quality which I think delights one most of all in this stirring narrative is its nobility. Too well we know man’s failings, his cowardice and lapses, and our writers of today are only too proficient in exposing these; but we stood in need of one to tell us how a man may be lifted far above himself by his sheer force of will.

More striking even than the aviator himself is, in my opinion, Rivière, his chief. The latter does not act, himself; he impels to action, breathes into his pilots his own virtue and exacts the utmost from them, constraining them to dare greatly. His iron will admits no flinching, and the least lapse is punished by him. At first sight his severity may seem inhuman and excessive. But its target is not the man himself, whom Rivière aspires to mold, but the man’s blemishes. In his portrayal of this character we feel the author’s profound admiration. I am especially grateful to him for bringing out a paradoxical truth which seems to me of great psychological import; that man’s happiness lies not in freedom but in his acceptance of a duty. Each of the characters in this book is wholeheartedly, passionately devoted to that which duty bids him do, and it is in fulfilling this perilous task, and only thus, that he attains contentedness and peace. Reading between the lines we discover that Rivière is anything but insensitive (the narrative of his interview with the wife of the lost pilot is infinitely touching) and he needs quite as much courage to give his orders as the pilots need to carry them out.

To make oneself beloved, he says, one need only show pity. I show little pity, or I hide it. . . . My power sometimes amazes me. And, again: Love the men under your orders, but do not let them know it.

A sense of duty commands Rivière in all things, the dark sense of duty, greater than that of love. Man is not to seek an end within himself but to submit and sacrifice his all to some strange thing that commands him and lives through him. It pleases me here to find that selfsame dark sense which inspired my Prometheus to his paradox: Man I love not; I love that which devours him. This is the mainspring of every act of heroism. ‘We behave,’ thought Rivière, ‘as if there were something of higher value than human life . . . But what thing?’ And again: There is perhaps something else, something more lasting, to be saved; and perhaps it was to save this part of man that Rivière was working. A true saying.

In an age when the idea of heroism seems likely to quit the army, since manly virtues may play no part in those future wars whose horrors are foreshadowed by our scientists, does not aviation provide the most admirable and worthy field for the display of prowess? What would otherwise be rashness ceases to be such when it is part and parcel of an allotted task. The pilot who is forever risking his life may well smile at the current meaning we give to courage. I trust that Saint-Exupéry will permit me to quote an old letter of his dating from the time when he was flying on the Casablanca-Dakar air route.

"I don’t know when I shall be back, I have had so much to do for several months, searches for lost airmen, salvage of planes that have come down in hostile territory, and some flights with the Dakar mail.

"I have just pulled off a little exploit; spent two days and nights with eleven Moors and a mechanic, salving a plane. Alarums and excursions, varied and impressive. I heard bullets whizzing over my head for the first time. So now I know how I behave under such conditions; much more calmly than the Moors. But I also came to understand something which had always puzzled me—why Plato (Aristotle?) places courage in

Reviews for Night Flight

[amerynth · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Antoine de Saint Exupery's "Night Flight" is the story of one night in the lives of the pilots and ground grew who flew the mail across the Andes from Patagonia, Chile and Paraguay to Argentina so it could be packed on another plane for Europe. The flights were fraught with danger as sudden storms, cyclones push the planes toward the craggy mountains below. The whole operation is overseen by Riviere, a no-nonsense boss whose primary concern is not the safety of the pilots, but the ability to get the mail in on time.I found this little book to be okay -- it was an interesting story and a very quick read. However, it really pales in comparison to Saint Exupery's incredible "Wind, Sand and Stars," which is one of the finest books about flying I've ever read, and a fantastic adventure novel besides. This story is just not as interesting unfortunately.

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Vliegeniersverhalen, geplaatst in een ruimere context: het lot en de menselijke wil, verantwoordelijkheid en plicht, noncommunicatie tussen mensen. Mooie fragmenten, maar niet alles is evenwichtig uitgewerkt, nogal obstinate karaktertekening.

[polaris4_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This dose of early aviation fiction was quite an enjoyable read, but not quite as good as I'd hoped. There are though passages of beautifully lyrical and quite poetic writing - basically when Saint-Exupéry writes on flying, and we follow the story of the brave newly-wed Patagonia airmail pilot Fabien - and then some lengthier interludes of less memorable passages from the perspective of the middle aged and no-nonsense airmail company Monsieur le Directeur Rivière. Both characters are apparently based on the author's own experiences in each role at one time or another.Written and published in 1931, S-E describes in this short novel the story of the pioneering Airmail lines which criss-crossed southern South America at that time, bringing the post from Patagonia, Paraguay, and Chile over to Buenos Aires, before its dispatch to Europe across Atlantic skies. The tale in particular tells how the pilot Fabien is at the sharp end of the director's orders. Rivière suffers the internal anguish and doubting of one who has staked his career on the commercial wisdom of advancing the cause of night flying. With Fabien we ferry the precious cargo through the black, often in unpredictably harsh weather, close to the massive Andes range, and are inside his very dimly illuminated cockpit with at times scant visibility, together with the operator and his faltering radio reception... 'An hour later the radio operator of the Patagonia mail-plane felt himself softly heaved up, as by a giant shoulder. He looked about him: heavy clouds were extinguishing the stars. He leaned over and peered down at the earth, looking for the lights of villages, hidden like glow-worms in the fields, but nothing shone in this black grass.'As an horrendous storm closes in and slowly snuffs out the weak airborne communications and banishes any remaining glimpse of the path ahead, Rivière hovers nervously near the night-shift clerks and operators at the other end of those brief radio connections, constantly asking them to ring to the way-stations to get the latest messages from the planes in flight. Fabien meanwhile, fights on: 'As he climbed, he found it easier to counteract the air currents by taking his bearings on the stars. Their pale magnets attracted him. He had struggled so long for a glimpse of light that now he would not have let even the faintest get away from him. Having found the inn-lamp he yearned for, he would have circled round this coveted sign till death. And thus he rose towards these fields of light.' A straightforward book with some very moving descriptions of early flying in fearsome conditions. I liked it, but I think I'll prefer his more extensive memoir Wind, Sand and Stars which I hope to read one day.

[whwatson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Several years ago I read Wind, Sand, and Stars by this same author (after seeing his book listed within the all time top 10, best true life adventure novels). I absolutely enjoyed it, and to this day, rank it as one of the best books I've read.

With Night Flight I find myself disappointed given that previous enthusiasm. This book, or more accurately short story, still employs his supurb poetic writing style, but it lacks the level of depth and feeling of experience that I found so engrossing previously.

It is, however, still a good read, and I look forward to, and intend to explore more of Saint-Exupery's writings.

[quondame · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Even translated the language is rich and evocative. It is however overcome by macholosophy. About a night mail hub in Buenos Aries, the director, ground personnel and pilots under pressure to preform or be eliminated as impractical. Not that the ideas are invalid, just that the nobility of the cause of night mail may not be up to the costs, and that it is a very insular male world in which the values are tended.

[seriousgrace · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One single night in time. This is the simple, subtle, yet tragically beautiful story of three mail planes coming into Buenos Aires from Chile, Patagonia and Paraguay. On the ground is director Monsieur Riviere whose chief worry is the mail getting to its destination on time. He is bulldog stubborn about it despite looming dangers. Meanwhile, in the air, one of the pilots, newlywed Fabien, faces danger when cyclone - fierce storms blow in from the Andes.

[danielstj · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was an excellent novella. Saint-Exupéry takes us into the minds, thoughts, and feelings of the principal characters and creates a story vivid, rife with entangling themes and mixed emotions that allow us to experience it as a emotional, philosophical, and moral tale. Everything that you want in a literary novella is here and it is by no means preaching or ingratiating, This was great, well-written, and (in my opinion) extremely readable.4.5 stars- no less!