Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

We must surely seek to communicate with some of those fires burning far apart in the landscape. But among these living stars, how many closed windows, how many extinct stars, how many sleeping men …

Even the most unassuming of them, the flame of the poet, the teacher or the carpenter. These small flames shone far apart in the landscape, demanding their fuel. In another, perhaps, they were searching through space, wearying themselves with the mathematics of the Andromeda nebula. In one home people were reading, or thinking, or sharing confidences. It was a dark night, with only occasional scattered lights glittering like stars on the plain.Įach one, in that ocean of shadows, was a sign of the miracle of consciousness. In my mind’s eye, I still have the image of my first night flight in Argentina.

In the same way the aeroplane, the implement of the airline companies, brings man face to face with the old problems. Little by little, as he walks behind the plough, the farmer forces out a few of nature’s secrets, and the truth which he uncovers is universal. He needs a carpenter’s plane, or a plough. Self-discovery comes when man measures himself against an obstacle. The earth teaches us more about ourselves than all the books in the world, because it is resistant to us. It is a fiction based on Antoine’s experiences as an airmail pilot and a director of Aeroposta Argentina Airline in Buenos Aires. An introductory note to a book about survival, Saint Exupéry tries to communicate the magic of flying over an earth shrouded in darkness, reaching out to every speck of light that represented a human being down below. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s shortest book is ‘Night Flight.’ With 96 hard copy pages, ‘Night Flight’ is a short and powerful novel. This extract is actually the whole foreword to his book Wind, Sand and Stars, a memoir of his days flying with Aéropostale in Africa and South America. He famously liked to read and write in the cockpit while flying and despite the number of times his plane came down, he persisted with the activity, flying both in war and peace time. Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s love of flying and the perspective it gave him on the world was something he wrote about extensively.

Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry