tSaint-Exupery was a poet of the sky. In novels like Southern Mail and Night Flight he wrote lyrically about his experiences as a pilot in the early days of aviation—when flying was adventurous and extremely dangerous. He always exalted, sometimes in ecstatic tones, the spirit of Man. He flew the early airmail (of the first 40 airmail pilots in the U.S., 31 died in crashes) in France and North Africa; he crashed many times and broke many bones, and it was after going down in the Sahara that he hallucinated the “little prince”—an experience he described in probably his best book, Wind, Sand and Stars. When France declared war on Nazi Germany, though 40 years old Saint-Ex (as friends called him) enlisted as a reconnaissance pilot and flew many sorties both before and during the fall of France. Flight to Arras condenses these experiences into one fictional flight: virtually a suicide mission to gather information about the enemy—information that Saint-Ex knew could not be forwarded to the French General Staff (because communications had broken down), and which in any case would quickly become obsolete because the Germans were advancing so fast. In the novel, the flight itself serves mainly as a framework for Saint-Ex’s reflections on the war, on death, on patriotism, on democracy, on freedom, and most of all on doing one’s duty… understandable, because of his anguish over the debacle that was the fall of France and the damage to the hearts and pride of all Frenchmen. These many years later I found descriptions of the flight itself and his reactions to it, and his ruminations on facing death, and his evolution from bitterness and cynicism (over the futility of the fighting) to an optimistic feeling of solidarity with all men, much more interesting than his philosophical reflections.tSaint-Ex survived the fall of France and escaped to the U.S. There he wrote not only this book but The Little Prince and Wind, Sand and Stars. In 1943, with the war turning against Germany, he returned to North Africa (outfitted in a French officer’s uniform whipped up by the wardrobe department of the Metropolitan Opera), where though now almost 44 he begged permission to fly for the Free French Air Force—a concession that was finally granted only through intervention by the Minister of War. So Saint-Ex was allowed to fly reconnaissance missions over southern France in a U.S. P-38—a very fast two-engine aircraft. One day in 1944 he failed to return from a sortie. His squadron leader presumed he had crashed into the Mediterranean, but did not know why. Only much later was the story put together: apparently Saint-Ex was shot down by two German fighters he happened to encounter just off the coast of France.tThe flames of the house, of the diving plane, strip away the flesh; but they strip away the worship of the flesh too. Man ceases to be concerned with himself: he recognizes of a sudden what he forms part of. If he should die, he would not be cutting himself off from his kind, but making himself one with them. He would not be losing himself, but finding himself. This that I affirm is not the wishful thinking of a moralist. It is an everyday fact. It is a commonplace truth. But a fact and a truth hidden under the veneer of our everyday illusion. Dressing and fretting over the fate that might befall my body, it was impossible for me to see that I was fretting over something absurd. But in the instant when you are giving up your body, you learn to your amazement—all men always learn to their amazement—how little store you set by your body. It would be foolish to deny that during all those years of my life when nothing insistent was prompting me, when the meaning of my existence was not at stake, it was impossible for me to conceive that anything might be half so important as my body. But here in this plane I say to my body (in effect): “I don’t care a button what becomes of you. I have been expelled out of you. There is no hope of your surviving this, and yet I lack for nothing. I reject all that I have been up to this very instant. For in the past it was not I who thought, not I who felt: it was you, my body. One way and another, I have dragged you through life up to this point; and here I discover that you are of no importance.”tMan does not die. Man imagines that it is death he fears; but what he fears is the unforeseen, the explosion. What man fears is himself, not death. There is no death when you meet death. When the body sinks into death, the essence of man is revealed. Man is a knot, a web, a mesh into which relationships are tied. Only those relationships matter. The body is an old crock that nobody will miss. I have never known a man to think of himself when dying. Never.t A man’s thigh muscles are incredibly powerful. I bore down upon the rudder bar with all my strength and sent the plane shuddering and skidding at right angles to our line of flight. The coronet swung overhead and slid down on my right. I had got away from one of the batteries and left it firing wasted packets of shell. But before I could bring my other thigh into play the ground battery had set straight what hung askew—the coronet of smoke was back again. Once more I bore down, and again the plane groaned and swayed in this swampy sky. All the weight of my body was on that bar, and the machine had swung, had skidded squarely to starboard. The coronet now curved above me on the left.tWould we last it out? But how could we! Each time that I brought the ship brutally round, the deluge of lance-strokes followed me before I could jerk back again. And each time, when I looked down, I saw again that same dizzyingly slow ascension of golden bubbles that seemed to be securely centered upon my plane. How did it happen that we were still whole? I began to believe in us. “I am invulnerable, after all,” I said to myself, “I am winning. From second to second, I am more and more the winner.”
Thoughts of a reconnaissance pilot dodging anti-aircraft fire:“I would like to be paid in time. I would like to have the right to love. I would like to get to know the people I’m about to die for.”“Elsewhere, I’ve experienced adventures: the creation of airmail routes, dissidence in the Sahara, South America… but war is not a true adventure, it’s a pseudo-adventure. Adventure rests in the richness of the bonds it establishes, the problems it poses, the creations it inspires. It’s not enough to turn a game into adventure by imposing life and death stakes on it. War isn’t an adventure. It’s a sickness. Like typhus.”Flight to Arras is really testimony—the observations of an eloquent, talented man who, having made a name for himself as a pilot and a writer, now finds his country overwhelmed by war and himself part of the huge sacrifice. Written in 1942 but set in 1940, the book is framed as a flight; St. X’s musing on the fall of France to Nazi Germany, the panicked evacuation of the French people as they mindlessly flee the occupying army, and more general observations of individuals and memories are interspersed with the nitty gritty of handling an aircraft’s controls and communicating with the navigator and gunner.I loved this book most of the way through but bogged down towards the end—when the mission is finally over he gets very philosophical, trying hard to define Man and his place in the world and what he owes to his fellow men. And the rather sad conclusion is that this war, the real war St. Exupéry is fighting in, is not over—and that his people are vanquished.And that’s just the sad conclusion of the book. It was painful to read it and know that, like Irène Némirovsky writing Suite Française at the same time, St. X would not live to see the end of the war. Within two years he’d be shot down and killed in flight off the coast of Marsailles… I remember when they found his identity bracelet in 1998.Not my favourite of St. Exupéry’s books, but very worth the effort. It makes an interesting read alongside Suite Française, documenting much of the same scenes of chaos and brainlessness that seem to have characterized the evacuation of the French cities faced with occupation.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_...
What do You think about Flight To Arras (1969)?
A book with a purpose. Written in the US during the second world war in order to convince americans that the French defeat did not happen through a lack of fighting and heroism. Saint-Ex tells the story of a sortie which he and his team survived against all possible odds. It earned him a Croix de Guerre and a citation.But this heroic story is almost incidental and serves to illustrate Saint-Exupery's philosophy of life and christian civilization. His last book before le Petit Prince and his ultimate death in 1944, Flight to Arras is a very personal story and provides an insight into his outlook on life, friendship and the brotherhood of Men.Still a must read 70 years later.
—Stéphane
I have to admitt, I couldn't wait to finish reading this book. Although the concept of this book is interested, the author and main character lost my interested when he started trailing off.Flight to Arras is about a pilot, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and his crew on a single reconnaissance mission durning WWII. He writes about a young soldiers thoughts about receiving a mission from his caption knowing that he and his crew will not survive and accepting this mission knowing his fate. Sounds good? Indeed it does, durning this mission he questions not only this very mission he is on, but his faith, the responsibility of man, the origin of man, and ultimately God himself. However, the author goes a little overboard with his inner-thoughts and really loses the reader. At least it did me.
—Tifnie
بعد تولستوي لم أقرأ لكاتب مرهف الحس وشفاف لهذا الحد كما قرأت له سواء في رائعته أرض البشر أو الطريق إلى أوراس .. هذا الرجل نبيل بكل معنى الكلمة في هذا الكتاب يتضح نبله وفلسفته في الحياة وشعوره تجاه الحرب ومأسيها وما ممكن تفعله في الناس وفي القرى وفي المدن وكيف ممكن أن تقتل مئات السنين من البناء والصبر وتخنق ضوء الشمس .. الطريق إلى آراس هي جزء آخر من سيرة هذا الطيار الحربي كتبها أثناء الحرب العالمية الثانية حين كانت الطياراتالإستطلاعية تشارك في الحرب غير إنها تختص بمشاعره تجاه العمل العبثي الذي يقوم به لذلك أخذ يسجل الخواطر التي تخطر له خلال رحلاته الإستطلاعية معبرا عن مآل الحروب والنهايات الحمقاء التي تنتهي بها وتجرها على كل الأطراف المشاركة وكيف أن الطيارون ما هم إلا وسائل في لعبة الحرب ، نبل هذا الإنسان يتضح في تقديمه الإعتذار تلو الآخر للحرية للأصدقاء للكرامة للإنسانية رؤيته الصادقة الخالية من أية تحيزات تظهر كم إن هذا الإنسان هو إنسان حقيقي .. أحببت شفافية أكزوبيري رقته وحبه لأخيه الإنسان .. الترجمة ليست ممتازة لكن لا بأس بها لحد ما وقد اسقطت النجمة بسببها
—mai ahmd
