Nausea (novel)
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 Cover of the 1964 English edition of Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea, 7th printing; New Directions Publishing. |
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| Author | Jean-Paul Sartre |
|---|---|
| Original title | La Nausée |
| Translator | Lloyd Alexander |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | New Directions Publishing |
| Released | 1938 |
La Nausée is a novel by Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, written in 1938 while he was a college professor. It is one of Sartre's best-known novels.
The Kafka-influenced novel concerns a dejected historian in a town similar to Le Havre who becomes convinced that inanimate objects and situations encroach on his ability to define himself, on his intellectual and spiritual freedom, evoking in the protagonist a sense of nausea.
It is widely considered one of the canonical works of existentialism. Sartre received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1964. They said he was recognized, "for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far-reaching influence on our age." Sartre was one of the few people to ever decline the award, referring to it as merely a function of a bourgeois institution.
In her La Force de l'Âge (The Prime of Life - 1960), French writer Simone de Beauvoir claims that La Nausée grants consciousness a remarkable independence and gives reality the full weight of its sense.
It was translated into English by Lloyd Alexander (New York: New Directions, 1964).
[edit] Plot
Fresh from several years of travel, 30-year-old Antoine Roquentin settles in the French seaport town of Bouville to finish his research on the life of an 18th-century political figure. But during the winter of 1932 a "sweetish sickness" he calls nausea increasingly impinges on almost everything he does or enjoys -- his research project, the company of "The Self-Taught Man" who is reading all the books in the library alphabetically, a pleasant physical relationship with a cafe owner named Francoise, his memories of Anny, an English girl he once loved ... even his own hands and the beauty of nature. Over time, his disgust towards existence forces him into near-insanity, self-hatred, and finally a revelation into the nature of his being. Antoine is facing the troublesomely provisional and limited nature of existence itself; he embodies Sartre's theories of existential angst, and he searches anxiously for meaning in all the things that had filled and fulfilled his life up to that point.
[edit] Philosophy
La Nausée serves primarily as a vehicle for Sartre to explain his philosophy in simplified terms. Roquentin is the classic existentialist hero, whose attempts to pierce the veil of perception lead him to a strange combination of disgust and wonder. For the first part of the novel, Roquentin has flashes of nausea that emanate from mundane objects. These flashes appear seemingly randomly, from staring at a crumpled piece of paper in the gutter to picking up a rock on the beach. The feeling he perceives is pure disgust: a contempt so refined that it almost shatters his mind each time it occurs. As the novel progresses, the nausea appears more and more frequently, though he is still unsure of what it actually signifies. However, at the base of a chesnut tree in a park, he receives a piercingly clear vision of what the nausea actually is. Existence itself, the property of existents to be something rather than nothing, was what was slowly driving him mad. He no longer sees objects as having qualities such as color or shape. Instead, all words are separated from the thing itself, and he is confronted with pure being.
Additionally, Sartre expounds upon his philosophy of existentialism as over and opposed to humanism. Upon the confession of the Self-Taught Man as to being a member of the S.F.I.O, a French Socialist party, Roquentin quickly engages him in a Socratic dialogue to expose his inconsistencies as a humanist. Roquentin first points out how humanism remains unaffiliated to a particular party or group so as to include or value all of mankind. However, he then notes how the humanist caters his sympathy with a bias towards the humble portion of mankind. Roquentin continues to point out further discrepancies of how one humanist may favor an audience of laughter, while another may enjoy the somber funeral. In dialogue, Roquentin challenges the Self-Taught Man to show a demonstrable love for a particular, tangible person rather than a love for the abstract entity attached to that person (i.e. the idea of Youth in a young man). In short, he concludes that humanism naively attempts to "melt all human attitudes into one" and, more importantly, to disavow humanism does not constitute “anti-humanism”.
[edit] Psychedelic connection
Thomas Riedlinger, in a chapter in Charles Grob's book Hallucinogens; a reader, writes:
| “ | Although awareness of the use of hallucinogens by prominent individuals in society is generally restricted to the period of the counterculture of the late 1960s and early 1970s, these compounds were available earlier in the twentieth century. Jean-Paul Sartre, renowned French philosopher and a founder of Existentialism, had a single mescaline experience in 1935. He encountered a nightmarish vision, which clung to him for months after and became the inspiration for his acclaimed novel Nausea. | ” |
