Originally published in 1938, Jean-Paul Sartre's short existential novel La Nausée can be read on many levels - to list several: philosophical, psychological, social and political. Going back to my college days, my reading of this work has always been decidedly personal. Thus my observations below and, at points, my own experiences relating to certain passages I have found to contain great power.
"Then the Nausea sized me, I dropped to a seat. I no longer knew where I was; I saw the colors spin slowly around me, I wanted to vomit."
The entire novel is written in the form of a diary of one Antoine Roquentin, an unemployed historian living in the small fictional city of Bouville on the northern French coast in 1932. Roquentin's Nausea (his capital) isn't occasional or a revulsion to anything specific, the smell of a certain room or being in the presence of a particular group of people; no, his Nausea is all pervasive: life in all of its various manifestations nauseates him.
I recall a time back one muggy afternoon, age eighteen, sitting in a locker room, waiting to take the field for a practice session with the other players on the football team, forced to listen to a coach’s ravings, I suddenly felt repulsed and disgusted by everything and everybody around me. Like Roquentin, I wanted to vomit. When the other players ran out to take the field, I remained seated. Then, calmly walking over to the equipment room, I turned in my uniform and pads. When I walked away I felt as if I shed an ugly layer of skin, a repugnant old self. I felt clearheaded and refreshed; I had a vivid sense of instant transformation.
I can imagine Roquentin in a somewhat similar plight but, unfortunately, there's no escape. He's the prisoner of an impossible situation: all of life, every bit of it, gives him his Nausea.
"Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and out, that's all. There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable monotonous addition."
This was my experience when in my 20s and 30s working in a suffocating insurance office. It didn't matter what time the clock said on the wall - all the hours were a dull, humdrum grey. When I left the office: a great sense of freedom and release.
For Roquentin there is no release - all of his small city, every street, park, café, library, parlor and bedroom carries this sense of humdrum dreariness - all times and places have turned dank, shadowy and lackluster as if emitting a soft unending groan.
"It's finished: the crowd is less congested, the hat-raisings less frequent, the shop windows have something less exquisite about them. I am at the end of the Rue Tournebride. Shall I cross and go up the street on the other side? I think I have had enough: I have seen enough pink skulls, thin, distinguished and faded countenances."
I recall walking in New York City to Penn Station to catch a train at the end of the day. The scene was grim, the vast majority of men and women having a hangdog, beaten down look. I was ready to leave. Roquintin has this feeling not only at the end of the day - he has it all the time.
"I have only my body: a man entirely alone, with his lonely body, cannot indulge in memories; they pass through him. I shouldn't complain: all I wanted was to be free."
An entire section of Sartre's Being and Nothingness is devoted to the body. In many ways Roquintin is like Pablo from Sartre's short story The Wall where Pablo feels being in his body is like being tied to an enormous vermin. Ahhh! No wonder Roquintin feels the Nausea.
"He deserves his face for he has never, for one instant, lost an occasion of utilizing his past to the best of his ability; he has stuffed it full, used his experience on women and children, exploited them."
Here Roquintin is alluding to an older man who is using his family to make a point displaying how wise he is and how correct his judgements. In this I'm in agreement with the novel's protagonist - I find such people overbearing. I was once in conversation with an older person who actually told me, as a way of discounting my position on a political matter: "You have to live a little," all the while hitting the scotch bottle. Curiously, a few years later, thanks mainly to all the scotch, this know-it-all was in very bad shape. I maintained a noble silence.
"But I would have to push the door open and enter. I didn't dare; I went on. Doors of houses frightened me especially. I was afraid they would open of themselves. I ended by walking in the middle of the street."
The narrator's sense of dread and estrangement has reached a point where even objects take on an ominous cast.
"I had thought out this sentence, at first it had been a small part of myself. Now it was inscribed on the paper, it sides against me. I didn't recognize it any more. i couldn't conceive it again. It was there, in front of me; in vain for me to trace some sign of origin. Anyone could have written it."
Yet again another example of his extreme alienation - the very words he writes on a page are viewed as something apart, as "the other," having nothing to do with who he really is as a person.
"Now I wanted to laugh. five feet tall! . . . I would have had to lean over or bend my knees. I was no longer surprised that he held up his nose so impetuously: the destiny of these small men is always working itself out a few inches about their head. Admirable power of art. From this shrill-voiced manikin, nothing would pass on to posterity same a threatening face, a superb gesture and the bloodshot eyes of a bull."
The portrait captures what Sartre in his philosophy termed "bad faith" - assuming false values that have turned him into a "shrill-voiced manikin."
"I jump up: it would be much better if I could only stop thinking. Thoughts are the dullest things. Duller than flesh. They stretch out and there's no end to them and they leave a funny taste in the mouth."
The mind is a wonderful servant but an ogre if it becomes one's taskmaster. How many people are trapped in their own thinking, continually reliving painful episodes of their past? Roquintin is one such example in the extreme.
"Things are divorced from their names. They are there, grotesque, headstrong, gigantic and it seems ridiculous to call them seats or say anything at all about them: I am in the midst of things, nameless things."
His Nausea has increased. All inanimate objects and situations are encroaching on what he perceives his intellectual and spiritual freedom.
Does Nausea sound disturbing? I strongly suspect this is exactly Jean-Paul Sartre's intent.
Jean-Paul Sartre, 1905-1980, French philosopher and author of a number of classic works of literature.
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