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{{Infobox Book
{{Infobox Book
| name = Nausea
| name = Nausea
Line 5: Line 4:
| translator = [[Lloyd Alexander]]
| translator = [[Lloyd Alexander]]
| image = [[Image:Sartre Nausea 1964.jpg|250px|Cover of the 1964 English edition of Jean-Paul Sartre's ''Nausea'', 7<sup>th</sup> printing; New Directions Publishing.]]
| image = [[Image:Sartre Nausea 1964.jpg|250px|Cover of the 1964 English edition of Jean-Paul Sartre's ''Nausea'', 7<sup>th</sup> printing; New Directions Publishing.]]
| image_caption = Cover of the 1964 English edition of Jean-Paul Sartre's ''Nausea'', 7<sup>th</sup> printing; New Directions Publishing.
| image_caption = Cover of the 1964 English edition of Jean-Paul Sartre's ''Nausea'', 7<sup>th</sup> printing; [[New Directions Publishers]].
| author = [[Jean-Paul Sartre]]
| author = [[Jean-Paul Sartre]]
| illustrator =
| illustrator =
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| series =
| series =
| genre = [[Philosophical novel]]
| genre = [[Philosophical novel]]
| publisher =
| publisher = [[Éditions Gallimard]]
| release_date = [[1938 in literature|1938]]
| release_date = [[1938 in literature|1938]]
| english_release_date =
| english_release_date = [[1959 in literature|1959]]
| media_type = Print ([[Hardcover|Hardback]] & [[Paperback]])
| media_type = Print ([[Hardcover|Hardback]] & [[Paperback]])
| pages =
| pages =
| isbn = NA
| isbn = ISBN 0-8112-0188-0 (US ed.)
| oclc = 8028693
| oclc = 8028693
| preceded_by =
| preceded_by =
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}}
}}


'''''La Nausée''''' is a novel by the [[Existentialism|existentialist]] philosopher [[Jean-Paul Sartre]], written in [[1938]] while he was a college professor. It is one of Sartre's best-known novels.
'''''La Nausée''''' (originally titled<ref>{{cite book | last = Drake | first = David | title = Sartre | publisher = Haus Pub | location = London | year = 2005 | page = p40 | isbn = 1904341853 }}</ref> ''Melancholia'') is a novel by the [[Existentialism|existentialist]] philosopher [[Jean-Paul Sartre]], written in [[1938]] while he was a college professor. It is one of Sartre's best-known novels.


The [[Franz Kafka|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]].
The [[Franz Kafka|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]].
Line 36: Line 35:
== Plot summary ==
== Plot summary ==


Written in the form of journal entries, it follows 30-year-old Antoine Roquentin who, fresh from years of travel, 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.
Written in the form of journal entries, it follows 30-year-old Antoine Roquentin who, returned from years of travel, 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.


==Characters in ''Nausea''==
⚫
==Philosophy==
* Antoine Roquentin - the protagonist of the novel, a former adventurer that has been living in Bouville for three years. Antoine does not keep in touch with family, nor has any friends. He is a loner at heart and often likes to listen to other people's conversations and examine their actions. When asked by a man to accompany him for lunch, the protagonist agrees, only to write in his diary later that: "''I had as much desire to eat with him as I had to hang myself.''" He is unemployed, but spends a lot of his time writing a book about a French politician of the nineteenth century. Antoine does not think too high of himself: "''The faces of others have some sense, some direction. Not mine. I cannot even decide whether it is handsome or ugly. I think it is ugly because I have been told so.''" When he starts suffering from the Nausea he feels the need to talk to Anny, but ultimately decides against telling her anything about it. He eventually starts to think he does not even exist: ''"My existence was beginning to cause me some concern. Was I a mere figment of the imagination?''"
⚫
''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 chestnut tree in a park, he receives a piercingly clear vision of what the nausea actually is. Existence itself, the property of existence 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.


* Anny - an English woman, once Antoine's lover. After meeting with him, Anny makes it clear that she has changed a considerable amount and must go on with her life. Antoine clings to the past, hoping that she may want to redefine their relationship, but is ultimately rejected by her.
⚫
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”.


==Major themes==


The critic William V. Spanos has used<ref>{{cite journal | first = William | last = Spanos | title = The Un-Naming of the Beasts: the Postmodernity of Sartre's ''La Nausée'' | journal = Criticism | volume = 20 | issue = Summer 1978 | pages = pp223-80}}</ref> Sartre's novel as an example of "negative capability," a presentation of the uncertainty and dread of human existence, so strong that the imagination cannot comprehend it.

Sartre has written<ref>{{cite book | last = Roemer | first = Michael | title = Telling Stories: Postmodernism and the Invalidation of Traditional Narrative |page=p221| publisher = Rowman & Littlefield | location = Lanham, MD | year = 1995 | isbn = 0847680428 }}</ref>:<blockquote>
What is meant . . . by saying that existence precedes essence? It means that, first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and only afterwards defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives of him, is undefinable, it is only because he is nothing. Only afterwards will he be something, and ''he will have made what he will be''.
</blockquote>

In simply narrative terms, Roquentin's nausea arises<ref>{{cite book | last = Best | first = Victoria | title = An Introduction to Twentieth-Century French Literature | publisher = Duckworth | location = London | year = 2002 | isbn = 0715631667 |page=p61-4}}</ref> from his near-complete detachment from other people, his not needing much interaction with them for daily necessities: "the fact of his alienation from others is important; as his own work ceases to entertain and to occupy him, Roquentin has nothing that could distract him from the business of existing in its simplest forms." As a practical matter, he could solve his problem by getting a job; but, as a device for developing the novel's theme, his aloneness is a way of making him (and the reader) recognize that there is nothing inherent in the objective nature of the world that would give any necessary meaning to whatever actions he chose, and therefore nothing to restrict his freedom. "[H]is perception of the world around him becomes unstable as objects are disengaged from their usual frames of reference," and he is forced<ref>Best, Victoria (2002), op cit </ref> to recognize that freedom is inescapable and that therefore creating a meaning for his life is his own responsibility. "Nothing makes us act the way we do, except our own personal choice."

⚫
=== Philosophy ===
''La Nausée'' serves primarily as a vehicle for Sartre to explain his philosophy in simplified terms<ref>{{cite web | title=Sartre & Peanuts | last=Radke | first=Nathan | work=Philosophy Now | url=http://www.philosophynow.org/issue44/44radke.htm | date= | accessdate=2008-02-01 }} </ref>. Roquentin is the classic existentialist hero whose attempts to pierce the veil of perception lead him to a strange combination of disgust and wonder<ref>{{cite web | title=Reading Guide for Sartre's Nausea | last=Clowney | first=David W. | work=Rowan University
⚫
| url=http://www.rowan.edu/philosop/clowney/Introphl/SARTRE.htm | date=April 1997 | accessdate=2008-02-01 }}</ref>. 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 chestnut tree in a park, he receives a piercingly clear vision of what the nausea actually is. Existence itself, the property of existence 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<ref>{{cite web | title=Lecture Notes: Sartre's "The Humanism of Existentialism" | last=Mattey | first=G. J. | work=UC Davis Philosophy Department | url=http://www-philosophy.ucdavis.edu/mattey/phi001/sartrelec.html | date= | accessdate=2008-02-01 }}</ref>. 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”.


==Psychological overview==
==Psychological overview==


From the psychological point of view Antoine Roquentin could be seen as an individual suffering from depression, and the nausea itself as one of the symptoms of his condition. Unemployed, living in deprived conditions, lacking the human contact, being trapped in the fantasies about the 18th century secret agent he is writing the book about, shows Sartre's oeuvre as a follow-up of [[Dostoevsky]]'s ''"Idiot"'' and [[Rilke]]'s ''"The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge"'' in search of the precise description of [[schizophrenia]].
From the psychological point of view Antoine Roquentin could be seen as an individual suffering from depression, and the nausea itself as one of the symptoms of his condition. Unemployed, living in deprived conditions, lacking the human contact, being trapped in the fantasies about the 18th century secret agent he is writing the book about, shows Sartre's oeuvre as a follow-up of [[Dostoevsky]]'s ''"Idiot"'' and [[Rilke]]'s ''"The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge"'' in search of the precise description of [[schizophrenia]].<ref>{{cite web | title=Bellow's Gift | last= | first= | work=The New York Times review of books | url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17110 | date=Volume 51, Number 9 · May 27, 2004 | accessdate=2008-02-01 }}</ref>

== Literary significance and reception ==

In his [[What Is literature?]], Sartre wrote<ref>{{cite book | last = Martin | first = Wallace | title = Recent Theories of Narrative | publisher = Cornell University Press | location = Ithaca |page = p158| year = 1986 | isbn = 0801493552 }}</ref>, "On the one hand, the literary object has no substance but the reader's subjectivity . . . But, on the other hand, the words are there like traps to arouse our feelings and to reflect them towards us . . . Thus, the writer appeals to the reader's freedom to collaborate in the production of the work."

Like many Modernist novels, ''La Nausée'' is<ref>{{cite book | last = Bradbury | first = Malcolm |authorlink=Malcolm Bradbury| title = Modernism | editor = Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane (eds.)|page = p100| publisher = Penguin | location = Harmondsworth Eng. | year = 1976 | isbn = 0140219331 }}</ref> a "city-novel," encapsulating experience within the city.

The novel is<ref>{{cite book | last = Fletcher | first = John | coauthors=Malcolm Bradbury|title = Modernism |editor = Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane (eds.)|page = p413| publisher = Penguin | location = Harmondsworth Eng. | year = 1976 | isbn = 0140219331 }}</ref> an intricate formal achievement modeled on the "diary-discovered-among-the-papers-of" mode of much 18th-century fiction.

Far from following<ref>{{cite book | last = Hollingsworth | first = Michael | title = Modernism |editor = Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane (eds.)|page = p431| publisher = Penguin | location = Harmondsworth Eng. | year = 1976 | isbn = 0140219331 }}</ref> 19th-century notions that character development in novels should obey and reveal psychological law, ''La Nausée'' treats such notions as bourgeois bad faith, ignoring the contingency and inexplicability of life.

''The Cambridge Companion to the French Novel'' places<ref name=Unwin>{{cite book | last = Unwin | first = Timothy | title = The Cambridge Companion to the French Novel | publisher = Cambridge University Press | location = Cambridge | year = 1997 | page=p13 | isbn = 0521499143 }}</ref> ''La Nausée'' in a tradition of French activism: "Following on from [[André Malraux|Malraux]], [[Jean-Paul Sartre|Sartre]], [[Simone de Beauvoir|Beauvoir]], and [[Albert Camus|Camus]] among others were all able to use the writing of novels as a powerful tool of ideological exploration." Although novelists like Sartre claim<ref>Unwin, Timothy (1997), op cit, p52 </ref> to be in rebellion against the 19th Century French novel, "they in fact owe a great deal both to its promotion of the lowly and to its ambiguous or 'poetic' aspects."

Ronald Aronson describes<ref name=camus>{{cite book | last = Aronson | first = Ronald | title = Camus & Sartre | publisher = University of Chicago Press | location = Chicago | year = 2004 |page = p11-12 | isbn = 0226027961 }}</ref> the reaction of [[Albert Camus]], still in Algeria and working on his own first novel, [[The Stranger (novel)|L’Étranger]].
At the time of the novel's appearance, Camus was a reviewer for an Algiers left-wing daily. Camus told a friend that he "thought a lot about the book" and it was "a very close part of me." In his review, Camus wrote, "the play of the toughest and most lucid mind are at the same time both lavished and squandered." Camus felt that each of the book's chapters, taken by itself, "reaches a kind of perfection in bitterness and truth." However, he also felt that the descriptive and the philosophical aspects of the novel are not balanced, that they "don't add up to a work of art: the passage from one to the other is too rapid, too unmotivated, to evoke in the reader the deep conviction that makes the art of the novel." He likewise felt that Sartre had tipped the balance too far in depicting the repugnant features of mankind "instead of basing his reasons for despair on certain of man's signs of greatness." Still, Camus's largely positive review led to a friendship between the two authors.

However, in his book ''Irrational Man'', the Philosopher [[William Barrett (philosopher)|William Barrett]] expresses<ref>{{cite book | last = Barrett | first = William |authorlink=William Barrett (philosopher)| title = Irrational Man | publisher = Anchor Books, Doubleday | location = New York | year = 1990 |page=p251| isbn = 0385031386 }}</ref> a judgment opposite to Camus's. He writes that ''Nausea'' "may well be Sartre's best book for the very reason that in it the intellectual and the creative artist come closest to being conjoined." Barrett feels that Sartre as a writer is best when "the idea itself is able to generate artistic passion and life," and he emphasizes that the despair and disgust in Nausea contrast<ref>Barrett, William (1990), op cit </ref> with the total despair of [[Louis-Ferdinand Céline|Céline]] and are a necessary personal recognition that enable <ref>Barrett, William (1990), op cit, p241</ref> "a release from disgust into heroism."

In his Sartre biography, David Drake writes<ref>Drake, David (2005), op cit, p42 </ref>, ''Nausea'' was on the whole well received by the critics and the success of Sartre the novelist served to enhance the reputation he had started to enjoy as a writer of short stories and philosophical texts, mostly on perception."
</blockquote>

== Publication history ==

==See also==
*[[Novel]]
*[[French literature of the 20th century]]
*[[Jean-Paul Sartre]]
*[[Existentialism]]

==Footnotes==
{{reflist|2}}

==References==
*{{cite book | last = Aronson | first = Ronald | title = Camus & Sartre | publisher = University of Chicago Press | location = Chicago | year = 2004 |page = p11-12 | isbn = 0226027961 }}
*{{cite book | last = Barrett | first = William |authorlink=William Barrett (philosopher)| title = Irrational Man | publisher = Anchor Books, Doubleday | location = New York | year = 1990 | isbn = 0385031386 }}
*{{cite book | last = Best | first = Victoria | title = An Introduction to Twentieth-Century French Literature | publisher = Duckworth | location = London | year = 2002 | isbn = 0715631667 }}
*{{cite book | last = Unwin | first = Timothy | title = The Cambridge Companion to the French Novel | publisher = Cambridge University Press | location = Cambridge | year = 1997 | isbn = 0521499143 }}

==External links==
*[http://www.rowan.edu/philosop/clowney/Introphl/SARTRE.htm Reading Guide for Sartre's Nausea] from Rowan University Philosophy Department
*[http://www-philosophy.ucdavis.edu/mattey/phi001/sartrelec.html Lecture Notes: Sartre's "The Humanism of Existentialism"] from UC Davis Philosophy Department
*[http://www.philosophynow.org/issue44/44radke.htm Sartre & Peanuts] Charlie Brown as an existentialist; from Philosophy ''Now'': a magazine of ideas
*[http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/02/lifetimes/nab-r-sartre.html?_r=1&oref=slogin Sartre's First Try] Vladimir Nabokov's highly negative and dismissive NY Times review: Sunday, April 24, 1949


[[Category:1938 novels]]
[[Category:1938 novels]]
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[[Category:Novels by Jean-Paul Sartre]]
[[Category:Novels by Jean-Paul Sartre]]
[[Category:Existentialist works|Nausea]]
[[Category:Existentialist works|Nausea]]



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Revision as of 15:51, 1 February 2008

Nausea
Cover of the 1964 English edition of Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea, 7th printing; New Directions Publishing.
Cover of the 1964 English edition of Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea, 7th printing; New Directions Publishers.
AuthorJean-Paul Sartre
Original titleLa Nausée
TranslatorLloyd Alexander
CountryFrance
LanguageFrench
GenrePhilosophical novel
PublisherÉditions Gallimard
Publication date
1938
Published in English
1959
Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBNISBN 0-8112-0188-0 (US ed.) Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character
OCLC8028693

La Nausée (originally titled[1] Melancholia) is a novel by the existentialist philosopher 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 was awarded (but declined) 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).

Plot summary

Written in the form of journal entries, it follows 30-year-old Antoine Roquentin who, returned from years of travel, 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.

Characters in Nausea

  • Antoine Roquentin - the protagonist of the novel, a former adventurer that has been living in Bouville for three years. Antoine does not keep in touch with family, nor has any friends. He is a loner at heart and often likes to listen to other people's conversations and examine their actions. When asked by a man to accompany him for lunch, the protagonist agrees, only to write in his diary later that: "I had as much desire to eat with him as I had to hang myself." He is unemployed, but spends a lot of his time writing a book about a French politician of the nineteenth century. Antoine does not think too high of himself: "The faces of others have some sense, some direction. Not mine. I cannot even decide whether it is handsome or ugly. I think it is ugly because I have been told so." When he starts suffering from the Nausea he feels the need to talk to Anny, but ultimately decides against telling her anything about it. He eventually starts to think he does not even exist: "My existence was beginning to cause me some concern. Was I a mere figment of the imagination?"
  • Anny - an English woman, once Antoine's lover. After meeting with him, Anny makes it clear that she has changed a considerable amount and must go on with her life. Antoine clings to the past, hoping that she may want to redefine their relationship, but is ultimately rejected by her.

Major themes

The critic William V. Spanos has used[2] Sartre's novel as an example of "negative capability," a presentation of the uncertainty and dread of human existence, so strong that the imagination cannot comprehend it.

Sartre has written[3]:

What is meant . . . by saying that existence precedes essence? It means that, first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and only afterwards defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives of him, is undefinable, it is only because he is nothing. Only afterwards will he be something, and he will have made what he will be.

In simply narrative terms, Roquentin's nausea arises[4] from his near-complete detachment from other people, his not needing much interaction with them for daily necessities: "the fact of his alienation from others is important; as his own work ceases to entertain and to occupy him, Roquentin has nothing that could distract him from the business of existing in its simplest forms." As a practical matter, he could solve his problem by getting a job; but, as a device for developing the novel's theme, his aloneness is a way of making him (and the reader) recognize that there is nothing inherent in the objective nature of the world that would give any necessary meaning to whatever actions he chose, and therefore nothing to restrict his freedom. "[H]is perception of the world around him becomes unstable as objects are disengaged from their usual frames of reference," and he is forced[5] to recognize that freedom is inescapable and that therefore creating a meaning for his life is his own responsibility. "Nothing makes us act the way we do, except our own personal choice."

Philosophy

La Nausée serves primarily as a vehicle for Sartre to explain his philosophy in simplified terms[6]. Roquentin is the classic existentialist hero whose attempts to pierce the veil of perception lead him to a strange combination of disgust and wonder[7]. 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 chestnut tree in a park, he receives a piercingly clear vision of what the nausea actually is. Existence itself, the property of existence 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[8]. 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”.

Psychological overview

From the psychological point of view Antoine Roquentin could be seen as an individual suffering from depression, and the nausea itself as one of the symptoms of his condition. Unemployed, living in deprived conditions, lacking the human contact, being trapped in the fantasies about the 18th century secret agent he is writing the book about, shows Sartre's oeuvre as a follow-up of Dostoevsky's "Idiot" and Rilke's "The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge" in search of the precise description of schizophrenia.[9]

Literary significance and reception

In his What Is literature?, Sartre wrote[10], "On the one hand, the literary object has no substance but the reader's subjectivity . . . But, on the other hand, the words are there like traps to arouse our feelings and to reflect them towards us . . . Thus, the writer appeals to the reader's freedom to collaborate in the production of the work."

Like many Modernist novels, La Nausée is[11] a "city-novel," encapsulating experience within the city.

The novel is[12] an intricate formal achievement modeled on the "diary-discovered-among-the-papers-of" mode of much 18th-century fiction.

Far from following[13] 19th-century notions that character development in novels should obey and reveal psychological law, La Nausée treats such notions as bourgeois bad faith, ignoring the contingency and inexplicability of life.

The Cambridge Companion to the French Novel places[14] La Nausée in a tradition of French activism: "Following on from Malraux, Sartre, Beauvoir, and Camus among others were all able to use the writing of novels as a powerful tool of ideological exploration." Although novelists like Sartre claim[15] to be in rebellion against the 19th Century French novel, "they in fact owe a great deal both to its promotion of the lowly and to its ambiguous or 'poetic' aspects."

Ronald Aronson describes[16] the reaction of Albert Camus, still in Algeria and working on his own first novel, L’Étranger. At the time of the novel's appearance, Camus was a reviewer for an Algiers left-wing daily. Camus told a friend that he "thought a lot about the book" and it was "a very close part of me." In his review, Camus wrote, "the play of the toughest and most lucid mind are at the same time both lavished and squandered." Camus felt that each of the book's chapters, taken by itself, "reaches a kind of perfection in bitterness and truth." However, he also felt that the descriptive and the philosophical aspects of the novel are not balanced, that they "don't add up to a work of art: the passage from one to the other is too rapid, too unmotivated, to evoke in the reader the deep conviction that makes the art of the novel." He likewise felt that Sartre had tipped the balance too far in depicting the repugnant features of mankind "instead of basing his reasons for despair on certain of man's signs of greatness." Still, Camus's largely positive review led to a friendship between the two authors.

However, in his book Irrational Man, the Philosopher William Barrett expresses[17] a judgment opposite to Camus's. He writes that Nausea "may well be Sartre's best book for the very reason that in it the intellectual and the creative artist come closest to being conjoined." Barrett feels that Sartre as a writer is best when "the idea itself is able to generate artistic passion and life," and he emphasizes that the despair and disgust in Nausea contrast[18] with the total despair of Céline and are a necessary personal recognition that enable [19] "a release from disgust into heroism."

In his Sartre biography, David Drake writes[20], Nausea was on the whole well received by the critics and the success of Sartre the novelist served to enhance the reputation he had started to enjoy as a writer of short stories and philosophical texts, mostly on perception."

Publication history

See also

Footnotes

  1. ^ Drake, David (2005). Sartre. London: Haus Pub. p. p40. ISBN 1904341853. {{cite book}}: |page= has extra text (help)
  2. ^ Spanos, William. "The Un-Naming of the Beasts: the Postmodernity of Sartre's La Nausée". Criticism. 20 (Summer 1978): pp223-80. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  3. ^ Roemer, Michael (1995). Telling Stories: Postmodernism and the Invalidation of Traditional Narrative. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. p. p221. ISBN 0847680428. {{cite book}}: |page= has extra text (help)
  4. ^ Best, Victoria (2002). An Introduction to Twentieth-Century French Literature. London: Duckworth. p. p61-4. ISBN 0715631667. {{cite book}}: |page= has extra text (help)
  5. ^ Best, Victoria (2002), op cit
  6. ^ Radke, Nathan. "Sartre & Peanuts". Philosophy Now. Retrieved 2008-02-01.
  7. ^ Clowney, David W. (April 1997). "Reading Guide for Sartre's Nausea". Rowan University. Retrieved 2008-02-01.
  8. ^ Mattey, G. J. "Lecture Notes: Sartre's "The Humanism of Existentialism"". UC Davis Philosophy Department. Retrieved 2008-02-01.
  9. ^ "Bellow's Gift". The New York Times review of books. Volume 51, Number 9 · May 27, 2004. Retrieved 2008-02-01. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  10. ^ Martin, Wallace (1986). Recent Theories of Narrative. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. p. p158. ISBN 0801493552. {{cite book}}: |page= has extra text (help)
  11. ^ Bradbury, Malcolm (1976). Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane (eds.) (ed.). Modernism. Harmondsworth Eng.: Penguin. p. p100. ISBN 0140219331. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help); |page= has extra text (help)
  12. ^ Fletcher, John (1976). Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane (eds.) (ed.). Modernism. Harmondsworth Eng.: Penguin. p. p413. ISBN 0140219331. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help); |page= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  13. ^ Hollingsworth, Michael (1976). Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane (eds.) (ed.). Modernism. Harmondsworth Eng.: Penguin. p. p431. ISBN 0140219331. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help); |page= has extra text (help)
  14. ^ Unwin, Timothy (1997). The Cambridge Companion to the French Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. p13. ISBN 0521499143. {{cite book}}: |page= has extra text (help)
  15. ^ Unwin, Timothy (1997), op cit, p52
  16. ^ Aronson, Ronald (2004). Camus & Sartre. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. p11-12. ISBN 0226027961. {{cite book}}: |page= has extra text (help)
  17. ^ Barrett, William (1990). Irrational Man. New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday. p. p251. ISBN 0385031386. {{cite book}}: |page= has extra text (help)
  18. ^ Barrett, William (1990), op cit
  19. ^ Barrett, William (1990), op cit, p241
  20. ^ Drake, David (2005), op cit, p42

References

  • Aronson, Ronald (2004). Camus & Sartre. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. p11-12. ISBN 0226027961. {{cite book}}: |page= has extra text (help)
  • Barrett, William (1990). Irrational Man. New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday. ISBN 0385031386.
  • Best, Victoria (2002). An Introduction to Twentieth-Century French Literature. London: Duckworth. ISBN 0715631667.
  • Unwin, Timothy (1997). The Cambridge Companion to the French Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521499143.

External links

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