Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre

My initial bouts of Existentialism was through the works of Albert Camus and through Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre. Antoine Roquotine in despair makes you ponder upon the questions of your own existence.

Some excerpts from Antoine Roqoutine’s Diary:

So, today, I was looking at the fawn-coloured boots of a cavalry office who was coming out of the barracks. As I followed them with my eyes, I saw a piece of paper lying beside a puddle. I thought that the officer was going to crush the paper into the mud with his heel, but no: with a single step he strode over the paper and puddle. I went upto it: it was a lined page, probably torn out of a school notebook. The rain had drenched and twisted it, and it was covered with blisters and swellings, like a burnt hand. The red line of the margin had blurred into a pink smear, the ink had run into places. The bottom of the page was hidden by a crust of mud. I bent down, already looking forward to touching this fresh and tender pulp which would roll into grey balls in my fingers. … I couldn’t do it. I stayed in a bent position for a moment, I read: ‘Dictation: The White Owl’, then I straightened up, empty handed. I am no longer free, I can no longer do what I want. Objects out not to touch, since they are not alive. You use them, you put them back in place, you live among them: they are useful, nothing more. But they touch me, it’s unbearable. I am afraid of entering in contact with them, just as if they were living animals.

Now I see; I remember better what I felt the other day on the sea-shore when I was holdingthat pebble. It was a sort of sweet disgust. How unpleasant it was! And it came from the pebble, I’m sure of that, it passed from the pebble into my hand. Yes, that’s it, that’s exactly it: A sort of Nausea in the hands.

I haven’t had any adventures. Things have happened to me, events, incidents, anything you like. But not adventures. It isn’t a matter of words; I am beginning to understand. There is something I longed for more that all the rest - without realizing it properly. It wasn’t love, heaven forbid, nor glory, nor wealth. It was … anyway, I had imagined that at certain moments my life could take on a rare and precious quality. There was no need for extraordinary circumstances: all I asked for was a little order. There is nothing very splendid about my life at present: but now and then, for example when they played music in cafes, I would look back and say to myself: in the old days, in London, in Meknes, Tokyo, I have had wonderful moments, I have had adventures. It is that which has been taken away from me now. I have just learnt, all of a sudden, for no apparent reason, that I have been lying to myself for ten years. Adventures are in books. And naturally, everything they tell you about in books can happen in real life, but not in the same way. It was to this way of happening that I attached so much importance.

First of all the beginnings would have to be real beginnings. Alas! now I can see so clearly what I wanted. Real beginnings, appearing like a fanfare of trumpets, like the first notes of a jazz tune, abruptly, cutting boredom short, strengthening duration; evenings among those evenings of which you later say: ‘I was out walking, it was an evening in May’. You are walking along, the moon has just risen, you feel idle, vacant, a little empty. And then all of a sudden you think: ‘Something has happened’. It might be anything: a slight crackling sound in the shadows, a fleeting silhouette crossing the street. But this slight event isn’t like the others: straight away you see that it is the predecesosor of a great form whose outlines are lost in the mist and you tell you too: ‘Something is beginning’.

Something begins in order to end: an adventure doesn’t let itself be extended; it achieves significance only through its death. Towards this death, which may also be my own, I am drawn irrevocably. Each moment I cling with all my heart: I know that it is unique, irreplacable - and yet I would not lift a finger to prevent it from being annihilated. This last minute I am sleeping - in Berlin, in London - in the arms of this woman whom I met two days ago - a minute I love passionately, a woman I am close to loving - it is going to come to an end, I know that. In a little while I shall leave for another country. I shall never find this woman again or this night. I study each second, I try to suck it dry; nothing pauses which I do not seize, which I do not fix forever within me, nothing, neither the ephemeral tenderness of these lovely eyes, nor the noises in the street, nor the false light of dawn: and yet the minute goes by and I do not hold it back, I am glad to see it pass.

And then all of a sudden, something breaks off sharply. The adventure is over, time resumes its everyday slackness. I turn around; behind me, that beautiful melodious form plunges completely into the past. It grows smaller, shrinking as it sinks, and now the end is simply one with the beginning. Following the golden spot with my eyes, I think that I would agree - even if I had nearly died, lost a fortune, a friend - to live it all over again, in the same circumstances, from beginning to end. But an adventure never begins again, is never prolonged.

Anny used to get the most out of time. When she was at Djibouti and I was at Aden, and I used to go see her for twenty-four hours, she contrived to multiply the misunderstandings between us until there were only sixty minutes, exactly sixty minutes, before I had to leave; sixty minutes, just long enough to make you feel the seconds passing one by one. I remember one of those terrible evenings. I had to leave at midnight. We had gone to an open air cinema; we were desperately unhappy, she as much as I. Only she led the dance. At eleven O’clock at the beginning of the main picture, she took my hand and pressed it between her hands without a word. I felt myself flooded with a bitter joy and I understood, without needing to look at my watch, that it was eleven o’clock. From that moment on we began to feel the minutes passing. That time we were leaving each other for three months. At one moment they projected a completely white-picture on the screen, the darkness lifted, and I saw that Anny was crying. Then, at midnight, she let go of my hand, after pressing it violently; I got up and left without saying a single word to her. That was a job well done.

Context: Sitting in a bar/cafe with 2 other men: Monsieur Achille and Doctor Rogé. Doctor Rogé is a bit arrogant and making fun of Achille by stating he is a crackpot. Antoine ponders on this thought and can’t help feeling ashamed for Achille.

How I should like tell him (Achille) that he’s being duped, that he’s playing into the hand of self-important people. Professionals in experience? They have dragged out their lives in stupor and somnolence, they have married in a hurry out of impatience, and they have made children at random. They have met other men in cafes, at weddings, at funerals. Now and then, caught in a current, they have struggled without understanding what was happening to them. Everything that had happened around them has begun and ended out of their sight; long obscure shapes, events from afar, have brushed rapidly past them, and when they have tried to look at them, everything was already over. And then, about forty, they baptize their stubborn ideas and a few proverbs with the name of Experience they begin to imitate slot machines; put a coin in the slot on the left and out come anecdotes wrapped in silver paper; put a coin in the slot on the right and you get precious pieces of advice which stick to your teeth like soft caramels. At this rate, I could get myself invited to people’s houses and they would tell one another that I was a great traveller in the sight of Eternity.

Yes: the Moslims squat to pass water; instead of ergotine. Hindu midwives use ground glass in cow dung; in Borneo, when a girl has a period, she spends three days and nights on the roof of her house. I have seen burials in gondolas in Venice, the Holy Week festivities in Sevilla, the Passion play at Oberammergau. Naturally, that’s just a tiny sample of my Experience: I could lean back in a chair and begin with a smile: ' Do you know Jihdava, Madame? It is a curious little town in Morovia where I stayed in 1924..’

Context: Feeling haunted by his work and presence while writing a book Monseiur de Roblebon

I picked up my pen and tried to get back to work; I was sick to death of these reflections on the past, the present, the world. I asked for only one thing: to be allowed to finish my book in peace.

But as my eyes fell on the pad of white sheets, I was struck by its appearance, and I stayed there, my pen raised, gazing at that dazzling paper: how hard and brilliant it was, how present it was. There was nothing in it that wasn’t present. The letters which I had just written on it were not dry yet and already they no longer belonged to me.

‘Care had been taken to spread the most sinister rumours…’

I had thought out this sentence, to begin with it had been a litle of myself. Now it had been engraved in the paper, it had taken sides against me. I no longer recognized it, I couldn’t even think of it out again. It was there, in front of me; it would have been useless for me to look at it for some sign of origin. Anybody else could have written it. But I, I wasn’t sure that I had written it. The letters didn’t shine any more, they were dry. That too had disappeared; nothing remained of their ephemeral brilliance. I looked anxiously around me: the present, nothing but the present. Light and solid piece of furniture, encrusted in their present, a table, a bed, a wardrobe with a mirror - and me. The true nature of the present revealed itself: it was that which exists, and all that was not present did not exist. The past did not exist. Not at all. Neither in things nor even in my thoughts. True, I had realized a long time before that my past had escaped me. But until then I believed that it had simply gone out of my range. For me the past was only pensioning off: it was another was existing, a state of holiday and inactivity; each event, when it had played its part, dutifully packed itself, away in a box and became an honorary event: we find it so difficult to imagine nothingness. Now I knew, things are entirely what they appear to be and behind them … there is nothing.