Nausea by Jean Paul Sartre, extract

Nausea is both the story of the troubled life of a young writer, Antoine Roquentin, and an exposition of one of the most influential and significant philosophical attitudes of modern times – existentialism. The book chronicles his struggle with the realization that he is an entirely free agent in a world devoid of meaning; a world in which he must find his own purpose and then take total responsibility for his choices. A seminal work of contemporary literary philosophy, Nausea evokes and examines the dizzying angst that can come from simply trying to live.

Extract

 Diary

Monday, 29January 1932

     SOMETHING has happened to me: I can't doubt that any more. It came as an illness does, not like an ordinary cer­tainty, not like anything obvious. It installed itself cunning­ly, little by little; I felt a little strange, a little awkward, and that was all. Once it was established, it didn't move any more, it lay low and I was able to persuade myself that there was nothing wrong with me, that it was a false alarm. And now it has started blossoming.

     I don't think the profession of historian fits a man for psychological analysis. In our work, we have to deal only with simple feelings to which we give generic names such as Ambition and Interest. Yet if I had an iota of self­knowledge, now is the time when I ought to use it.

     There is something new, for example, about my hands, a certain way of picking up my pipe or my fork. Or else it is the fork which now has a certain way of getting itself picked up, I don't know. Just now, when I was on the point of coming into my room, I stopped short because I felt in my hand a cold object which attracted my attention by means of a sort of personality. I opened my hand and looked: I was simply holding the doorknob. This morning, at the library, when the Autodidact· came to say good-morning to me, it took me ten seconds to recognize him. I saw an un­known face which was barely a face. And then there was his hand, like a fat maggot in my hand. I let go of it straight away and the arm fell back limply.

     In the streets too there are a great many suspicious noises to be heard.

     So a change has taken place in the course of these last few weeks. But where? It's an abstract change which settles on nothing. Is it I who has changed? If it isn't I, then it's this room, this town, this nature; I must choose.

     I think it's I who has changed: that's the simplest solu­tion, also the most unpleasant.  But I have to admit that I am subject to these sudden transformations. The thing is that I very rarely think; consequendy a host of little metamor­phoses accumulate in me without my noticing it, and then, one fine day, a positive revolution takes place. That is what has given my life this halting, incoherent aspect. When I left France, for example, there were a lot of people who said I had gone off on a sudden impulse. And when I returned un­expectedly after six years of travelling, they might well have spoken of a sudden impulse once more. I can see myself again with Mercier in the office of that French official who resigned last year after the Petrou business. Mercier was going to Bengal with an archaeological expedition. I had always wanted to go to Bengal, and he urged me to go with him. At present, I wonder why. I imagine that he didn't feel too sure of Portal and that he was counting on me to keep an eye on him. I could see no reason to refuse. And even if, at the time, I had guessed at that little scheme with regard to Portal, that would have been another reason for accepting enthusiastically. Well, I was paralysed, I couldn't say a word. I was staring at a little Khmer statuette on a card-table next to a telephone. I felt as if I were full of lymph or warm milk.

     With an angelic patience: which concealed a slight irritation, Mercier was saying to me:

     'You see, I have to be certain from the official point of view. I know that you'll end up by saying yes, so you might as well accept straight away.'

     He has a reddish-black beard, heavily scented. At every movement of his head I got a whiff of perfume. And then, all of a sudden, I awoke from a sleep which had lasted six years.

     The statue struck me as stupid and unattractive and I felt that I was terribly bored. I couldn't understand why I was in Indo-China. What was I doing there? Why was I talking to those people? Why was I dressed so oddly? My passion was dead. For years it had submerged me and swept me along; now I felt empty. But that wasn't the worst of it: in­stalled in front of me with a sort of indolence there was a voluminous, insipid idea. I don't know exactly what it was, but it sickened me so much that I couldn't look at it. All that was mixed up for me with the perfume of Mercier's beard.

     I pulled myself together, convulsed with anger against him, and answered curtly:

     'Thank you, but I think I've done enough travelling: I must go back to France now.'

     Two days later I took the boat for Marseille.

     If I am not mistaken, and if all the signs which are piling up are indications of a fresh upheaval in my life, well then, I am frightened. It isn't that my life is rich or weighty or precious, but I'm afraid of what is going to be born and take hold of me and carry me off -I wonder where? Shall I have to go away again, leaving everything behind -my research, my book? Shall I awake in a few months, a few years, ex­hausted, disappointed, in the midst of fresh ruins? I should like to understand myself properly before it is too late.

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