La Nausée

Nausée, La. Sartre's first novel, published 1939. It is sometimes criticized for being too philosophical, but it is rather an attempt to evoke in fictional form human experience as it is seen by phenomenology and Existentialism. The novel's hero, Antoine Roquentin, undergoes an existential crisis in the course of which he loses confidence in the old-established values and identities of ordinary social life. His relationship to himself, to other people, to physical objects, all come to appear problematic as he becomes aware of the absurdity and contingency of the world, its lack of pre-ordained meaning and purpose. The effect of this is experienced psychologically by Roquentin as anguish, and physiologically as nausea. Sartre may intend a certain irony when he leaves Roquentin unreconciled with existence, but finding a temporary respite in the ‘imaginary’ realm of art: listening to a jazz tune and contemplating writing a work of fiction himself.

[Christina Howells]