Roquentin’s purpose in starting the diary which presents the narrative is to understand and document the nausea that he suffers, detailing his small perceptions so as to ruminate on their deeper meanings, and how he exists in relation to the world. A meditation on art and existence, politics and society, Nausea, which Iris Murdoch called the ‘Tour de Force of a young man,’ has become a staple novel in the existentialist reading list. Little can stave off this nausea or the sense of meaninglessness in existence, except perhaps the creation of some form of art that will endure and transcend Roquentin’s life. In his isolation, Roquentin suffers from the nausea, as he calls it – a sense of overwhelming sickness at the knowledge that he exists in a world rife with other things and people existing. This is the extent of Roquentin’s contact with other human life. He makes love without emotion to a local café owner occasionally, and, as he goes about his research, shares small pleasantries with a fellow library user who he has named ‘the Autodidact’ and who is reading his way through Bouville’s complete library alphabetically. Through Nausea’s narrative, written as Roquentin’s diary, it becomes clear that Roquentin leads an empty existence, spending his days working through papers in the local library, and his evenings in cafes and restaurants – all of this in suffocating isolation. Having travelled the world, he has settled on writing a biography of the Marquis de Rollebon, a minor figure in the French Revolution, in the hope that the book, once finished, will afford him some form of legacy that will transcend his mortal existence. Roquentin, a man on the brink of his thirtieth birthday, is undertaking a scholarly project in the small town of Bouville (modelled on Le Havre). In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.Nausea (1938), La Nausée in the original French, is Jean-Paul Sartre’s first novel and an exploration of his early thoughts on existentialism through the meandering existence of one man. First published 28 February 2017 11108 La Nausée 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.
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