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Nausea

by Jean-Paul Sartre, Lloyd Alexander (Translator)

3.88 of 5 stars 3.88 · rating details · 26,730 ratings · 792 reviews

Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form he ruthlessly catalogues his every feeling and sensation about the world and people around him. His thoughts culminate in a pervasive, overpowering feeling of nausea which "spread at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of our timethe...more

Paperback, 178 pages

Published June 1st 1969 by New Directions Publishing (first published January 1st 1938)

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Jun 09, 2007 Jahn Sood rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: someone who is more emotional stable than me.

I put a longer review of this book / a journal entry that I wrote while I was reading it in "my writing" since it was too long for this page.

6.9.07
Nausea is not a good thing to have as the only thing that belongs to you, and even worse as the only thing that you belong to. It is sickening and dark and so terribly everyday that it gets inside you if you let it. Sartre writes beautifully and describes the physical world in such incredible detail, that if you are a reader, and even more if you are...more

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Mar 03, 2008 Tosh rated it 4 of 5 stars

Jean-Paul Sartre's version of "Rebel Without a Cause" and like James Dean, Sartre himself became an icon. Written in the late 30's, Sartre's study of a man who analyze his feelings, bearings on a world that makes him sick. This book has so much identity to it, that it is almost a brand name for 'youth.' There is nothing better then to be caught reading this novel by a pretty girl in a coffee house. Unless it's Starbucks, and then it is just... pointless.

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Apr 06, 2013 Elizabeth Cardenas-Nelson rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, reviewed

I have to admit that I read this book in the summer between finishing high school and starting college - a time when I felt sure everything I'd been taught was irrelevant. When I read Nausea, I thought and acted like I had discovered the holy grail! I told all my friends (all 3 of them) they HAD to read it. I fell in love with this book with the intensity only a young person in their late teens can. (Evidently not all young people feel this way. My best friend still blames me ruining her summer...more

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Oct 20, 2012 ☽ Moon ☯ 佛月球 Будда Луны rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"What counts in life is not the number of rare and exciting adventures he encounters, but the inner depth in that life."

---Hayden Carruth, From the book's Introduction

The psychological sojourn of the human mind in a state of undefined anxiety is what Jean-Paul Sartre puts to life in Nausea as it becomes his basis of inspiration to form a narrative style that encapsulates the formless thoughts into the ephemeral world of the physical as the unseen becomes visible in its convoluted form, showing a glimpse of the inner transformation that can occur in every man who suffers in the transitory state of existence.

The true essence of this existence lies in the fiber of human consciousness, which is consisted of endless thoughts that clamour in the depth of its inner silence. It is the last frontier man should venture to, to unmask him from his transient form, to define his true hidden nature...

This is what Sartre penetrates deeply in an elaborative fashion as he goes inside the anxious and tortured mind of Antoine Roquentin through his journals, following the fleeting nature of thoughts as it becomes the structure of the narrative, its basic foundation that seems to take root from the style made renowned by Virginia Woolf in her novels, but Sartre's writing is harder to discern because it does not follow a particular plot, as Roquetin's consciousness sprouts in different directions, creating a myriad of unrelated images, as it appears like a stream that flows and moves unto an unknown path. What is only tangible though, is the depth of his writing style, evident in his ability to dig deeper into the dark grave of existence.

Roquetin's mental journey to see through the totality of his life, flowing from his dim reflections of the blurried past to the culmination of his present paranoia in relation to the irreversibility of Time, is triggered by events taking shape beyond his earthly control. It is his consciousness seeking to communicate with the Great Unknown, in which condition Sartre only dubbed as the Nausea, perhaps, a symbolic representation of Roquetin's psychological sickness of the physical existence, voluntarily vomiting the gift of life from his system and allowing the emergence of the true redemption from the spirit that dwells within him. ☾(less)

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Apr 06, 2007 Alicia rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Those with patience and interest in existentialism

Shelves: philosophy

This was a tedious read, and though a short novel, it took me a couple of months on and off to get through it. Sartre sets out to illustrate/explore existentialism in the narrative form. I liked his similar attempt in the play "The Flies" better, as it had a lot more humor and story going on. If you liked Nadja by Andre Breton, you might be insane but you will probably like the writing style of this novel also. I sometimes wondered if the novel flows better or is more poetic in its native French...more

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Jan 17, 2008 jack rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone who loves the smiths, anyone over the age of 18

i found this book at a salvation army when i was 17, i had no idea who sartre was, i just liked the description on the back and it sounded really depressing which i was into at the time. i kept trying to read it for the next five years but could never get past the first ten pages or so because it would just bum me out too much.

i finally read it when i had just graduated from college. i'm glad that i waited that long because i don't think i would have gotten the joke until then. in much the same...more

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Jul 10, 2012 Giulia rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Sono sempre intenta a scovare un equivalente musicale alle mie letture, ma questa volta Sartre mi ha facilitato il compito. Il suo Roquentin è infatti stregato da questo ragtime anni ’20: ”Some of these days” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_0ldg.... Sono quasi sicura che sia questo. Il pezzo è lui. Roquentin parla di una cantante negra. Sophie Tucker è bianca, la sua voce, sebbene a volte bluesy, non esprime la solita potenza delle più note vocalità blues.

“Tra un momento ci sarà il ritornello:...more

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Aug 28, 2007 Lilias rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: observant loners

Shelves: fiction

I am surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. Full of wit and perfect attention to detail, the narrative chronicles Antoine's thoughts through his diary entries. The only criticism I have of the book is actually also a compliment, which is that the writing so accurately reflects a person's thoughts that the book becomes just as redundant as our thoughts tend to be (...or maybe just my thoughts, hm?). Thus the reading becomes a bit tedious, and that is what stops me, perhaps unfairly, from givi...more

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May 18, 2007 Andie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: finished

If you live in Florida, lets say Ft. Lauderdale, don't read this book... especially when you're trying to pay the bills by working in a call center and you're aweful at telemarketing and you're roommate is weird and depressed and everyone around you is fake and plastic. That's my only warning. Otherwise, it's a great book.

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May 06, 2013 Jonathon rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book is pretty damn good. I think you really need to relish this book like a good cheeseburger..Eat slowly; savour each bite and let it go straight to the heart.... That was a really dumb thing I said right there....Anyways, I feel I can read a few pages and spend the next day or two thinking about them...This is among other productive things I spend my time thinking about, like for instance, weird ways I could die...

I feel there are some definite influences from Louis Ferdinand Celine in S...more

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Mar 19, 2012 Kiri rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: own, read-in-2012, reviewed, favourites

Okay, wow. They should stock this thing in the bible section. Or the adult erotica section, because either way it gives you some pretty intense experiences.

In a nutshell: this book is kind of like an existentialist essay in the form of a diary. It's about this red-haired writer guy Antoine Roquentin, who's recently been overwhelmed with an intolerable awareness of his own existence. Like, super intolerable. Like, a soul-crushing, mind-blowing, nausea-inducing kind of intolerable. It's pretty awe...more

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Apr 14, 2007 Daniel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Anyone sick of the mundane

Shelves: oldfavorites

After reading accounts of Sartre's highly unpleasant experiences with the then-infant compound LSD, this book made more sense on the whole, though taken as an independent perspective of one man's interior world (and a fictional world at that, severed from the corresponding reality of the author) I found it illuminating and full of abstract though vivid imagery. I read it in conjunction with a class on Existentialism while living in Copenhagen, so the atmosphere provided certain nuances to the ex...more

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Aug 09, 2011 Rakesh added it · review of another edition

Existential angst is finally given a name; Nausea. It comes to those out of nowhere, and grips you in your entirety (like 'the fog' in Bouville perhaps), and then dissipates as quickly as it came. It comes to those who know the answer is not 42, but the square root of minus one (my apologies to Douglas Adams).

Taking the form of a diary, the book allows you to enter into the depths of a man's (Sartre's?) mind. Unedited and uncensored, the protagonist is quite in touch with his subconscious (Freud...more

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Sep 03, 2009 Mitra added it

هر لحظه را وارسی می کنم, می کوشم تا رمقش را بکشم; هیچ چیز نیست که بگذرد و نگیرمش و

برای همیشه در خودم نگهش ندارم,هیچ چیز, نه لطافت گذرنده ی این چشمهای زیبا, نه همهمه خیابان, نه روشنایی کاذب سحر:و با این حال دقیقه سپری می شود و من نگهش نمی دارم, دوست دارم که بگذرد.

و بعد ناگهان چیزی یکباره می شکند...ماجرا به پایان رسیده است, زمان جریان شل روزانه اش را از سر می گیرد.

سر می گردانم:پشت سرم, آن صورت زیبا و خوش آهنگ یکسره در گذشته فرو می رود.کوچک می شود, هنگام افول خود چروکیده می شود و حالا آغاز با پا...more

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Sep 03, 2009 Mitra added it · review of another edition

انتوان روکانتن قهرمان رمان تهوع تک وتنها در شهر بوویل زندگی می کند.هر چند دست اندر در کار پﮊوهشی تاریخی است باری دل مشغولی عمده اش "وجود" است.وجودی که او به آن می اندیشد وجود در سا حت این جهانی و جلوه گر در موقعیتهای اجتماعی فرد آدمی و روابط وی با افراد دیگر جامعه است.دو چیز روکانتن را می آزارد: یکی آنکه این وجود در ذرات خود نا واجب و نا عقلانی است و دیگر آنکه پیرامون او را جماعتی "رجاله" با احساساتی دروغین و اندیشه های کلیشه ای فرا گرفته اند.برخورد با این وجود نا عقلانی در انبوه جزئیات مبتذلش گ...more

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Mar 14, 2009 Justin rated it 4 of 5 stars

If I could sum this book up in one word: painful. In two words: painful and tedious. In several hundred words:

As my first exposure to Sartre’s thoughts on existence, Nausea is an effective demonstration of how the novel can lead the reader to examine the surrounding world in a different way. Sartre’s observations can lead you to recognize previously unsettling notions and feelings within reality.

As the lead character, Antoine Roquentin laboriously records his every thought in his journal (which...more If I could sum this book up in one word: painful. In two words: painful and tedious. In several hundred words:

As my first exposure to Sartre’s thoughts on existence, Nausea is an effective demonstration of how the novel can lead the reader to examine the surrounding world in a different way. Sartre’s observations can lead you to recognize previously unsettling notions and feelings within reality.

As the lead character, Antoine Roquentin laboriously records his every thought in his journal (which Sartre has supposedly “found”;hence a clever start to the story) I found myself in a world very similar to Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and Elizabeth Moon’s The Speed of Dark, a world where my mind melds with the thoughts of the protagonist. Unfortunately in this case, that level of laborious detail was tedious for the first 70-80 pages. Painful to read, the bright spots are the cynical and somber observations. Once Roquentin finds himself uninterested in his current work, a historical account of Marquis de Rollebon, I was hooked. I had a hard time putting the story away or out of mind once his diatribe against existence begins, continuing later in the story by discussions with “the Self-Taught Man” and his old lover, Anny. This wasn’t an enjoyable read, its not supposed to be. If I was devoid of meaning and thought about how absurd everything is, perhaps I would be struck with bouts of nausea too. By committing yourself to this story, you are committing yourself to seeing the world in a different way, unshielded from hope and glittering generalities. Just the painful numbness of existence without meaning. Fortunately, a feeling I don’t have.

Lines that stood out to me From Roquentin’s Journal:

“And then professionals and even amateurs always end up by being right. Their wisdom prompts them to make the least possible noise, to live as little as possible, to let themselves be forgotten. Their best stories are about the rash and the original, who were chastised. Yes, that’s how it happens and no one will say the contrary.”

“They come out of their offices after their day of work, they look at their houses and the squares with satisfaction. They think it is their city, a good solid bourgeois city. They aren’t afraid, they feel at home… they have proof, a hundred times a day, that everything happens mechanically.” (less)

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May 15, 2013 Chris rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Now here is a story about a really pathetic character, Antoine Roquentin, absolutely paralyzed and nauseated by his intellectual power and gravitas. My diagnosis: he played too much, then thought too much, then was too tired to take courageous steps in the best direction he knew. It was the epitome of the tension between thought and action illuminated by Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s famous line, “Thought expands, but paralyzes; action animates, but narrows.” I think it’s interesting that in Antoine’...more Now here is a story about a really pathetic character, Antoine Roquentin, absolutely paralyzed and nauseated by his intellectual power and gravitas. My diagnosis: he played too much, then thought too much, then was too tired to take courageous steps in the best direction he knew. It was the epitome of the tension between thought and action illuminated by Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s famous line, “Thought expands, but paralyzes; action animates, but narrows.” I think it’s interesting that in Antoine’s attempt to squeeze out of the narrow confines of a simplistic worldview, he finds himself feeling suffocated and even violated by the close proximity of all existence, and even his own existence. The interconnectedness of all things, like “dough that gets longer and longer…everything looks so much alike that you wonder how people go the idea of inventing names, to make distinctions,” became to him an inescapable realization of his coextension with the universe by interpenetration with all adjacent objects, and therefore his own infinity. He wanted nothing more than to be a discrete, understandable, limited object that keeps fresh and accessible the meaning that his life may have had in the past, and that other people were still enjoying all around him. He is lost, has become immured in the entanglements and knots of his serpentine logic that is coiling in and constricting the life out of him. Reminds me of G.K. Chesterton’s great exhortation against too much of an emphasis on reason, “The madman is not the person who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.”

It’s actually sad, and a bit unnerving, to witness Antoine’s decline into delirium, and I won’t say I can’t relate to some of the symptoms. It’s a genius thang. This book begins with Antoine journaling his thoughts to try and lend resiliency and consistency to a growing abstraction in his ideas and sensations. He wants to hold on to his leaking life, crystallize his moments and finalize their meaning. He is very uncomfortable with his growing realization that the world isn’t just itself, but partly his own fluid invention. While listening to music, he compares his slippery attempts of holding onto, and defining, the moment as akin to trying to catch jazz notes in his hand, “I would like to hold them back, but I know if I succeeded in stopping one, it would remain between my fingers only as a raffish languishing sound. I must accept their death; I must even will it.” This, then, mirrors his resignation not to stymie the flow of his seconds and minutes, or wish everything into a petrified past with no organic, infinitely extending present, "I cling to each instant with all my heart: I know that it is unique, irreplaceable, and yet I would not raise a finger to stop it from being annihilated.” But he, just having turned 30, is morbidly transfixed by the intractable, ‘unsluicable’, nature of the flow of life and time, to the point of being unable to get his bearings and…do something about it! He’s basically experiencing the cliché of a mid-life crisis and responding with rag-doll physics. He loathes his life, and loathes other people’s lives, and starts blaming life itself for his failures. His exciting travels are over; his love-interest is no longer in love with him; his only friend is a clingy, insecure, child-molester; he hates his job (writing history); he hates philosophies that are contrary to his own; he hates stupid, frivolous people; and apparently he can’t play jazz. But mostly, as I see it, he’s just lonely. There is one chance in the story where he saw a spark of hope to rekindle an old romance, and he actually became excited about it, but he loses the girl again, and falls back on his bitter-sweet companion, nausea.

To himself, he seems to want to frame his misery as the ultimate penalty for knowing secrets about life, society, and self that all the other poor schmucks can’t see, “They only see the thin film…I see beneath it! The veneer melts, the shining velvety scales…explode everywhere at my look, they split and gape.” But the real problem here is that Mr. Roquentin sees no purpose for his insight, except to lament that he is alone in his supreme intelligence looking down on the silly dummies all around him. But, those silly dummies are happy, sooo…. ? He is “alone and free”, in “exile” from others who do not think as he does, “…they are watching my back with surprise and disgust; they thought I was like them, that I was a man, and I deceived them. I suddenly lost the appearance of a man and they saw a crab running backwards out of this human room. Now the unmasked intruder has fled: the show goes on.” Not unlike the ugly bug in Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Antoine’s feeling of alienation and rejection might just be a more significant factor in his self-loathing than merely an albatross of his genius. Which came first, societal rejection or self-loathing? Hard to tell.

This story, however disgusting an impression the character makes upon the reader, is not a meaningless story. It is about a void that is left in the place of the failure of logic and modern ideals to string personal meaning together out of impersonal data, which data, this story clearly illustrates, is not so easily culled and defined from the boiling porridge of reality that is essentially irreducible and ‘absurd’ apart from our distorted and deeply human categories. It is meant as a warning against modernist idealism, and as a call to action to think about what our response will be to this postmodern quagmire of antiquated values, traditions, and explanations of the meaning of life. Sartre, I don’t believe, was simply wallowing like his protagonist in the sulfuric atmosphere of self-pity and melancholy despair. I don’t believe this is what Sartre believed and felt in his finest hours, though he may have (and I would assume probably had) experienced these thoughts and feelings to some degree to have been able to so brilliantly capture that life-sick mindset. Sartre was sounding the alarm by painting a clear picture of the orphans of modernism, leaving nothing to the imagination as to the type of sticky mess of confusion and despondency that one’s existence becomes when one tries to live in the past, instead of moving bravely into the future with a better understanding who one is, and what one’s supposed to be doing in the universe. Does Sartre offer any answers here? No. But he poses a pretty damn good question that might inspire people to start the search. He makes attempts in other books to answer the question (try Existentialism Is a Humanism), but that’s not the point here. He’s nauseating us to prevent us from turning into the monster he wrote about.

It also is a warning to all erudites who think knowledge can ever bring happiness. Knowing is not living, and action must be taken so that love and happiness, which according to some psychologists “cannot be pursued, but must ensue”, will be a constant in a person’s life. And it is, again, so important to note that the overwhelming sense of one’s bloated and overly-magnified self in the center of an absurd universe will only grow more absorbing and involuted as a person withdraws from society and begins to brood upon their inadequacies. In other words, I wonder if a little bit of medicine and healthy friendships could have fixed a large part of Antoine’s problems. The other part, to be sure, may have been ideological malaise (which I assume is the primary motive for Sartre to write this story) but it’s hard for me to view that as the whole problem. I believe existential angst cannot be blamed squarely on one’s ideas, but this new brand of melancholia may be rather a hybrid of inefficacies in philosophy, relationships, biology, environment…maybe more. Who knows, it could just be a bad thyroid. Or an ‘underdone turnip’. I don’t know. What do you think I am? An ‘existential-angst-factor-calculator’ or something? Geeeesh.

Parallel first-person narratives of people who over-thought their life to the point of existential paralysis are Dostoyevsky’s “Notes From Underground” and Camus “The Stranger.” Similar affliction, similar attitudes. To all the panty-wastes of these novels I say (with the authors’ concurrence I’m sure), “Well, my boy, it seems you have thought yourself into a really fine pickle. And don’t you love it, you wretch, you.” But really, I’m not sure the problem has been offered an absolutely satisfying solution, even in my time; so I hope to do everything I can not to end up comparably prostrate before my own sense of meaninglessness in the end. Sartre, your warning is duly noted, my friend. Duly noted.
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May 13, 2013 Leon marked it as to-read · review of another edition

The classic Existentialist novel, with a new introduction by renowned poet, translator, and critic Richard Howard.Winner of the 1964 Nobel Prize for Literature, Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher, critic, novelist, and dramatist, holds a position of singular eminence in the world of letters. Among readers and critics familiar with the whole of Sartre's work, it is generally recognized that his earliest novel, La Nausée (first published in 1938), is his finest and most significant. It is unques

...more

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Feb 27, 2013 Sherry Johnson rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I don't consider La Nausée to be a masterpiece like some of the other prose or theatre works I've read by Jean-Paul Sartre. It is still a very thoughtful and provocative work though. I read this work in English about 20 years ago & the second time around, I guess somewhat more inured, I didn't find it to be as nearly revolting or powerful. I found that stylistically Sartre had not yet fully developed himself, although there are passages here and there which definitely herald the flawless pow...more I don't consider La Nausée to be a masterpiece like some of the other prose or theatre works I've read by Jean-Paul Sartre. It is still a very thoughtful and provocative work though. I read this work in English about 20 years ago & the second time around, I guess somewhat more inured, I didn't find it to be as nearly revolting or powerful. I found that stylistically Sartre had not yet fully developed himself, although there are passages here and there which definitely herald the flawless power of some of the later works. Many would probably easily identify with Antoine Roquentin, the main character of this work, & I guess this is illustrated by the character almost having become an existential caricature. Indeed, one can find caricatures of Antoine Roquentin in every coffee shop in Europe and America. Only they aren't as thoughtful or creative, & have latched on to the figure more for the purpose of requiring an idol, which Sartre even hints at with a note of perceptive delight on the last page of the work.

Of course Antoine Roquentin suffers from what he calls la Nausée... This malady is the physical manifestation of an ontological illness. Roquentin feels that life is meaningless and vacillates from feeling utterly detached from his surroundings to feeling extremely invaded by them. The malady begins one day when he skips a stone over the water, a child's game -

C'est depuis ce fameux jour où je voulais faire des ricochets. J'allais lancer ce galet,
je l'ai regardé et c'est alors que tout a commencé: j'ai senti qu'il *existait*. Et puis
après ça, il y a eu d'autres Nausée; de temps en temps les objets se mettent à vous
exister dans la main.

The image of the game is perhaps a fitting metaphor for the philosophical enterprise. It is a key image as well in absurdist writing, particularly in the next work I'm about to read, Cocteau's Les Enfants Terribles, & of course Sartre's works share many concerns of absurdist prose and theatre. The state of thinking/awareness puts one in conflict with their surroundings and interferes with that state of pure being which Roquentin expresses a longing for - especially in light of the failure of reason. This failure of course is also emphasized in La Nausée by the by-now common use of images from theatre, although I must say this is not new territory. I am unsure about precedents in French prose, but to me a work such as La Nausée is heavily grounded in the tradition of French poetry. For me this work resounds of Baudelaire and Rimbaud more than anything, especially Rimbaud. Belying the character's disinterest and disgust, we find he revels in painterly descriptions of unlikely subjects such as offal or a feeling of terror concerning nature. Lonely, despairing evening scenes are painted in a wash of satanic blues. When he describes seeing his friend the Autodidact retreating from him, after having been beaten for fondling a boy, he says «Sur le seuil de la porte, il y avait une tache de sang, en étoile» - On the threshold of the door, there is a stain of star-shaped blood. This is French poetry, through and through...

I find it somewhat disgusting that a character so detached from humanity finds his great moment of compassion in this work in defending his friend who is attempting to engage in pederasty. It's not that I believe it's the equivalent of someone who molests very young children, but in the whole scenario the character of Roquentin portrays the Autodidact as being completely innocent, & from my own experience I don't really share his opinion of this being an accurate portrait of most pederasts. Sartre suddenly waxes poetic about the pathetic figure as though pederasts are the salvation of humanity. This as well I realize is a product of French culture. The whole event falsely dichotomizes sexuality and violence, as if there is only one alternative or the other. And yet, Roquentin's descriptions of his interactions with women are decidedly misogynistic and full of physical loathing. If sex is peaceful, I wonder why the rapist in men is unleashed during times of war? If pederasty is free and peaceful, then why are the boys horrified when the Autodidact is fondling one of them? And why does Roquentin still violently jump to his defence?

The end of the work is life-affirming I guess in the sense that although almost completely alienated from humanity Roquentin has hope in the form of plans for the future. It is a faint feeling of it though, & in its dismissal of valuing any kind of need for others in affirming and shaping one's own existence, I find it lacks the power of the moments of hope in other works of Sartre's which are more tied to humanity, as in the great moments in Huis Clos when the characters briefly have compassion. La Nausée is an important work though in the scope of its influence and recommended reading as part of Sartre's oeuvre.

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Feb 26, 2013 Donna rated it 2 of 5 stars

"I was just thinking," I tell him, laughing, "that here we sit, all of us, eating and drinking to
preserve our precious existence and really there is nothing, nothing, absolutely no reason for existing." This is where I struggled. Because now it became official. I had to choose whether to close the book or continue reading it in boredom and hatred. Yes, this book is an existentialist introduction book for the beginners.

The part of the book that I just couldn't stand was the part where he stabbed...more

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Nov 24, 2012 Najlepša leta rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Neizkoriščeno nebo

Samo Sartre lahko napiše besedne zveze kot so: “neizkoriščeno nebo” (str. 109) ali pa “Sreda. Ne smeš se bati. Četrtek. Napisal štiri strani. potem dolg trenutek sreče. Ne premišljevati o vrednosti zgodovine. Izpostavljaš se nevarnosti, da se ti bo zagabila”. (str.109) Meni se sicer ni. Čutim to knjigo in vdihavam vsako besedo te knjige: “Umazana ledena senca” (str. 110), “mlačne kože” (str. 114), “modrikasto pero” (str. 110), “ženska z voščeno poltjo” (str. 110), “blatne zvezd...more Neizkoriščeno nebo

Samo Sartre lahko napiše besedne zveze kot so: “neizkoriščeno nebo” (str. 109) ali pa “Sreda. Ne smeš se bati. Četrtek. Napisal štiri strani. potem dolg trenutek sreče. Ne premišljevati o vrednosti zgodovine. Izpostavljaš se nevarnosti, da se ti bo zagabila”. (str.109) Meni se sicer ni. Čutim to knjigo in vdihavam vsako besedo te knjige: “Umazana ledena senca” (str. 110), “mlačne kože” (str. 114), “modrikasto pero” (str. 110), “ženska z voščeno poltjo” (str. 110), “blatne zvezde” (str. 110). Ta knjiga je za tiste, ki ljubijo jezik, biser. (ocena:4/5)(3.sept.2011).

Knjigo Gnus sem brala od junija 2011 do januarja 2012. Gre za roman, v katerem Antoine Roquentin piše knjigo o gospodu Rollenbonu. Knjiga je notranji monolog pisca, v kateri izvemo na koncu, da je prvoosebni pripovedovalec končal razmerje z Anny. In pravi: “Moram povedati, da Anny sedaj uživa in jaz ji ne pomenim nič več, kakor da je ne bi nikoli srečal, mahoma me je vrgla iz sebe, ni me več v njej, in ni me tudi v drugih zavestih sveta. To me dela smešnega. Pa vendar dobro vem, da bivam, da sem jaz tisti, ki sem tu. Če zdaj pravim “jaz”, se mi to zdi votlo. Ne posreči se mi več prav dobro, da bi čutil sebe, tako sem pozabljen. Vse, kar je ostalo resničnega v meni, je bivanje, ki čuti, da biva. Lenobno, dolgo zeham. Nikogar ni. Antoine Roquentin ne biva za nikogar. To me kratkočasi.” “In kaj je Antoine Roquentin? Nekaj abstraktnega. Majhen bled spomin name se ziblje v moji zavesti. Antoine Roquentin … In nenadoma “jaz” bledi, bledi, z njim je opravljeno, kmalu ugasne. Bistra, negibna, opustela zavest ždi med zidovi vedno podaljšuje svoje bivanje. Nihče več ne prebiva v njej. Malo prej je še nekdo govoril “jaz” govoril je “moji zavesti”. Kdo? Zunaj so bile hrupne ulice z znanimi barvami in vonji. Ostali so brezimni zidovi, brezimna zavest. Vidiš to, kar je: zidovi, in med zidovi majhna živa in neosebna prosojnost. Zavest biva kakor drevo, kakor travna bilka. Dremlje, dolgočasi se.” (str. 251) Zgornji odlomek me malo spominja na Hansa Schniera in njegovo ljubezen Mario, ki ga je zapustila. Ta občutek, da je odšla z drugim. Železniška postaja. Anny se je prikazala. Z gospodom v dolgem plašču. Mogoče se kdaj vrne, vendar jaz grem v Pariz ! Mogoče mi bo kdaj pisala. Ne vem, zakaj me je sedaj povabila k sebi. Torej ne obstaja popoln trenutek. Ko sva se prvič poljubila, je Anny stala sredi kopriv, in si ni želela poljuba. Poljubil sem jo. Morala je dovoliti. Morala je tudi mene naučiti, kdaj jo lahko poljubim, in po vseh pravilih… Zakaj mi sedaj razlaga to ??? “Torej. Videl sem Anny. Na železniški postaji sem ju zagledal. V dolgem plašču je korakala ob njem, nato vstopila na vlak in je ni več. Tudi jaz odhajam. V Pariz. Zbogom.” Odlomek iz knjige najbolje ponazori kaj je “zavest o zavesti”. Z gnusom pa je drugače, ni čisto jasno, kaj pomeni. Vendar BOLI. BIVANJE. NESKONČNOST. BIVANJE. ČUTIM GNUS. BOLI. Sedaj ko sem knjigo po mnogih mesecih vrnila v knjižnico, lahko samo povem, da je to moja prva knjiga o eksistencializmu in upam, da se kmalu ne srečam s kakšno podobno. Pozabila sem izpisati tiste čudovite besedne zveze, ko stopam skozi park dreves… Na trenutke se mi je zdelo, da je enkratna, na trenutke tudi napeta, vmes sem pa občutila dolgočasje bivanja v tej knjigi. Kar me je najbolj prepričalo v tej knjigi, je njegovo razumevanje povezanosti narave, mesta in ljudi.

Vedeti ali znati tako dobro pisati, in tega ne izkoristiti, zavreči tudi “neizkoriščeno nebo” je velika škoda. Velika škoda za avtorja, ki je zmožen napisati zelo dobre kratke zgodbe in drame. Ali predstavlja glavna oseba te zgodbe kašen specifičen tip osebe, z neko univerzalno etiko? Ne. Glavni junak je popolnoma nepomeben in zelo dolgočasen kot se dolgočasi tudi sam. Zakaj imajo mnogi prav to knjigo za vrhunsko? Moram povedati iskreno, da je zelo dolgočasna. Nekoč bom to knjigo še malo prelistala. Ne vem kdaj. Kmalu ne.

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Aug 26, 2012 Venus added it · review of another edition

Shelves: philosophy

La nausée c’est un autre mot pour le spleen baudelairien, un étrange désespoir et malaise face à l’existence, une « crise existentielle » qui oscille entre dégoût, folie, conscience profonde de soi et tentation de nihilisme, entre pulsion de mort et urgence d’exister.

Présenté sous la forme d’un journal fictif, La nausée est un récit hautement intimiste entièrement tourné vers le ressenti, les perceptions et les sensations de son narrateur, Antoine Roquentin, un historien de 30 ans, de retour de...more

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Jul 03, 2012 Barry rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This was a good book. I wouldn't say it floored me. Possibly it did when people read it when it was written (mid 1930's). I felt that it described the descent of a man into a kind of madness. Not real madness, but madness in the sense that the world lost the meanigs and just became existence. I can totally empathise with that feeling and understand the difficulty in putting it into words. Kudos to Sartre that he has been able to do it so vividly in the book. A lot of those images when the main c...more This was a good book. I wouldn't say it floored me. Possibly it did when people read it when it was written (mid 1930's). I felt that it described the descent of a man into a kind of madness. Not real madness, but madness in the sense that the world lost the meanigs and just became existence. I can totally empathise with that feeling and understand the difficulty in putting it into words. Kudos to Sartre that he has been able to do it so vividly in the book. A lot of those images when the main character is overtaken with 'Nausea' will stay with me.

It seems to me that the two main themes are existentialist themse that:
1. It all starts with existence. There are no theories to prove existence, no meanings to it, it just is. That is the starting point of everything.
2. Our understanding of existence is the meanings that we impose on it. If you take away those meanings you get the poor absurb existence.

The protaginist character seems to have a hard time holding on to a meaningful reality. He goes through periods where he is going well and life seems to have meaning then he gets overtaken by Nausea and the world reveals it's essential meaninglessness - it's absurdity.

I wonder if this Nausea that he is constantly suffering is a symptom of the fact that he is lonely. When you are on your own it is easy for the world to become devoid of meaning because you are disassociated from everything around you. Right at the end of the book when he is listening to the music he thinks the musician and the singer are lucky because they have recorded this song and now other people will think of them. The have saved themselves from meaningless. He could do the same thing. If he built up relationships with people then he would mean something to them and he might not feel that his existence is so pointless.

In fact the total absurdity of existence that he feels is cemented when Anny has changed and no longer feels anything for him. I think that finally cust him off from meaning. The same happens when he gives up writing his book. He says how pointless it was but it gave him purpose. That's why he needed the book more than the historical character he was writing about needed the book to be written about him.

I like the talk of adventure. He talks about how there really is no such thing as adventure. We are imposing our own meanings on a reality that is no different from one moment to the next. Memory plays a major part in this book. We look back and order the memories in our life to make meaning. We create the adventures in our minds. Throughout the book memory plays a prominent part - the library, anny, the picture gallery. We taken the experiences we have and order them in our minds to create pictures.(less)

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Mar 30, 2012 أحمد أبازيد Ahmad Abazed rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

الجزء الأوّل من الكتاب مملّ , لكنّه ربما كان ضروريا لتدخل في فضاء العبثيّة و المعنى الحقيقيّ لهذه الأجساد المتحرّكة على أرض التفاهة , في الجزء الأوّل يقترب أطوان من المرآة و يصف ما يراه , مشهد مقلق , هذا كان بداية الشعور بالكينونة ...
في الجزء الآخر يتدفّق سارتر , و يبدأ العرض , كساحر يجيد فنّه , العبثيّة , الكينوينة , اللحظات الكاملة , الغثيان , الإنسان ... مربك و صادم , ولو عدت إلى وقته كأوّل كتاب لسارتر , و أوّل كتاب يطرح مفاهيمه , فبإمكانك تخيّل مدى ما كانت هذه الحصاة قد أحدثت في واحة الثقافة...more

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Mar 21, 2012 ميّ أحمد rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: فلسفة, روايات

عندما كتب ساتر روايته الاولى التي اشتهرت تحت عنوان «الغثيان»، وكان قد اسماها في البداية «تأملات في الصدفة»، عرضها على رفيقة حياته سيمون دوبوفوار، التي وجدتها مملة ولا تتضمن عنصر التشويق، أعاد سارتر صياغتها قبل ارسالها الى الناشر
الفرنسي «غاليمار»، لكن لجنة القراءة رفضتها واعتبرتها غير ذات شأن.
مما أصابه بالإحباط الشديد والاكتئاب
الا أنه قرر التصرف بشكل عملي هذه المرة ملتمسا من صديقه، شارل دولان، التوسط لدى الناشر، غاستون غاليمار. واقترح الناشر تعديلات وتغييرا للعنوان إلى «الغثيان».
وهكذا ظهرت للوجو...more

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Dec 20, 2011 Lucas Leite rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

One Essay About The Curse Of Liberty

"Existence is not something conceived by far: it has to invade us suddenly, it has to hold on us, weigh heavily on our hearts as a large animal stopped - otherwise there is absolutely nothing"
Sartre

Few can carry the adjective multifaceted as adequately as the Frenchman Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980). One of the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century, Sartre was a philosopher, playwright, writer and activist who believed in the active role of th...more

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Dec 18, 2011 Sli rated it 4 of 5 stars

Na koricama bi trebalo stajati - HE WHO ENTERS ABANDON ALL HOPE. Ništa brutalnije u životu još nisam pročitao. Sartreov (anti)junak je stvorenje (ne znam da li je to uopće čovjek) koje postoji, i to je sve. Ne znam koju drugu osobinu bih mu pripisao. Bez prošlosti, bez budućnosti, a u sadašnjosti - pukim postojanjem. Ono što resi glavnog lika je nevjerojatna iskrenost prema sebi, od kuda i dolaze napadi mučnine, jer ono što si priznaje je jednostavno previše za prihvatiti i uopće pojmiti.
Zašto...more

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Dec 09, 2011 MJ Nicholls marked it as seduced-and-abandoned · review of another edition

An insufferable philosophical classic, penned in nauseating and styleless first person prose. Roquentin is an arrogant buffoon whose existential woes are trivial, arch and pathetic. No attempt to create a novel has been made, apart from using that most lazy of constructs, the diary, opening the whole work out to a meandering thought-stream of excruciating random dullness. It isn’t accessible to confused students, unless those students happen to be aesthetes on private incomes writing dull histor...more

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Nov 06, 2011 Scott Venhuizen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I figured I should read something good ‘n’ depressing to prepare myself for the oncoming darkness and cold of the winter months – and Nausea just had a nice ring to it I guess. This is my second time reading the book – the first time my understanding of existentialism wasn’t so great – and I thought it would be fun to revisit it now that I am have a better understanding of existentialism’s principles.

At its simplest, Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin coming to terms with the fact that li...more I figured I should read something good ‘n’ depressing to prepare myself for the oncoming darkness and cold of the winter months – and Nausea just had a nice ring to it I guess. This is my second time reading the book – the first time my understanding of existentialism wasn’t so great – and I thought it would be fun to revisit it now that I am have a better understanding of existentialism’s principles.

At its simplest, Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin coming to terms with the fact that life is devoid of meaning – and it isn’t an easy realization for him to handle – due to this, much of Nausea reads like a horror novel – almost like Roquenin is on a bad trip (I have read that Sartre had some bad experiences with LSD – maybe this inspired some of the more horrific scenes in the novel – like when he is repulsed by the pale, indistinct, fleshiness of his face when he studies it in the mirror – or when he is metaphysically attacked by the chestnut tree). Someone should really make an artsy-fartsy/high-contrast/black-and-white film adaptation of Nausea – I have never really read a book before where I couldn’t help but imagine everything occurring in black and white.

I read somewhere (probably Wikipedia) that Sartre’s original plan was to present his existential ideas in the form of an essay – but his girlfriend convinced him that no one would read it so he had better just make a novel out of it. However, I don’t think Sartre fully committed to the form – and at times Nausea can seem a little disjointed – one can tell that Sartre would really rather be writing an essay. Due to this, Nausea doesn’t quite have the elegance of other existential works like The Stranger. Also, Roquentin’s recovery at the end – and his decision to write a novel about his experiences – seemed a little tacked on – somewhat reminiscent of the last chapter of A Clockwork Orange in which Alex realizes he was a bad person and changes his ways.

All in all – a really well written/enlightening book – a great introduction to existentialism – just missing the artistic elegance found in other similar works by Camus and Kafka.
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Sep 21, 2010 Patrick Kelly rated it 5 of 5 stars

Sartre is known for his works' contributions to existentialist thought. Perhaps the most profound of these, I think, is Nausea. Existentialists see life as fundamentally challenging and nauseating. It's all about getting past the inherent meaninglessness of life to create individuated, existential meaning. You're defined constantly by your actions, not your "inherent" disposition or "pre-given" place. Nausea represents the first part of that struggle, wherein the protagonist Antoine is horrified...more

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About Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre, normally known simply as Jean-Paul Sartre, was a French existentialist philosopher and pioneer, dramatist and screenwriter, novelist and critic. He was a leading figure in 20th century French philosophy.

He declined the award of the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has ex...more

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Quotes from Nausea

“I am alone in the midst of these happy, reasonable voices. All these creatures spend their time explaining, realizing happily that they agree with each other. In Heaven's name, why is it so important to think the same things all together. ” — 282 people liked it

“It's quite an undertaking to start loving somebody. You have to have energy ,generosity, blindness. There is even a moment right at the start where you have to jump across an abyss: if you think about it you don't do it.” — 188 people liked it

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