Disgust
The disgust ( French La nausée , see also, medical: Nausea ) is a novel by Jean-Paul Sartre . It was published in 1938 and is considered the main existentialist novel .
The title Melancholia (based on Albrecht Dürer's copperplate engraving) originally planned by Sartre was rejected by his publisher Gallimard and in turn suggested the current title.
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In his first novel, which Sartre worked on for five years, there are already many subjects that become clearer in his later philosophical works. The book is a collection of diary entries by the first-person narrator Roquentin, who tries to understand the disgust that has crept into him for some time.
The novel is dedicated to Simone de Beauvoir alias Castor. It is preceded by a quote from Louis Ferdinand Céline (in the translation by Heinrich Wallfisch ):
- "This guy has no social value, he's just an individual."
Antoine Roquentin is a historian who lives in a small town called Bouville and is writing a historical book there about the diplomat Rollebon, which he currently sees as the only justification for his existence . This disgust, which he rather feels in the things themselves, only leaves him listening to a jazz record by the Canadian musician Shelton Brooks, interpreted by Sophie Tucker : " Some of these days you'll miss me, honey ". The cause of disgust is the futility and contingency of its existence. Only the chain of circumstances, the irreversibility of events - he remembers his adventures in the process - makes him happy. Novels, stories and works of art, these made things, bring him happiness because of the severity of their form. At the same time, Sartre makes Roquentin question his own existence when looking at a painting:
- “And it was true, I had always been aware of it: I had no right to exist. I had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant, a microbe. My life grew randomly and in all directions. It gave me vague signals at times; then again I felt nothing but a hum without meaning. "
Real life, on the other hand, the passing of days, the coming and going of people, has no necessity for Roquentin. Only when you tell life does this change. Roquentin becomes aware of the futility of existence at the sight of a root in the park. We know what the function of a root is in general, but there is no explanation for the existence of this individual root. In contrast, the fully explainable, such as a circle, does not exist. So existence cannot be derived from a being, it precedes the being. At the end of the book Roquentin makes the decision to give up his existence as a historian and instead write a novel in order to justify himself as an artist in the service of strict form.
For the hero of the novel, life has lost all ordinaryness. He is constantly experiencing new moments of his meaningless existence. At the end of his novel, Sartre alludes to a hope that is known as contingency , i.e. the inner finitude of an existence that expresses itself in the fact that this very existence could also be different or not at all. Even if existence is lonely and therefore also free, the individual in this world has to invent himself and can freely decide what he wants to be.
See also
literature
- Brigitta Coenen-Mennemeier: The existence and the absurd: Sartre, "La Nausée" 1938 and Camus , L'Étranger 1942. In: Wolfgang Asholt (Ed.): Interpretations. French literature 20th century: novel. Stauffenburg, Tübingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-86057-909-1 .
- Jean Firges : Jean Paul Sartre, La Nausée: The discovery of existence in Sartre's novel "The Disgust". Sonnenberg, Annweiler 2012, ISBN 3933264693 .
- Ulrich Diehl: Disgusting life, a crisis of meaning and existential freedom. Philosophical remarks on Sartre's “The Disgust”. In: Hermes A. Kick (Ed.): Disgust . Representation and interpretation in the sciences and arts. Pressler, Hürtgenwald 2003, ISBN 3876461014 ( online ).
- Inca Rumold: The Metamorphosis of Disgust. On the function of art in Rainer Maria Rilke's “ Malte Laurids Brigge ” and Sartre's “La Nausée”. Series: Treatises on art, music and literary studies, 291. Bouvier, Bonn 1979, ISBN 3416014987 .
notes
- ↑ la boue = "the mud", thus "mud town". Sartre lived in Le Havre at the time of writing .
- ↑ detailed research bibliography
- ↑ Downloads area, above all downloads in chronological order (here 2010), then scroll down to the link.
- ^ State of research, problems of the existentialist tradition, problems of the diary novel , problems of the artist in both texts, structure in both texts, bibliography