La nausea

Ciò che sarebbe sciocco sarebbe di essere sempre stoici: ci si esaurirebbe per niente.

Mi è venuta voglia di rileggere La Nausea dopo aver letto Camus e il suo Straniero; il sentimento fondamentale che Sartre cerca d'esprimere mi tocca a distanza di anni, nel profondo, di nuovo. L'impossibilità di riuscire a esprimersi, di comprendere sé stessi e il mondo... Sia Antonio che Anny 'si sopravvivono' in una realtà così distante da loro che sembra averli già inghiottiti e digeriti, e non avessero nient'altro da dire.

E arriverei - al passato, soltanto al passato - ad accettare me stesso

Ma l'intero libro è anche un modo per tentare di giustificare la propria esistenza - flebilmente, docilmente. Leggendo, la nausea che si descrive nel libro - dolce e impastata - sembrava posarsi anche nella mia bocca, ma non la rifuggivo, anzi: tentavo di assaporarla anche e soprattutto lontano dal libro, nella mia esistenza.

I too like to talk philosophy when I'm avoiding my emotions.

Roquentin says at some point: “Most of the time, because of their failure to fasten on to words, my thoughts remain misty and nebulous. They assume vague, amazing shapes and are then swallowed up: I promptly forget them.” This is unfortunately the current state of my thoughts. I need a thread to inaugurate this review. I’m not sure whether I am able to summon it. I’m not sure whether I just did. Above all, I think Sartre’s book took hold of some neurons in my brain: today in class, I had two ‘nauseas’ dare I say. I became free; too free. I felt the existence of my tongue as a separate entity and lost control over the thoughts that were about to shape shift themselves through it and beyond it. I literally struggled to hold in what I was promptly thinking of.

Nausea is Antoine Roquentin’s diary in which he pours all roaming thoughts and daily incidents. Like all diaries, its purpose lies within itself. In other words, one cannot confront Nausea and not expect to get numbed or weighed down sometimes by the monotony of words; not that Sartre tends to be monotonous, quite the contrary. What I’m trying to say is, Nausea may not appeal to everyone. Camus’s ‘The Stranger’ certainly has a more engaging, blood dripping story line – more ‘action’. Nevertheless, it conveys its essence in a subtle way, unlike ‘Nausea’ which drops all matters plainly on the discussion table.

Our protagonist, Antoine Roquentin, is a solipsist engulfed by the shadows of reality. He’s trying to dissect existence and see what’s inside it. Alongside his daily routine, he gets bombarded by flares of nausea. I kept looking forward for these bad boys to strike, for the layers of a tenuous reality to come crumbling down behind veils of nihilism. A simple pebble would be enough to cause the nausea, sometimes a seat or a tree root, or even a glass of beer. Once the chain reaction starts, reality starts falling apart: things break free from their names, become hollow and meaningless: “Things are entirely what they appear to be and behind them… there is nothing.”; “But for me there is neither Monday nor Sunday: there are days which push one another along in disorder, and then, all of a sudden, revelations like this.”

Amidst his nauseas, Roquentin stresses on two things: the superfluity and the contingence of the world. The former is projected on nature and its over-abundant elements: when he sees the trees at the park, he dismisses their superfluity as “dismal, sickly, encumbered by itself”. The latter reveals itself within its impact on life as a whole. Life occurrences, including Roquentin’s, become subject to chance and randomness: “I hadn’t any right to exist. I had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant, a microbe. My life grew in a haphazard way and in all directions. Sometimes it sent me vague signals; at other times I could feel nothing but an inconsequential buzzing.”

I thought the book flow would not lead to a closure, but it did, and a satisfying one at that. Salvation seemed to metamorphose into writing a book for Roquentin – I hope he doesn’t start on another history novel though. He acknowledges that writing the book might not help his mind get off the existential crisis at first, but it will enable him to recall his “life without repugnance”.

So if you happen to be sucked in the existential vortex, what would your salvation look like? Would you even care to have one? Or would you rather proceed with your everyday life tasks dodging its winds?