Undated Sheet

Jean-Paul Sartre's

NAUSEA

Translated from the French by Robert Baldick

Digital electronic transcription by John O’Loughlin

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'He is a fellow without any collective significance, barely an individual.'

L.F. Céline, The Church

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Editor's Note

THESE notebooks were found among Antoine Roquentin's papers. We are publishing them without any alteration.

The first page is undated, but we have good reason to believe that it was written a few weeks before the diary itself was started. In that case it would have been written about the beginning of January 1932, at the latest.

At that time, Antoine Roquentin, after travelling in central Europe, North Africa, and the Far East, had been living for three years at Bouville, where he was completing his historical research on the Marquis de Rollebon.

THE EDITORS

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Undated Sheet

THE best thing would be to write down everything that happens from day to day. To keep a diary in order to understand. To neglect no nuances or little details, even if they seem unimportant, and above all to classify them. I must say how I see this table, the street, people, my packet of tobacco, since these are the things which have changed. I must fix the exact extent and nature of this change.

For example, there is a cardboard box which contains my bottle of ink. I ought to try to say how I saw it before and how I - [A word is missing here.] it now. Well, it's a parallelepiped rectangle standing out against - that's silly, there's nothing I can say about it. That's what I must avoid: I mustn't put strangeness where there's nothing. I think that is the danger of keeping a diary: you exaggerate everything, you are on the look-out, and you continually stretch the truth. On the other hand, it is certain that from one moment to the next - and precisely in connexion with this box or any other object - I may recapture the impression of the day before yesterday. I must always be prepared, or else it might slip through my fingers again. I must never - [A word has been crossed out here (possibly 'force' or 'forge'), and another word has been written above it which is illegible.] anything but note down carefully and in the greatest detail everything that happens.

Naturally, I can no longer write anything definite about that business on Saturday and the day before yesterday - I am already too far away from it; all that I can say is that in neither case was there anything people would ordinarily call an event. On Saturday the children were playing ducks and drakes, and I wanted to throw a pebble into the sea like them. At that moment I stopped, dropped the pebble and walked away. I imagine I must have looked rather bewildered, because the children laughed behind my back.

So much for the exterior. What happened inside me didn't leave any clear traces. There was something which I saw and which disgusted me, but I no longer know whether I was looking at the sea or at the pebble. It was a flat pebble, completely dry on one side, wet and muddy on the other. I held it by the edges, with my fingers wide apart to avoid getting them dirty.

The day before yesterday, it was much more complicated. There was also that series of coincidences and misunderstandings which I can't explain to myself. But I'm not going to amuse myself by putting all that down on paper. Anyhow, it's certain I was frightened or experienced some other feeling of that sort. If only I knew what I was frightened of, I should already have made considerable progress.

The odd thing is that I am not at all prepared to consider myself insane, and indeed I can see quite clearly that I am not: all these changes concern objects. At least, that is what I'd like to be sure about.

10.30

[Obviously in the evening. The following paragraph is much later than the preceding ones. We are inclined to think that it was written the following day at the earliest.]

Perhaps it was a slight attack of insanity after all. There is no longer any trace of it left. The peculiar feelings I had the other week strike me as quite ridiculous today: I can no longer enter into them. This evening I am quite at ease, with my feet firmly on the ground. This is my room, which faces north-east. Down below is the rue des Mutilés and the shunting yard of the new station. From my window I can see the red and white flame of the Rendez-vous des Cheminots at the corner of the boulevard Victor-Noir. The Paris train has just come in. People are coming out of the old station and dispersing in the streets. I can hear footsteps and voices. A lot of people are waiting for the last tram. They must make a sad little group around the gas lamp just under my window. Well, they will have to wait a few minutes more: the tram won't come before a quarter to eleven. I only hope no commercial travellers are going to come tonight: I do so want to sleep and have so much sleep to catch up on. One good night, just one, and all this business would be swept away.

A quarter to eleven: there's nothing more to fear - if they were coming, they would be here already. Unless it's the day for the gentleman from Rouen. He comes every week, and they keep No.2 for him, the first-floor room with a bidet. He may still turn up; he often drinks a beer at the Rendez-vous des Cheminots before going to bed. He doesn't make too much noise. He is quite short and very neat, with a waxed black moustache and a wig. Here he is now.

Well, when I heard him coming upstairs, it gave me quite a thrill, it was so reassuring: what is there to fear from such a regular world? I think I am cured.

And here comes tram No.7, Abattoirs - Grands Bassins. It arrives with a great clanking noise. It moves off again. Now, loaded with suitcases and sleeping children, it's heading towards the Grand Bassins, towards the factories in the black east. It's the last tram but one; the last one will go by in an hour.

I'm going to bed. I'm cured, and I'm going to give up writing down my impressions, like a little girl, in a nice new notebook.

There's only one case in which it might be interesting to keep a diary: that would be if [The text of the undated sheet ends here.]