Antoine Roquentin, Historian?: A Critical Look at Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea

34 Historically Speaking September/October 2007 JEAN-PAUL SARTRE PUBUSHED HIS FIRST NOVEL LA Nausée in 1938. Itwas his account of a crisis in the life of an eccentric historian residing in a drab hotelin aprovincialFrench seaport, doing research on an obscure nobleman of the Revolutionary andNapoleonic eras. The historian, Antoine Roquentin, finds himself increasingly disgusted by everything and everyone around him, leading him to question his rationality andhis thoughts, andto abandon his research, untilfinally , in a climactic confrontation with a chestnut tree, he breaks through to a definitivegrasp of existence. As a result, he leavesforParis to devote himself to thepursuit of art. This novel, with its unconventionalform and antisocial tone, laid thefoundation for Sartre's notoriety in prewar France, a notoriety that survived the occupation and reachedits %enitb during thepostwaryears, when his name became synonymous with the intellectual movement of "existentialism. " He died in 1980, mourned as a national and international sage, and in 2005, the centennial of his birth, commemorations of his life and work tookplace all over the world, including at the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center of the University of California, Santa Barbara. At this conference there was no shortage of aduktion. PaulSennino, however,pleasedsome andupset others by challenging the historiographical, literary, andphilosophical, credentials of one of the most celebratedthinkers of ourtime. Antoine Roquentin, Historian? A Critical Look at Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea Paul Sonnino I am a historian of early modern Europe, and my only qualification for being here today to speak on Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea is that the distinguished organizer of this conference, Ernest Sturm, has graciously invited me to do so. To make things worse, I am a very methodical plodder. So I hope you will bear with me if, in my obsession for getting my facts straight, I begin by trying to see what exacdy Sartre lets me know about the life of his protagonist , Antoine Roquentin. It would appear as if Antoine was born in 1902, in or around Paris, because at the age of 8 we find him playing in the Luxembourg gardens. Of his parents and his education we know absolutely nothing, except that around the age of 15, in 1917, he appears in La Rochelle, listening to the whistling of American soldiers. Obviously he escaped the brunt of World War I, but I can't help but wonder: How did Roquentin become a historian, who did he study under, and how, upon reaching the age of 20, did he escape conscription? Sartre only deigns to tell us that, at die same age, Roquentin was getting drunk, doing historical research on a certain Marquis de Rollebon, and acting as a notary clerk in a suburb of Rouen. In 1923 Roquentin abandoned France for a life of travel. Is it then that he stopped in Hamburg and Berlin? I can only guess because he was dating a girl named Erna in Hamburg, whom he might not have recalled if he had already met his beloved Anny. Moreover, Germany is on the way to Moscow, where we find him in 1923, pursuing his research on Rollebon and stealing documents from the Soviet State Library. He must have left Russia in a hurry, because there is no other time that we can place his photographs of Spain, most plausibly taken before his arrival in Spanish Morocco, where in 1924 we first meet him in the company of his friend Anny. We lose them in 1925. Perhaps this was the year of Djibouti and Aden, but if so, by 1926 they have taken a fast boat to England, and are on the verge of splitting up. In that same year his impulse took him to The 1964 English language version cover of Sartre's Nausea. Tokyo. Perhaps he was still there or in Kamaishishi in 1927, when Anny sent him a picture of herself from Portsmouth. Then maybe Shanghai with Mercier, for in 1928 he is having lunch with him in Hanoi and fed up with the life of a vagabond. At this point I can't help but wonder, in keeping with my pedestrian spirit, just how Roquentin managed to finance all diese travels. In 1932, at the beginning of...