Melencolia I is a 1514 engraving by the German Renaissance master Albrecht Dürer.
The overwhelming nausea has me in its clutches again. I think of Jean Paul Sartre and his novel "Nausea". I bought it hoping it might give me some insight into my own deplorable condition. It did. It does.
A Summery of Nausea by John Paul Sartre:
"Antoine Roquentin, a historian living in Bouville, France, begins a diary to help him explain the strange and sickening sensations that have been bothering him for the previous few days. He is not sure what exactly is wrong with him, often doubting if there is any need to keep a diary at all. Nevertheless, a few days later, he is so overcome with what he calls the Nausea, that he begins to furiously list every insignificant fact, detail, feeling, and impression occurring both inside himself and the outside world. He holds a stone, looks at a glass of beer, and tries to touch a soggy piece of paper in the street--each time sensing a worrisome and overwhelming presence."
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/nausea/summary.html
“I am. I am, I exist, I think, therefore I am; I am because I think, why do I think? I don't want to think any more, I am because I think that I don't want to be, I think that I . . . because . . . ugh!”
“I jump up: it would be much better if I could only stop thinking. Thoughts are the dullest things. Duller than flesh. They stretch out and there's no end to them and they leave a funny taste in the mouth. Then there are words, inside the thoughts, unfinished words, a sketchy sentence which constantly returns: "I have to fi. . . I ex. . . Dead . . . M. de Roll is dead . . . I am not ... I ex. . ." It goes, it goes . . . and there's no end to it. It's worse than the rest because I feel responsible and have complicity in it. For example, this sort of painful rumination: I exist, I am the one who keeps it up. I. The body lives by itself once it has begun. But though I am the one who continues it, unrolls it. I exist. How serpentine is this feeling of existing, I unwind it, slowly. ... If I could keep myself from thinking! I try, and succeed: my head seems to fill with smoke . . . and then it starts again: "Smoke . . . not to think . . . don't want to think ... I think I don't want to think. I mustn't think that I don't want to think. Because that's still a thought." Will there never be an end to it?
My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think . . . and I can't stop myself from thinking. At this very moment, it's frightful, if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing. I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire: the hatred, the disgust of existing, there are as many ways to make myself exist, to thrust myself into existence. Thoughts are born at the back of me, like sudden giddiness, I feel them being born behind my head ... if I yield, they're going to come round in front of me, between my eyes, and I always yield, the thought grows and grows and there it is, immense, filling me completely and renewing my existence.”
“I grow warm, I begin to feel happy. There is nothing extraordinary in this, it is a small happiness of Nausea: it spreads at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of out time - the time of purple suspenders, and broken chair seats; it is made of white, soft instants, spreading at the edge, like an oil stain. No sooner than born, it is already old, it seems as though I have known it for twenty yea
“I do not think therefore I am a moustache”
“People. You must love people. Men are admirable. I want to vomit—and suddenly, there it is: the Nausea”
“The Nausea is not inside me: I feel it out there in the wall, in the suspenders, everywhere around me. It makes itself one with the café, I am the one who is within it.”
“I have no taste for work any longer, I can do nothing more except wait for night. 530: Things are bad! Things are very bad: I have it, the filth, the Nausea.”
“Something has happened to me, I can't doubt it any more. It came as an illness does, not like an ordinary certainty, not like anything evident. It came cunningly, little by little; I felt a little strange, a little put out, that's all. Once established it never moved, it stayed quiet, and I was able to persuade myself that nothing was the matter with me, that it was a false alarm. And now, it's blossoming.”
“The Nausea has not left me and I don't believe it will leave me so soon; but I no longer have to bear it, it is no longer an illness or a passing fit: it is I.”
(all quotes above: Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea)
