page_title: Nausea (novel)
section_title: Writing and editing
hierarchical_section_title: Nausea (novel) / Publication history / Writing and editing
context_page_description: Nausea is a philosophical novel by the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, published in 1938. It is Sartre's first novel and, in his own opinion, one of his best works.
  The novel takes place in 'Bouville' a town similar to Le Havre, and it concerns a dejected historian, who becomes convinced that inanimate objects and situations encroach on his ability to define himself, on his intellectual and spiritual freedom, evoking in the protagonist a sense of nausea.
  French writer Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre's lifelong partner, argues that La Nausée grants consciousness a remarkable independence and gives reality the full weight of its sense. It is one of the canonical works of existentialism.
  In 1964 Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, but he ultimately declined to accept it. The Nobel Foundation recognized him "for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far-reaching influence on our age." Sartre was one of the few people to have declined the award, referring to it as merely a function of a bourgeois institution.
context_section_description: Sartre originally titled the novel Melancholia, based on the engraving Melencolia I by Albrecht Dürer. Simone de Beauvoir referred to it as his "factum on contingency." He composed it from 1932 to 1936. He had begun it during his military service and continued writing at Le Havre and in Berlin.
  Ethan Kleinberg reports:
  Sartre went to study in Berlin for the academic year 1933. While in Berlin, Sartre did not take any university courses or work with Husserl or Heidegger. Sartre's time seems to have been spent reading Husserl and working on the second draft of Nausea.
  David Drake confirms this account.
  The manuscript was subsequently typed. It was at first refused by the Nouvelle Revue Française (N.R.F.), despite a strong recommendation from their reviewer, Jean Paulhan. In 1937, however, the imprint's publisher, Gaston Gallimard accepted it and suggested the title La Nausée.
  Brice Parain, the editor, asked for numerous cuts of material that was either too populist or else too sexual to avoid an action for indecency. Sartre deleted the populist material, which was not natural to him, with few complaints, because he wanted to be published by the prestigious N.R.F., which had a strong, if vague, house style. However, he stood fast on the sexual material which he felt was an artistically necessary hallucinatory ingredient.
  Michel Contat, one of Sartre's closest collaborators and then among his most prominent scholars, has examined the original typescript and feels that, "if ever Melancholia is published as its author had originally intended it, the novel will no doubt emerge as a work which is more composite, more baroque and perhaps more original than the version actually published."
caption: Melencolia I, by Albrecht Dürer
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