The motive of Roquentin`s dictum lies within his desire to escape the feeling of Nausée in which he finds himself. Written just after the Spanish Civil war and published just before the outbreak of WWII, Sartre`s La Nausée explores the concept of free-will and the relationship between the individual`s consciousness and the outside world, at a time when corruption and unrest sparked philosophical questions of individual responsibility and more fundamentally the meaning of existence. Roquentin`s dictum is very direct in its meaning: the emphatic il faut implies Roquentin felt it necessary to choose between vivre or raconter in order to escape the feeling of nausée, or maybe simply as he saw the two as incompatible. Throughout the novel, the diary of Roquentin illustrates the progression of a search for the cause of his nausée as well as simultaneously attempting to discover the meaning of existence. In order to demonstrate how the novel demonstrates the significance of this dictum, it would be appropriate to discuss the ways in which the verbs vivre and raconter are explored through the examples of characters and events that Roquentin chooses to put into his diary, so that the reasons why a choice must be made between the two can be shown.
Firstly, the examples of raconter and its effects must be considered. Raconter, meaning to tell/to describe, seems to be at first epitomised by the character of Anny. Roquentin receives letters from her in which he can find nothing of interest, as he considers that her tales of events lack importance and are solely recounting the past. Throughout the novel, she continuously strives to remember les moments parfaits which for Roquentin are irretrievable and lost due to the passing of time. Roquentin states that "un homme, c`est toujours un conteur d`histoires, il vit entouré de ses histories et des histories d`autrui". For Roquentin, Anny is one of those individuals who raconte. Another of these figures is the Autodidact, who believes that one can learn everything there is to know through reading books alphabetically in the library. This, as well as the Autodidact`s admiration for Roquentin`s aventures, brings the latter to the conclusion that "pour que l`événement le plus banal devienne une aventure, il faut et il suffit qu`on se mette à le raconter". The habit of alphabetical reading is an example of raconte, as the Autodidact is solely learning facts, and Roquentin`s aventures do not exist except for in terms of raconter. The Autodidact`s excitement at Roquentin`s aventures, combined with Anny`s desire to recreate les moments parfaits, brings Roquentin to the conclusion that "autant [de personnes] voudrait tenter d`attraper le temps par la queue", implying it is a futile exercise to raconte as it causes the subject to become stuck in the past.
It is this relationship with time and the conclusions that he draws from it that is a fundamental factor in Roquentin`s experience of existence. The predictability of the Autodidact`s behaviour causes him to question the relationship between past, present and future; "chaque instant ne parait que pour amener ceux qui suivent". The concept of raconter becomes a signifier of things past, as the notion of describing necessarily resurrects previously conceived events or ideas. For the first part of the novel, Roquentin is engaged with a study into the life of the Marquis de Rollebon, a French aristocrat who lived during the French revolution, whom he finds difficult to understand. The reason behind his conducting of a study into the life of Rollebon begins to occur to him when he looks in the mirror and is confused as to whether he is seeing his own face or that of Rollebon; he is trying to use the past in order to make sense of the present, and begins to feel constrained by it. In the same way, when he visits the Musée de Bouville, he comes to the conclusion that the subjects in the portraits were afraid of death and relied on their past experiences to make them worthy. These events lead to Roquentin`s revelation about the nature of consciousness, concluding that it is devoid of a project and therefore one must vivre rather than raconter. From this point onwards, the relationship between vivre and raconter becomes clearer and Roquentin embarks on his analysis of the present devoid of the use of past events.
After the abandoning of the autobiographical study, Roquentin comes up against another problem; "si seulement je pouvais m'arreter de penser". Earlier in the novel he muses, "ne pas penser.je ne veux pas penser.je pense que je ne vuex pas penser. Il ne faut pas que je pense que je ne veux pas penser. Parce que c'est encore une pensée". Here, the relationship between vivre and raconter is brought into question once more, as fundamentally it seems that Roquentin's preference to vivre is in rejection of raconter. However, Roquentin realises that as soon as a thought is conceived, and subsequently considered, the original thought becomes an event in the past, and thus its reconsideration becomes a raconte. How, then, is it possible to vivre without raconter? It is this factor that puts into question the nature of La Nausée as a novel itself. Roquentin criticises the notion of raconter, suggesting it to be inferior to vivre, as "quand on raconte la vie, tout change - les evenements se produisent dans un sens et nous les racontons en sens inverse". However, the episodes in the novel such as the meeting with Anny, lunch with the Autodidact and the visit to the Musée de Bouville seem to be in themselves a recounting of previous events, and thus a direct contradiction of Roquentin's sense of vivre. The critic Christina Howells points out that "Roquentin himself is acutely aware of the insidious teleology necessarily entailed in telling a story" and that it is the fact that Roquentin himself is a story-teller which is part of his own dilemma.
In terms of Sartre`s writing-style within the novel, it would seem imperative to create a sense of unstructured consciousness in order to create the sense of Roquentin`s organic experience rather than a recounting of events. As previously stated, this can on some levels be regarded as an impossible feat, as the nature of story-telling itself is reconstruction, and not an exact stream of consciousness. However, in various episodes within the novel, the question of the nature of human consciousness arises. For example, the episode when Roquentin reads of a child`s rape and murder in a newspaper demonstrates the idea of consciousness set out in Sartre`s theoretical work. In terms of the style in this particular passage, "Sartre has over compensated for the otherwise possibly colourless and abstract nature of his material in the apparently gratuitous obscenity of Roquentin`s responses to the account of the child`s death" . This style would imply that Roquentin is recounting the episode elaborately, and therefore not subjectively experiencing it. However, in describing the feeling of desire, shame, dear, disgust and fainting, the author is conveying the idea that consciousness is in fact limited due to "the contingent situation over consciousness" , in this case it being presented with horrific events. Furthermore, the smell and touch of the newspaper give Roquentin objects to his consciousness, further emphasising how consciousness can be subjected involuntarily to emotions and experiences. Here, the question of the freedom of the individual arises, and the relationship between vivre and raconter is once again examined. The concept of vivre opposes the concept of raconte, because the latter is constrained by the past and a reconstruction of experience. This therefore suggests that in order to reject raconte and accept vivre in the choice proposed in the statement, the individual`s freedom must not be restricted. However, just when Roquentin resolves to abort his research on Rollebon in order to vivre without constraint and understand the present, he becomes subject to an experience of the present which is restricted by the newspaper article.
This idea of being determined by situation is at the centre of the relationship between the vivre and raconter. The latter term for Roquentin implies being restricted by the past, however the former, although on the surface is ideally unrestricted, poses problems of perception for Roquentin. The basis of this is the relationship between existence and essence. In Sartrian Existentialism existence precedes essence; essence being the physical characteristics of an object and existence being its fundamental being. For Roquentin, it is the essence which prevents an individual from perceiving the existence of an object. For example, looking at the roots of a chestnut tree, Roquentin comes to the realisation that its characteristics are the creation of the observer, and only by looking through these can the bare existence of the tree come into view.
"Je voyais bien qu`on ne pouvait pas passer de sa fonction de racine, de pompe aspirante, à ça, à cette peau dure et compacte de phoque.La fonction n`expliquait rien : elle permettait de comprendre en gros ce que c`était qu`une racine, mais pas du tout celle-ci"
In Roquentin`s eyes, the essences of an object do not actually exist as they are created by the observer. These essences are therefore a form of raconte and have prevented the observer from seeing the true being of the object. It is the confrontation with the idea that essence does not actually exist, and functions just as a means of comparison, which creates the feeling of nausée in Roquentin. The implications for the concept of essence being created by the observer is the reason why Roquentin feels it is necessary to choose between vivre and raconter. Essence and the verb raconter are closely linked, as are existence and vivre. Essence is something created by an individual who is confronted with an object, which necessarily causes them to describe it in terms of characteristics, and thus the individual is forced to raconter, and being prevented from seeing its true existence. Existence, on the other hand, is only possible to see when the essence of an object is put aside. In order to do this, the individual must not be raconter.
Early on in the novel, Roquentin`s fear of the realisation of this existence is introduced and becomes clear to be the reason for his feeling of la nausée. It is the separation of existence and essence which causes the feeling of nausée, as can be seen with Roquentin`s experience of music. The emotion he remembers by listening to a song that he once heard with Ema he describes as "j`ai senti avec violence qu j`avais une aventure". However, when she comes to sit down next to him with her arms around him (a material sensation and a realisation of existence), he realises he must "recommer de vivre" and that "l`impression d`aventure venait de s`évanouir". His first thoughts are those of raconter, followed by the desire to return to vivre. In this way, Roquentin is implying that it is impossible to do both.
The title statement suggests that it is impossible, or maybe simply unprofitable, for vivre and raconter to coexist. When Roquentin becomes aware of essence in the form of raconter, for example with the chestnut tree, he is overcome with the feeling of la nausée. In resolving to vivre, he feels elevated from others in that he recognises his own existence, and thus has made the choice. However, as the novel progresses, it becomes clear that to raconter becomes unavoidable, shown fundamentally in the fact he is writing and recounting, but also with the close relationship between existence and essence. Furthermore, when he resolves to write a novel at the end of the book, he seems to be leaning towards the use of raconter in order to understand the present and his existence. Therefore, although it might be profitable for Roquentin to choose one of the two concepts to avoid the feeling of la nausée, the two are significantly interlinked and thus the idea of choosing is desirable but perhaps impossible for him.
