Sartre presented the completed second version of the factum for
Beauvoir’s assessment since mutual critique had become a common
practice between them. Seeing that it was already conceived as a diary,
her advice was to refashion the treatise into novelistic form. Opting for
its imaginative expression, he revised “Melancholia,” its initial title
inspired by the Du ̈rer woodcut,^7 a third time and submitted it to the
renowned publishing house, Gallimard. All this labor on a topic that
clearly was life-defining for Sartre, made its rejection in the spring of
1936 all the more painful. But thanks to the influence of close friends,
Gaston Gallimard read the rejected manuscript himself and declared it
“splendid.”^8 Fortunately, Monsieur Gallimard did suggest that its title
be changed toNauseaand so it was. That was in May 1937. The work
appeared to general acclaim the following year. Meanwhile, Sartre had
also submitted his short story about the Spanish Civil War, “The Wall,”
to Gallimard and it was immediately accepted for publication. It
appeared a few months beforeNauseain the firm’s prestigiousNouvelle
Revue Franc ̧aise. Andre ́ Gide reportedly declared the short story a
masterpiece and asked the editors: “Who is this new Jean-Paul?...
I think we can expect a great deal from him.”^9 In a letter to Beauvoir,
Sartre quotes an appreciative card from Nobel laureate Roger Martin du
Gard, who had just read the novel: “How to write to you after reading
you? One would be too afraid of sounding like theSelf-Taught Man...
or, worse still, being pigeonholed with the bastards. All the same, it’s
truly splendid, your book. And I’m happy that youexist.”^10 Henceforth,
Sartre would publish several essays and reviews in that journal. Its
(^7) Husserl analyzes that woodcut in hisIdeas I,§ 111 , the book that Sartre studied assiduously
in Berlin and which he takes as the model for analyzing the work of art (for Sartre’s initial
mention, seeIon 149 ; he develops his analysis inImaginary 20 , 24 and 49 ). For a close
reading of this problematic text in the context of Husserl’s theory of the imagination along
with critical remarks about Sartre’s interpretation of this passage, see Saraiva,Imagination
selon Husserl, 227 – 235. The artwork aside, “Melancholia” is an apt title for a malady that we
saw overtake Sartre and continue for some months following his experiment with mescalin
8 in^1935.
Hazel Rowley,Teˆte-a`-Teˆte: Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre(New York: Harper-
9 Collins,^2005 ),^360 ,n.^2.
10 Quoted by Cohen-Solal (Life^120 ).
Dated July 1938. Jean-Paul Sartre,Witness to My Life. The Letters of Jean-Paul Sartre to
Simone de Beauvoir, 1926 – 1939 , ed. Simone de Beauvoir (New York: Scribner’s, 1992 ), 154.
The necessity of contingency:Nausea 139