If what he would later call the “myth” ofl’homme seulguided his life as
a Normalien, its influence continued in hisThe Legend of Truthand
reached its creative climax inNausea. Sartre identifies with Roquentin as
he will later do with another solitary man, Matthew Delarue, the leading
protagonist of his next novelistic undertaking, a set of novels,The Roads
to Freedom.^15
To say that the myth of solitary man disappears with Sartre’s experi-
ence of the war is inexact. One continues to sense its presence in several
characters of his novels and plays in the 1940 s and 1950 s. In fact, the idea
of the solitary individual reflects the ideal of the individual as cham-
pioned by proto-existentialists, Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich
Nietzsche, both of whom had introduced the “existentialist” theme of
“becoming an individual” by embracing the responsibility that both
produces and defines it. Kierkegaard, for example, was reputed to have
wished for “That Single Individual” as the epitaph on his tombstone.^16
And Nietzsche wrote eloquently about the loneliness of the individual
who rises above the herd.^17 Sartre was familiar with the work of
Nietzsche, though perhaps not yet with that of Kierkegaard, when he
was fashioning this “myth” as a Normalien.^18
(^15) In hisWar Diaries, Sartre muses: “Why is it that Antoine Roquentin and Mathieu, who are
me, are indeed so gloomy – whereas, Heavens! life for me isn’t all that bad? I think it’s
because they’re homonculi. In reality, they areme,stripped of the living principle. The essential
difference between Roquentin and me is that, for my part, I write the story of Antoine
Roquentin...That’s what I did: I stripped my characters of my obsessive passion for
writing, my pride, my faith in my destiny, my metaphysical optimism – and thereby provoked
in them a gloomy pullulation” (WD 338 – 339 ). Elsewhere Sartre speaks of his next novel,The
Age of Reason, as a sequel toNauseaand of Mathieu, its chief protagonist, as a “continu-
ation” of Roquentin (Sartre’s first recorded interview, given to Claudine Chonez [ 1938 ] and
cited in Contat and Rybalkai: 114 ).
(^16) Joakim Garff,Søren Kierkegaard. A Biographytrans. Bruce H. Kirmmse (Princeton Univer-
17 sity Press,^2005 ),^812.
“Today...when only the herd animal is honored” (Friedrich Nietzsche,Werke, 3 vols., vol.
ii, ed. Karl Schlechte [Munich and Vienna, 1977 ],. 678 ; see Thomas R. Flynn,Existential-
18 ism: A Very Short Introduction[Oxford University Press,^2006 ],^25 ).
Given his high regard for Jean Wahl’sVers le concret( 1932 ), which includes references to
Heidegger and Kierkegaard, it is possible that Sartre would have read Jean Wahl’s essay
“Heidegger et Kierkegaard,” published inRecherches Philosophiques 2 ( 1932 – 33 ): 349 – 370 .In
hisWar Diaries, December 1939 , Sartre does cite Wahl’sE ́tudes Kierkegaardiennes, published
in 1938 , though by thenNauseawas in print. He also lists Kierkegaard’sThe Concept of
Dread(Angst) among the books he had recently read (WD-E 139 ). And his interest in the
The Diary of Antoine Roquentin 141