morality of the work of art” ( 1921 – 1929 ); the chastening experience of
failing theagre ́gationexam and passing it on the second try, which led
him, with Beauvoir’s support, to modestly cleanse himself of the “super-
humanity” with which he, Nizan and Maheu had endowed themselves
under the spell of a Nietzschean exuberance ( 1929 – 1937 ) when he
seemed on the edge of failure; and, finally, theannus mirabiliswhen
Nauseawas accepted for publication, “The Wall” appeared in the June
1937 issue of theNouvelle Revue Franc ̧aise, he met Wanda Kosakiewicz,
and received a teaching post in Paris (WD 73 – 78 ).
Omnivorous humanism(s)
It is Beauvoir who registers the “conversion”:
Metaphysicalsolidarity that I newly discovered, I, who was a solipsist. I cannot be
consciousness, spirit, among ants. I understand what was lacking in our antihuman-
ism. To admire man as given (a beautiful intelligent animal) is idiotic – but there is
no other reality than human reality – all values are founded on it. And that “toward
which it transcends itself ” is what has always moved each one us.^34
The issue of humanism arises when Roquentin encounters the self-
taught man in the library. The autodidact is methodically reading every
entry in the encyclopedia in alphabetical order, reminiscent of the young
Sartre in his grandfather’s library. This unsavory and rather pitiful
character is the incarnation of a certain kind of humanism that Roquen-
tin despises. He used to hang around with some Parisian humanists
who were smooth in their measured philanthropy. But this little fellow
was their crude, barbaric mimic: “a provincial humanist.” Raised in
Germany, the man confesses to Roquentin that, as a prisoner in a French
internment camp during the Great War, he had traded his youthful belief
in God for a belief in man. In a remark that invites ironic comparison
with Sartre’s experience in a German stalag a few years later, the
humanist explains: “In the internment camp, I learned to believe in
men.”^35 Now comes the venture of trust: “Monsieur, I know that I can
(^34) Wartime Diary, trans. Anne Deing Cordero (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009 ),
35 Jan.^21 ,^1940 ,^234.
Nausea, trans. Lloyd Alexander (New York: New Directions, 1964 ), 114 ; hereafterNausea.
Omnivorous humanism(s) 149