Fiction-
The Diary of Antoine Roquentin. By Jean-Paul Sartre. Translated by Lloyd Alexander. (John Lehmann. 9s. 6d.)
Randle in Springtime. By Geoffrey Cotterell. (Eyre and Spottiswoode. 9s.) JEAN-PAUL. SARTRE'S novel La Nausee, here translated under the title of The Diary of Antoine Roquentin, is one of those rare books whose publication (in 1938) announced that a new genius was among us. Although so far M. Sartre has produced no other comparable with the major novels of Dostoevsky, it was possible to see in this work something of the quality of Letters from the Underworld. Here was the same honesty of self-revelation, something of the same insight into the mind at work, and here, also, a subtle observer of character and incident. The two works differ in their philosophical bases Where Dostoevsky's imaginative force, allied with Christian mysti- cism, results in an almost unbearable revelation of motive and responsibility and the hidden darknesses of guilt and secret self- accusation, M. Sartre's atheist Existentialism makes for a surface hyper-consciousness, a pleasurable tingling of the skin rather than pity and terror felt in the solar plexus. It is its freedom from exterior concepts of duty that has made this philosophy so widely accepted today.
The blurb of the translation tells us that in this diary M. Sartre " presents us with his first full-length essay in the philosophy for which he has since become famous," but the English reader must not expect to find here an analysis of this philosophy which, Foulquie tells us, even experts cannot always completely understand. In actual fact La Massie will give the reader no more than a little elementary grounding in one aspect of M. Sartre's form of Exis- tentialism which he expounded at length, some five years later, in L'Etre et le Neant : "Never, until these last few days, had I understood the meaning of ' existence.' I was like the others, like the ones walking along the seashore, all dressed in their spring finery. I said, like them, The ocean is green ; that white speck up there is a seagull,' but I didn't feel that it existed or that the seagull was an existing sea- gull' ; usually existence hides itself. It is there, around us, in us, it is us, you can't say two words without mentioning it, but you can never touch it."
Roquentin, with his growing consciousness of existence, is in the process of reaching that state of complete self-responsibility which is glimpsed in his ex-mistress Anny. The characters may be regarded as aspects of error in this philosophy, but every character in the book, apart from any symbolical importance he may have, is solidly real and human. It is this ability to combine reality tind philosophical pertinence that gives M. Sartre his great distinction. Among these characters the self-taught man, hiding from his own existence behind a wall of undigested information acquired by reading a library from A to Z, is particularly memorable. Without ever having understood or really seen a human being, he believes himself to be a humanist and a Socialist. Roquentin tells him: "'You see that you don't love them. You wouldn't recognise
them in the street. They're only symbols in your eyes. You are not at all touched by them; you're touched by the Youth of the Man, the Love of Man and Woman, the Human Voice.'
" Well ? Doesn't that exist? '
"'Certainly not., it doesn't exist ! Neither Youth nor Maturity nor Old Age nor Death . . "
The scene in which the self-taught man Is, in the end, betrayed by his own thwarted nature is one of the most intensely presented in modem fiction.
It will be a pity if English publishers continue to find it neces- sary, for financial reasons, to take from America translations of Continental works that could be prepared better at home. I gather from his use of that disfiguring word " gotten " that Mr. Lloyd Alexander is an American. His translation of La Nausee, although adequate as a whble, has in it small errors and inexactnesses that are often maddening. In Roquentin's nightmare about insects in a garden, for instance, the word teignes is rendered as " ringworm," and agitaient (page 99, in relation to a woman's hands) as " trembled," which implies palsy, when " fluttered " or " fidgeted " would surely give a more precise picture. If space permitted, these examples could be increased by half a dozen others casually noted down in one reading. Publishers' lists describe both The Diary of Antoine Roquentin and Mr. Cotterell's Randle in Springtime as novels, but so great is the difference between the two books that one wishes again for another category in which to place works of exceptional quality. This is not to belittle the entertainment value of Mr. Cotterell's novel, but simply to underline that it will give the reader entertain- ment but little more. Randle in Springtime has by now been so widely read and reviewed that there is scarcely need to tell anyone that it concerns a very ordinary English officer in post-war Germany and his decline and fall before the temptation of the black market. It is very readable, and can be recommended to anyone looking for relaxation over the Easter holidays. OLIVIA MANNING.
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