CHESTNUT TREE
29
as if it were not altogether a hand. I thought of a big white worm ...
no, that was not quite it either. And the doubtful transparency of
that glass of beer, at the Mably Cafe. Doubtful, suspect, that is what
these things- these sounds, scents and
tastes--wert:~.·
When they
slipped past you quickly, like a hare that has been flushed, and you
did not pay much attention to them, it was possible to believe they
were quite simple and reassuring, that there was a true blue, a true
red, a true almond and violet scent in the world. But as soon as you
waylaid them for a moment, this sense of comfort and security gave
way to a profound malaise: colors, tastes, smells were never true,
never their plain selves and nothing but themselves. The simplest, the
most undecomposable attributes had something superfluous in them–
selves, relative to themselves, at the heart of them. That black there,
against my foot, did not seem to be black but rather the confused
effort to imagine black by someone who had never seen it and who
could not stop himself, someone who had imagined an ambiguous
state of being, beyond color. It
resembled
a color ... but it also
resembled a bruise, or a secretion, an oozing . . . and something else
even, a smell, for instance; it blended into the smell of wet earth, of
warm wet wood, into the dark smell overlying this sinewy wood like
a coat of varnish, into the savor of sweet, ground-up fiber. I not only
saw
that black; seeing is an abstract creation, an idea that has been
gone over, clarified, a man's idea. But that black, that sickly and
amorphous presence, overran the sense of sight, and of smell and
taste as well, from a long way off.... Then this excess turned into
confusion, and in the end it was nothing because it was too much.
That moment was extraordinary. There was I, unmoving, un–
feeling, in the throes of a frightful ecstasy. But in the very midst of
this ecstasy something new had appeared: I understood my Nausea,
I understood it perfectly. To tell the truth, I did not formulate my
discovery in my own mind. But I believe it would be easy for me to
put it into words now. The essence of it is contingency. I mean that,
by definition, existence is not necessity. To exist is simply
to be here;
existents appear, may be encountered, but they can never be
deduced.
There are people, I believe, who have understood this. But they try
to overcome this contingency by creating a being that is necessary and
its own cause. Now, no necessary being can explain existence: contin–
gency is not a pretense, an appearance that can be dispelled; it is the
absolute, and consequently gratuitousness itself. Everything is gratui–
tous-this park, this c:ity, and myself. At the time this truth happens .
to strike you, it makes your stomach tum over and everything around
