"Seekrank sitz' ich noch immer am Mastbaum", oder: "... wie schade, hat gar nichts von Helgoland gesehn!" ; einige Fälle von Nausea in der Literatur

Abstract

For most people, the constant rocking movement of a ship under way brings about queasiness of greater or lesser intensity, so-called seasickness, a form of kinetosis (motion sickness) which can lead to the victim’s complete collapse accompanied by the violent longing for death. For Petrarch, seasickness was worse than death. It is not surprising that a phenomenon such as this one, from which there is no escape, is found reflected in a wide variety of guises in literature from antiquity to the present. Examples from "high" and "low" literature illuminate the main aspects of the discussion: Seasickness is regarded unmanly, for example; "tough guys," especially sailors, play it down to an absolute minimum (Lukian, Gerstäcker, Thomas Mann). Others delight in detailed humorous descriptions (Rehm, Thoman Mann again, Kishon), which in certain nihilist works can reach a positively nauseating level (Céline). For anyone not suffering from the affliction himself, it is easy to regard the plight of others with malignant glee (Gerstäcker, Rehm, Pastor Bardey and popular ballads). It is not possible to present more than a very rough outline of this topic, nor to provide anything remotely close to a complete catalogue of the various remedies allegedly to be taken before, during or after the journey, from pickled herring (Heine) to red wine and white bread (Goethe). Overcome with seasickness, drowning in self-pity and the desire for delivery through death, one is hardly in a position to appreciate such advice anyway.