manner -- not only in the form of a violent history but also in the form of subversive

knowledge. This crisis invites us, for the very first time, to violate the taboo that neither
Heraclitus nor Euripides could ever quite manage to violate, and to expose to the light of
reason the role played by violence in human society.

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Part II Triangular Desire

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Chapter 3 Triangular Desire

"Mimesis" or "mimetic desire" is the single most important concept for understanding
Girard's thought. His main reason for using the Greek word rather than "imitation" is that it
"makes the conflictual aspect of mimesis conceivable," something not possible with the
drained and feeble imitation ( Girard, Things Hidden, 18). "Triangular Desire" is an excerpt
taken from the first chapter of Girard first book, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel (1-17). It
includes the triangular structure of desire: self, other as mediator* (later he would switch to
"model"*), and the object that the self or subject desires because he or she knows, imagines,
or suspects the mediator desires it. Internal* and external* mediation (see under
Model/Mediator),* rivalry, resentment, envy, and vanity are discussed in the course of
Girard's argument that the romantic concept of a spontaneous desire is illusory. The only
essential aspect of mimesis that Girard did not emphasize in this early analysis is the reality
of mimesis as a capacity and force which operates prior to cognition and representation,
although of course it becomes intertwined with representation in all the forms of human
culture.* For further reading on mimesis as precognitive and prerepresentational, see Things
Hidden, 1-23, and "To Double Business Bound,"200-203, as well as the interview that
constitutes the epilogue to the Reader.

"I want you to know, Sancho, that the famous Amadis of Gaul was one of the most perfect
knight errants. But what am I saying, one of the most perfect? I should say the only, the first,
the unique, the master and lord of all those who existed in the world. . . . I think . . . that,
when a painter wants to become famous for his art he tries to imitate the originals of the best
masters he knows; the same rule applies to most important jobs or exercises which

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contribute to the embellishment of republics; thus the man who wishes to be known as careful
and patient should and does imitate Ulysses, in whose person and works Homer paints for us
a vivid portrait of carefulness and patience, just as Virgil shows us in the person of Aeneas
the valor of a pious son and the wisdom of a valiant captain; and it is understood that they
depict them not as they are but as they should be, to provide an example of virtue for
centuries to come. In the same way Amadis was the post, the star, the sun for brave and
amorous knights, and we others who fight under the banner of love and chivalry should
imitate him. Thus, my friend Sancho, I reckon that whoever imitates him best will come
closest to perfect chivalry."

Don Quixote has surrendered to Amadis the individual's fundamental prerogative: he no

longer chooses the objects of his own desire -Amadis must choose for him. The disciple
pursues objects which are determined for him, or at least seem to be determined for him, by
the model of all chivalry. We shall call this model the mediator of desire. Chivalric existence
is the imitation of Amadis in the same sense that the Christian's existence is the imitation of
Christ.

In most works of fiction, the characters have desires which are simpler than Don Quixote's.
There is no mediator; there is only the subject and the object. When the "nature" of the object
inspiring the passion is not sufficient to account for the desire, one must turn to the
impassioned subject. Either his "psychology" is examined or his "liberty" invoked. But desire
is always spontaneous. It can always be portrayed by a simple straight line which joins
subject and object.

The straight line is present in the desire of Don Quixote, but it is not essential. The mediator
is there, above that line, radiating toward both the subject and the object. The spatial
metaphor which expresses this triple relationship is obviously the triangle. The object
changes with each adventure but the triangle remains. The barber's basin or Master Peter's
puppets replace the windmills; but Amadis is always present.

The triangle is no Gestalt. The real structures are intersubjective. They cannot be localized
anywhere; the triangle has no reality whatever; it is a systematic metaphor, systematically
pursued. Because changes in size and shape do not destroy the identity of this figure, as we
will see later, the diversity as well as the unity of the works can be simultaneously illustrated.
The purpose and limitations of this structural geometry may become clearer through a
reference to "structural models." The triangle is a model of a sort, or rather a whole family of
models. But these models are not "mechanical" like those of Claude Lévi-Strauss. They
always allude to the mystery, transparent yet opaque, of human relations. All types of
structural thinking assume that human reality is intelligible;

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it is a logos and, as such, it is an incipient logic, or it degrades itself into a logic. It can thus
be systematized, at least up to a point, however unsystematic, irrational, and chaotic it may
appear even to those, or rather especially to those who operate the system. A basic contention
of this essay is that the great writers apprehend intuitively and concretely, through the
medium of their art, if not formally, the system in which they were first imprisoned together
with their contemporaries. Literary interpretation must be systematic because it is the
continuation of literature. It should formalize implicit or already half-explicit systems. To
maintain that criticism will never be systematic is to maintain that it will never be real
knowledge. The value of a critical thought depends not on how cleverly it manages to
disguise its own systematic nature or on how many fundamental issues it manages to shirk or
to dissolve but on how much literary substance it really embraces, comprehends, and makes
articulate. The goal may be too ambitious but it is not outside the scope of literary criticism.
It is the very essence of literary criticism. Failure to reach it should be condemned, but not
the attempt. Everything else has already been done.

Don Quixote, in Cervantes's novel, is a typical example of the victim of triangular desire, but
he is far from being the only one. Next to him the most affected is his squire, Sancho Panza.
Some of Sancho's desires are not imitated, for example, those aroused by the sight of a piece
of cheese or a goatskin of wine. But Sancho has other ambitions besides filling his stomach.
Ever since he has been with Don Quixote he has been dreaming of an "island" of which he
would be governor, and he wants the title of duchess for his daughter. These desires do not
come spontaneously to a simple man like Sancho. It is Don Quixote who has put them into
his head.

This time the suggestion is not literary, but oral. But the difference has little importance.
These new desires form a new triangle of which the imaginary island, Don Quixote, and
Sancho occupy the angles. Don Quixote is Sancho's mediator. The effects of triangular desire
are the same in the two characters. From the moment the mediator's influence is felt, the
sense of reality is lost and judgment paralyzed.

Since the mediator's influence is more profound and constant in the case of Don Quixote than
in that of Sancho, romantic readers have seen in the novel little more than the contrast
between Don Quixote the idealist and the realist Sancho. This contrast is real but secondary;
it should not make us overlook the analogies between the two characters. Chivalric passion
defines a desire according to the Other, opposed to this desire according to Oneself that most
of us pride ourselves on enjoying. Don Quixote and Sancho borrow their desires from the
Other in a movement which is so fundamental and primitive that they completely confuse it
with the will to be Oneself.

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One might object that Amadis is a fictitious person -- and this we must admit, but Don
Quixote is not the author of this fiction. The mediator is imaginary but not the mediation.
Behind the hero's desires there is indeed the suggestion of a third person, the inventor of
Amadis, the author of the chivalric romances. Cervantes's work is a long meditation on the
baleful influence that the most lucid minds can exercise upon one another. Except in the
realm of chivalry, Don Quixote reasons with a great deal of common sense. Nor are his
favorite writers mad: perhaps they do not even take their fiction seriously. The illusion is the
fruit of a bizarre marriage of two lucid consciousnesses. Chivalric literature, ever more
widespread since the invention of the printing press, multiplies stupendously the chances of
similar unions.
Desire according to the Other and the "seminal" function of literature are also found in the
novels of Flaubert. Emma Bovary desires through the romantic heroines who fill her
imagination. The second-rate books which she devoured in her youth have destroyed all her
spontaneity. We must turn to Jules de Gaultier for the definition of this "bovarysm" which he
reveals in almost every one of Flaubert's characters: "The same ignorance, the same
inconsistency, the same absence of individual reaction seem to make them fated to obey the
suggestion of an external milieu, for lack of an auto-suggestion from within." In his famous
essay, entitled Bovarysm, Gaultier goes on to observe that in order to reach their goal, which
is to "see themselves as they are not," Flaubert's heroes find a "model" for themselves and
"imitate from the person they have decided to be, all that can be imitated, everything exterior,
appearance, gesture, intonation, and dress."

The external aspects of imitation are the most striking; but we must above all remember that
the characters of Cervantes and Flaubert are imitating, or believe they are imitating, the
desires of models they have freely chosen. A third novelist, Stendhal, also underscores the
role of suggestion and imitation in the personality of his heroes. Mathilde de la Mole finds
her models in the history of her family; Julien Sorel imitates Napoleon. The Memoirs of
Saint-Helena and Bulletins of the Grand Army replace the tales of chivalry and the romantic
extravagances. The prince of Parma imitates Louis XIV. The young Bishop of Agde practices
the benediction in front of a mirror; he mimics the old and venerable prelates whom he fears
he does not sufficiently resemble.

Here history is nothing but a kind of literature; it suggests to all Stendhal's characters feelings
and, especially, desires that they do not experience spontaneously. When he enters the service
of the Renal family, Julien borrows from Rousseau Confessions the desire to eat at his
master's table rather than at that of the servants. Stendhal uses the word "vanity" (vanité) to
indicate all these forms of "copying" and imitating." The vaniteux -- vain person -- cannot
draw his desires from his

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own resources; he must borrow them from others. Thus the vaniteux is brother to Don
Quixote and Emma Bovary. And so in Stendhal we again find triangular desire.

In the first pages of The Red and the Black we take a walk through Verrières with the mayor
of the village and his wife. Majestic but tormented, M. de Rênal strolls along his retaining
walls. He wants to make Julien Sorel the tutor of his two sons, but not for their sake nor from
the love of knowledge. His desire is not spontaneous. The conversation between husband and
wife soon reveals the mechanism: "Valenod has no tutor for his children -- he might very
well steal this one from us."

Valenod is the richest and most influential man in Verrières, next to M. de Rênal himself.
The mayor of Verrières always has the image of his rival before his eyes during his
negotiations with old Mr. Sorel, Julien's father. He makes the latter some very favorable
propositions but the sly peasant invents a brilliant reply: "We have a better offer." This time
M. de Rênal is completely convinced that Valenod wishes to engage Julien and his own
desire is redoubled. The ever-increasing price that the buyer is willing to pay is determined
by the imaginary desire which he attributes to his rival. So there is indeed an imitation of this
imaginary desire, and even a very scrupulous imitation, since everything about the desire
which is copied, including its intensity, depends upon the desire which serves as model.
At the end of the novel, Julien tries to win back Mathilde de la Mole and, on the advice of the
dandy Korasof, resorts to the same sort of trick as his father. He pays court to the Maréchale
de Fervacques; he wishes to arouse this woman's desire and display it before Mathilde so that
the idea of imitating it might suggest itself to her. A little water is enough to prime a pump; a
little desire is enough to arouse desire in the creature of vanity.

Julien carries out his plan and everything turns out as expected. The interest which the
Maréchale takes in him reawakens Mathilde's desire. And the triangle reappears -- Mathilde,
Mme. de Fervacques, Julien -M. de Rênal, Valenod, Julien. The triangle is present each time
that Stendhal speaks of vanity, whether it is a question of ambition, business, or love. It is
surprising that the Marxist critics, for whom economic structures provide the archetype of all
human relations, have not as yet pointed out the analogy between the crafty bargaining of old
man Sorel and the amorous maneuvers of his son.

A vaniteux will desire any object so long as he is convinced that it is already desired by
another person whom he admires. The mediator here is a rival, brought into existence as a
rival by vanity, and that same vanity demands his defeat. The rivalry between mediator and
the person who desires constitutes an essential difference between this desire and that of Don
Quixote, or of Emma Bovary. Amadis cannot vie with

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Don Quixote in the protection of orphans in distress; he cannot slaughter giants in his place.
Valenod, on the other hand, can steal the tutor from M. de Rênal; the Maréchale de
Fervacques can take Julien from Mathilde de la Mole. In most of Stendhal's desires, the
mediator himself desires the object, or could desire it: it is even this very desire, real or
presumed, which makes this object infinitely desirable in the eyes of the subject. The
mediation begets a second desire exactly the same as the mediator's. This means that one is
always confronted with two competing desires. The mediator can no longer act his role of
model without also acting or appearing to act the role of obstacle. Like the relentless sentry of
the Kafka fable, the model shows his disciple the gate of paradise and forbids him to enter
with one and the same gesture. We should not be surprised if the look cast by M. de Rênal on
Valenod is vastly different from that raised by Don Quixote toward Amadis.

In Cervantes the mediator is enthroned in an inaccessible heaven and transmits to his faithful
follower a little of his serenity. In Stendhal, this same mediator has come down to earth. The
clear distinction between these two types of relationship between mediator and subject
indicates the enormous spiritual gap which separates Don Quixote from the most despicably
vain of Stendhal's characters. The image of the triangle cannot remain valid for us unless it at
once allows this distinction and measures this gap for us. To achieve this double objective,
we have only to vary the distance, in the triangle, separating the mediator from the desiring
subject.

Obviously this distance is greatest in Cervantes. There can be no contact whatsoever between
Don Quixote and his legendary Amadis. Emma Bovary is already closer to her Parisian
mediator. Travelers' tales, books, and the press bring the latest fashions of the capital even to
Yonville. Emma comes still closer to her mediator when she goes to the ball at the
Vaubyessards'; she penetrates the holy of holies and gazes at the idol face to face. But this
proximity is fleeting. Emma will never be able to desire that which the incarnations of her
"ideal" desire; she will never be able to be their rival; she will never leave for Paris.
Julien Sorel does all that Emma cannot do. At the beginning of The Red and the Black the
distance between the hero and his mediator is as great as in Madame Bovary. But Julien spans
this distance; he leaves his province and becomes the lover of the proud Mathilde; he rises
rapidly to a brilliant position. Stendhal's other heroes are also close to their mediators. It is
this which distinguishes Stendhal's universe from those we have already considered. Between
Julien and Mathilde, between Rênal and Valenod, between Lucien Leuwen and the nobles of
Nancy, between Sansfin and the petty squires of Normandy, the distance is always small
enough to permit the rivalry of desires. In the novels of Cervantes and

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Flaubert, the mediator remained beyond the universe of the hero; he is now within the same
universe.

Romantic works are, therefore, grouped into two fundamental categories -- but within these
categories there can be an infinite number of secondary distinctions. We shall speak of
external mediation when the distance is sufficient to eliminate any contact between the two
spheres of possibilities of which the mediator and the subject occupy the respective centers.
We shall speak of internal mediation when this same distance is sufficiently reduced to allow
these two spheres to penetrate each other more or less profoundly.

Obviously it is not physical space that measures the gap between mediator and the desiring
subject. Although geographical separation might be one factor, the distance between
mediator and subject is primarily spiritual. Don Quixote and Sancho are always close to each
other physically but the social and intellectual distance which separates them remains
insuperable. The valet never desires what his master desires. Sancho covets the food left by
the monks, the purse of gold found on the road, and other objects which Don Quixote
willingly lets him have. As for the imaginary island, it is from Don Quixote himself that
Sancho is counting on receiving it, as the faithful vassal holds everything in the name of his
lord. The mediation of Sancho is therefore an external mediation. No rivalry with the
mediator is possible. The harmony between the two companions is never seriously troubled.

The hero of external mediation proclaims aloud the true nature of his desire. He worships his
model openly and declares himself his disciple. We have seen Don Quixote himself explain
to Sancho the privileged part Amadis plays in his life. Mme. Bovary and Léon also admit the
truth about their desires in their lyric confessions. The parallel between Don Quixote and
Madame Bovary has become classic. It is always easy to recognize analogies between two
novels of external mediation.

Imitation in Stendhal's work at first seems less absurd since there is less of that divergence
between the worlds of disciple and model which makes a Don Quixote or an Emma Bovary
so grotesque. And yet the imitation is no less strict and literal in internal mediation than in
external mediation. If this seems surprising it is not only because the imitation refers to a
model who is "close," but also because the hero of internal mediation, far from boasting of
his efforts to imitate, carefully hides them.

The impulse toward the object is ultimately an impulse toward the mediator; in internal
mediation this impulse is checked by the mediator himself since he desires, or perhaps
possesses, the object. Fascinated by his model, the disciple inevitably sees, in the mechanical
obstacle which
 -39-

he puts in his way, proof of the ill will borne him. Far from declaring himself a faithful
vassal, he thinks only of repudiating the bonds of mediation. But these bonds are stronger
than ever, for the mediator's apparent hostility does not diminish his prestige but instead
augments it. The subject is convinced that the model considers himself too superior to accept
him as a disciple. The subject is torn between two opposite feelings toward his model -- the
most submissive reverence and the most intense malice. This is the passion we call hatred.

Only someone who prevents us from satisfying a desire which he himself has inspired in us is
truly an object of hatred. The person who hates first hates himself for the secret admiration
concealed by his hatred. In an effort to hide this desperate admiration from others, and from
himself, he no longer wants to see in his mediator anything but an obstacle. The secondary
role of the mediator thus becomes primary, concealing his original function of a model
scrupulously imitated.

In the quarrel which puts him in opposition to his rival, the subject reverses the logical and
chronological order of desires in order to hide his imitation. He asserts that his own desire is
prior to that of his rival; according to him, it is the mediator who is responsible for the rivalry.
Everything that originates with this mediator is systematically belittled, although still secretly
desired. Now the mediator is a shrewd and diabolical enemy; he tries to rob the subject of his
most prized possessions; he obstinately thwarts his most legitimate ambitions.

All the phenomena explored by Max Scheler in Ressentiment 1. are, in our opinion, the result
of internal mediation. Furthermore, the word ressentiment itself underscores the quality of
reaction, of repercussion which characterizes the experience of the subject in this type of
mediation. The impassioned admiration and desire to emulate stumble over the unfair
obstacle with which the model seems to block the way of his disciple, and then these passions
recoil on the disciple in the form of impotent hatred, thus causing the sort of psychological
self-poisoning so well described by Scheler.

As he indicates, ressentiment can impose its point of view on even those whom it does not
dominate. It is ressentiment which prevents us, and sometimes prevents Scheler himself, from
recognizing the part played by imitation in the birth of desire. For example, we do not see
that jealousy and envy, like hatred, are scarcely more than traditional names given to internal
mediation, names which almost always conceal their true nature from us.

____________________
1.
The author quotes from the French translation, L'Homme du Ressentiment. There is an
English translation by William H. Holdheim, Ressentiment ( New York: Free Press, 1960).
The word ressentiment is used by Scheler in the original German text as the most accurate
term for the feeling described. - Trans.

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Jealousy and envy imply a third presence: object, subject, and a third person toward whom
the jealousy or envy is directed. These two "vices" are therefore triangular; however, we
never recognize a model in the person who arouses jealousy because we always take a jealous
person's attitude toward the problem of jealousy. Like all victims of internal mediation, the
jealous person easily convinces himself that his desire is spontaneous, in other words, that it
is deeply rooted in the object and in this object alone. As a result he always maintains that his
desire preceded the intervention of the mediator. He would have us see him as an intruder, a
bore, a terzo incomodo who interrupts a delightful têteà-tête. jealousy is thus reduced to the
irritation we all experience when one of our desires is accidentally thwarted. But true
jealousy is infinitely more profound and complex; it always contains an element of
fascination with the insolent rival. Furthermore, it is always the same people who suffer from
jealousy. Is it possible that they are all the victims of repeated accidents? Is it fate that creates
for them so many rivals and throws so many obstacle in the way of their desires? We do not
believe it ourselves, since we say that these chronic victims of jealousy or of envy have a
"jealous temperament" or an "envious nature." What exactly then does such a "temperament"
or "nature" imply if not an irresistible impulse to desire what Others desire, in other words to
imitate the desires of others?

Max Scheler numbers "envy, jealousy, and rivalry" among the sources of ressentiment. He
defines envy as "a feeling of impotence which vitiates our attempt to acquire something
because it belongs to another." He observes, on the other hand, that there would be no envy,
in the strong sense of the word, if the envious person's imagination did not transform into
concerted opposition the passive obstacle which the possessor puts in his way by the mere
fact of possession. "Mere regret at not possessing something which belongs to another and
which we covet is not enough in itself to give rise to envy, since it might also be an incentive
for acquiring the desired object or something similar. . . . Envy occurs only when our efforts
to acquire it fail and we are left with a feeling of impotence."

The analysis is accurate and complete; it omits neither the envious person's self-deception
with regard to the cause of his failure, nor the paralysis that accompanies envy. But these
elements remain isolated; Scheler has not really perceived their relationship. On the other
hand everything becomes clear, everything fits into a coherent structure if, in order to explain
envy, we abandon the object of rivalry as a starting point and choose instead the rival himself,
i.e., the mediator, as both a point of departure for our analysis and its conclusion. Possession
is a merely passive obstacle; it is frustrating and seems a deliberate expression of contempt
only because the rival is secretly revered. The demigod

-41-

seems to answer homage with a curse. He seems to render evil for good. The subject would
like to think of himself as the victim of an atrocious injustice but in his anguish he wonders
whether perhaps he does not deserve his apparent condemnation. Rivalry therefore only
aggravates mediation; it increases the mediator's prestige and strengthens the bond which
links the object to this mediator by forcing him to affirm openly his right or desire of
possession. Thus the subject is less capable than ever of giving up the inaccessible object: it
is on this object and it alone that the mediator confers his prestige, by possessing or wanting
to possess it. Other objects have no worth at all in the eyes of the envious person, even
though they may be similar to or indeed identical with the "mediated" object.

Everything becomes clear when one sees that the loathed rival is actually a mediator. Max
Scheler himself is not far from the truth when he states in Ressentiment that "the fact of
choosing a model for oneself" is the result of a certain tendency, common to all men, to
compare oneself with others, and he goes on to say, "all jealousy, all ambition, and even an
ideal like the 'imitation' of Christ is based on such comparisons." But this intuition remains
isolated. Only the great artists attribute to the mediator the position usurped by the object;
only they reverse the commonly accepted hierarchy of desire.

In The Memoirs of a Tourist, Stendhal warns his readers against what he calls the modern
emotions, the fruits of universal vanity: "envy, jealousy, and impotent hatred." Stendhal's
formula gathers together the three triangular emotions; it considers them apart from any
particular object; it associates them with that imperative need to imitate by which, according
to the novelist, the nineteenth century is completely possessed. For his part, Scheler asserts,
following Nietzsche -- who acknowledged a large debt to Stendhal -- that the romantic state
of mind is pervaded by ressentiment. Stendhal says precisely this, but he looks for the source
of this spiritual poison in the passionate imitation of individuals who are fundamentally our
equals and whom we endow with an arbitrary prestige. If the modern emotions flourish, it is
not because "envious natures" and "jealous temperaments" have unfortunately and
mysteriously increased in number, but because internal mediation triumphs in a universe
where the differences between men are gradually erased.

The great novelists reveal the imitative nature of desire. In our days its nature is hard to
perceive because the most fervent imitation is the most vigorously denied. Don Quixote
proclaimed himself the disciple of Amadis and the writers of his time proclaimed themselves
the disciples of the Ancients. The romantic vaniteux does not want to be anyone's disciple. He
convinces himself that he is thoroughly original. In the nineteenth century spontaneity
becomes a universal dogma, succeeding imitation. Stendhal warns us at every step that we
must not be fooled

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by these individualisms professed with fanfare, for they merely hide a new form of imitation.
Romantic revulsion, hatred of society, nostalgia for the desert, like gregariousness, usually
conceal a morbid concern for the Other.

In order to camouflage the essential role which the Other plays in his desires, Stendhal's
vaniteux frequently appeals to the clichés of the reigning ideology. Behind the devotion, the
mawkish altruism, the hypocritical engagement of the grandes dames of 1830, Stendhal finds
not the generous impulse of a being truly prepared to give itself but rather the tormented
recourse of vanity at bay, the centrifugal movement of an ego powerless to desire by itself.
The novelist lets his characters act and speak; then, in the twinkling of an eye, he reveals to
us the mediator. He reestablishes covertly the true hierarchy of desire while pretending to
believe in the weak reasoning advanced by his character in support of the contrary hierarchy.
This is one of the perpetual methods of Stendhal's irony.

The romantic vaniteux always wants to convince himself that his desire is written into the
nature of things, or which amounts to the same thing, that it is the emanation of a serene
subjectivity, the creation ex nihilo of a quasi-divine ego. Desire is no longer rooted in the
object perhaps, but it is rooted in the subject; it is certainly not rooted in the Other. The
objective and subjective fallacies are one and the same; both originate in the image which we
all have of our own desires. Subjectivisms and objectivisms, romanticisms and realisms,
individualisms and scientisms, idealisms and positivisms appear to be in opposition but are
secretly in agreement to conceal the presence of the mediator. All these dogmas are the
aesthetic or philosophic translation of worldviews peculiar to internal mediation. They all
depend directly or indirectly on the lie of spontaneous desire. They all defend the same
illusion of autonomy to which modern man is passionately devoted.

It is this same illusion which the great novel does not succeed in shattering although it never
ceased to denounce it. Unlike the romantics and neo-romantics, a Cervantes, a Flaubert, and a
Stendhal reveal the truth of desire in their great novels, but this truth remains hidden even at
the heart of its revelation. The reader, who is usually convinced of his own spontaneity,
applies to the work the meanings he already applies to the world. The nineteenth century,
which failed completely to understand Cervantes, continually praised the "originality" of his
hero. The romantic reader, by a marvelous misinterpretation which fundamentally is only a
superior truth, identifies himself with Don Quixote, the supreme imitator, and makes of him
the model individual.

Thus is should not surprise us that the term "romanesque" 2. still re-

____________________
2.
In the French original, constant association and opposition of romantique and ro-

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flects, in its ambiguity, our unawareness of all mediation. The term denotes the chivalric
romances and it denotes Don Quixote; it can be synonymous with "romantic" and it can
indicate the destruction of romantic pretensions. In the future we shall use the term
"romantic" for the works which reflect the presence of a mediator without ever revealing it
and the term "novelistic" for the works which reveal this presence. It is to the latter that this
book is primarily devoted.

____________________
manesque, with their same radical and different endings, tried to convey something of an
essential, yet elusive, difference between the works which passively reflect and those
which actively reveal "mediated" desire. The two words are not interchangeable, to be
sure, but their opposition alone is fully significant. The essay must not be read as the
indictment of a narrowly, or even broadly defined literary school. Neither is it an effort to
circumscribe the genre of the novel. The author is aware that Jean Santeuil is a novel and
should be classified as such if classifications were the order of the day. Jean Santeuil can
nevertheless be viewed as "romantic" within the context of the essay, in other words by
contrast with the "romanesque" -- novelistic -- Remembrance of Things Past. Similarly,
Chateaubriand Mémoires d'outre-Tombe is not a novel but it partakes somewhat of the
"romanesque" by contrast with the romantic René. Unlike the categories of literary
historians, which are mechanistic and positivistic, the present categories, even though they
are not Hegelian, are still dialectical. They are not independent labels stuck once and for
all on a fixed amount of static and objective literary material. Neither are they literature-
proof receptacles in which that same material would be contained. They have no value in
themselves; no single category can be appraised separately. Oppositions are essential; their
terms should not be dissociated. The whole system alone is truly significant and self-
sufficient, in accordance with a structural hypothesis.

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 Chapter 4 Desire and the Unity of Novelistic Conclusions
This selection is the concluding chapter of Deceit, Desire, and the Novel. Here Girard
summarizes his argument that in the best work of the great novelists such as Cervantes,
Stendhal, Flaubert, Proust, and Dostoyevsky, the novelistic (nonromantic) conclusions
represent conversions from the death to which rivalrous desire leads. In the great novels the
authors attain a profound communion of Self and Other, intuit in their protagonists their own
similarity to the Other who is a model-rival (see under Model/Mediator)* or even a model-
obstacle (see under Model/Mediator),* and find liberation from the pride of romantic
individualism. The climax of this conversionary discovery occurs above all in Dostoyevsky,
whose Notes from the Underground "is the turning point between romanticism and the
novel," and whose conclusion to The Brothers Karamazov affirms the reality of the death and
resurrection to which the agnostic Proust gives literary expression in The Past Recaptured
and Remembrance of Things Past.

The ultimate meaning of desire is death but death is not the novel's ultimate meaning. The
demons like raving madmen throw themselves into the sea and perish. But the patient is
cured. Stepan Trofimovitch on his deathbed recalls the miracle: "But the sick man will be
healed and 'will sit at the feet of Jesus,' and all will look upon him with astonishment."

These words are applicable not only to Russia but to the dying man himself. Stepan
Trofimovitch is this sick man who is healed in death and whom death heals. Stepan let
himself be carried away by the wave of scandal, murder, and crime which engulfed the town.
His flight has its roots in the universal madness but as soon as it is undertaken its significance
changes -- it is transformed into a return to the mother earth and to the light of day. His
roaming finally leads the old man to a wretched

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bed in an inn where a Gospel woman reads him the words of St. Luke. The dying man sees
the truth in the parable of the swine of Gerasa. Out of supreme disorder is born supernatural
order.

The closer Stepan comes to death, the more he withdraws from lying: "I've been telling lies
all my life. Even when I told the truth I never spoke for the sake of the truth, but always for
my own sake. I knew it before, but I only see it now." In these words Stepan clearly
contradicts his former ideas.

The apocalypse would not be complete without a positive side. There are two antithetical
deaths in the conclusion of The Possessed: one death which is an extinction of the spirit and
one death which is spirit; Stavrogin's death is only death, Stepan's death is life. This double
ending is not unusual in Dostoyevsky. We find it in The Brothers Karamazov where the
madness of Ivan Karamazov is contrasted with the redeeming conversion of Dmitri. We find
it in Crime and Punishment where Svidrigailov's suicide is contrasted with the redeeming
conversion of Raskolnikov. The Gospel woman who watches at Stepan's bedside plays a
similar role to Sonia's though less pronounced. She is the mediator between the sinner and the
Scriptures.
Raskolnikov and Dmitri Karamazov do not die a physical death but they are nonetheless
restored to life. All Dostoyevsky's conclusions are fresh beginnings; a new life commences,
either among men or in eternity.

But perhaps it would be better not to push this analysis any further. Many critics refuse to
accept Dostoyevsky's religious conclusions. They find them artificial, ill-considered, and
superficially imposed on the novel. The novelist is supposed to have written them when he
ran out of novelistic inspiration, in order to give his work an appearance of religious
orthodoxy.

So let us leave Dostoyevsky and turn to the conclusions of other novels, such as Don Quixote.
The hero's death is very like that of Stepan Trofimovitch. His passion for chivalry is
portrayed as an actual possession of which the dying man sees himself fortunately, though
somewhat belatedly, delivered. The clarity of vision that he regains enables Don Quixote, like
Stepan Trofimovitch, to reject his former existence.

At this time my judgment is free and clear and no longer covered with a thick blanket of
ignorance woven by my sad and constant reading of detestable books of chivalry. I recognize
their extravagance and trickery. My only regret is that my disillusionment has come too late
and that I do not have time to make up for my mistake by reading other books which would
help to enlighten my soul.

The Spanish desengaño has the same meaning as Dostoyevsky's conversion. But again there
are many writers who advise us not to dwell on

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this conversion in death. The conclusion of Don Quixote is almost as unappreciated as

Dostoyevsky's conclusions, and strangely enough the same faults are found in it. It is
considered artificial, conventional, and superimposed on the novel. Why should two such
great novelists both consider it proper to disfigure the final pages of their masterpieces? As
we have seen, Dostoyevsky is considered the victim of self-imposed censure. The Inquisition
was hostile to books of chivalry. The critics remain convinced that Don Quixote is a book of
chivalry. Cervantes therefore was obliged to write a "conformist" conclusion which would
allay ecclesiastical suspicions.

Let us then leave Cervantes, if we must, and turn to a third novelist. Stendhal was not a
Slavophile and had no reason to fear the church, at least during the period when he wrote The
Red and the Black. But the conclusion of that novel is nevertheless a third conversion in
death. Julien also utters words which clearly contradict his former ideas. He repudiates his
will to power, he makes a break with the world which fascinated him; his passion for
Mathilde disappears; he flies to Mme. de Rênal and refuses to defend himself.

All these analogies are remarkable. But again we are asked not to attach any importance to
this conversion in death. Even the author, who seems ashamed of his own lyricism, conspires
with the critics to discredit his own text. He tells us we should not take Julien's meditations
seriously for "the lack of exercise was beginning to affect his health and give him the exalted
and weak character of a young German student."
Let Stendhal say what he likes. We can no longer be put off the scent. If we are still blind to
the unity displayed in novelistic conclusions, the unanimous hostility of romantic critics
should be enough to open our eyes.

It is the hypotheses of the critics that are insignificant and artificial, not the conclusions. One
would have to have little esteem for Cervantes to think him capable of betraying his own
thought. The hypothesis of self-censure is not even worth discussing, for the beauty of the
text alone is enough to demolish it. The solemn adjuration of the dying Don Quixote is
addressed to us, the readers, just as much as to his friends and relatives gathered about him:
"In the extremity which I have reached I must not make light of my soul."

It is easy to understand the hostility of the romantic critics. All the heroes, in the conclusion,
utter words which clearly contradict their former ideas, and those ideas are always shared by
the romantic critics. Don Quixote renounces his knights, Julien Sorel his revolt, and
Raskolnikov his superhumanity. Each time the hero denies the fantasy inspired by his pride.
And it is that fantasy which the romantic interpretation always exalts. The critics do not want
to admit that they have been mis-

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taken; thus they have to maintain that the conclusion is unworthy of the work it crowns.

The analogies between the conclusions of the great novels destroy ipso facto all
interpretations that minimize their importance. There is a single phenomenon and it must be
accounted for by one principle.

The unity of novelistic conclusions consists in the renunciation of metaphysical desire. The
dying hero repudiates his mediator: "I am the enemy of Amadis of Gaul and of all the infinite
battalions of his kind. . . . Today, through God's mercy, having been made wise at my own
expense, I loathe them."

Repudiation of the mediator implies renunciation of divinity, and this means renouncing
pride. The physical diminution of the hero both expresses and conceals the defeat of pride.
One sentence with a double meaning in The Red and the Black expresses beautifully the link
between death and liberation, between the guillotine and the break with the mediator: "What
do Others matter to me," exclaims Julien Sorel, "my relations with others are going to be
abruptly cut off."

In renouncing divinity the hero renounces slavery. Every level of his existence is inverted, all
the effects of metaphysical desire are replaced by contrary effects. Deception gives way to
truth, anguish to remembrance, agitation to repose, hatred to love, humiliation to humility,
mediated desire to autonomy, deviated transcendency to vertical transcendency.

This time it is not a false but a genuine conversion. The hero triumphs in defeat; he triumphs
because he is at the end of his resources; for the first time he has to look his despair and his
nothingness in the face. But this look which he has dreaded, which is the death of pride, is his
salvation. The conclusions of all the novels are reminiscent of an oriental tale in which the
hero is clinging by his finger-tips to the edge of a cliff; exhausted, the hero finally lets
himself fall into the abyss. He expects to smash against the rocks below but instead he is
supported by the air: the law of gravity is annulled.
All novelistic conclusions are conversions; it is impossible to doubt this. But can one go
further? Can one maintain that all these conversions have the same meaning? Two
fundamental categories seem to be distinguishable from the outset: those conclusions which
portray a solitary hero who rejoins other men and those which portray a "gregarious" hero
gaining solitude. Dostoyevsky's novels belong to the first category, Stendhal's to the second.
Raskolnikov rejects solitude and embraces Others, Julien Sorel rejects Others and embraces
solitude.

The opposition seems insurmountable. Yet it is not. If our interpretation of the conversion is
correct, if it puts an end to triangular desire, then its effects cannot be expressed either in
terms of absolute soli-

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tude or in terms of a return to the world. Metaphysical desire brings into being a certain
relationship to others and to oneself. True conversion engenders a new relationship to others
and to oneself. The mechanical oppositions of solitude and gregariousness, involvement and
noninvolvement are the result of romantic interpretations.

If we examine Stendhal's and Dostoyevsky's conclusions more closely we find that the two
aspects of true conversion are always present but that they are not equally developed.
Stendhal places more emphasis on the subjective aspect and Dostoyevsky more on the
intersubjective aspect. The neglected aspect is never completely suppressed. Julien wins
solitude but he triumphs over isolation. His happiness with Mme. de Rênal is the supreme
expression of a profound change in his relationship with Others. When the hero finds himself
surrounded by a crowd at the beginning of his trial, he is surprised to find that he no longer
feels his old hatred for Others. He wonders whether Others are as bad as he once thought
them. When he no longer envies people, when he no longer wishes to seduce or dominate
them, then Julien no longer hates them.

Similarly Raskolnikov, in the conclusion, triumphs over his isolation but he also gains
solitude. He reads the Gospel; he recovers the peace which has so long escaped him. Solitude
and human contact exist only as functions of each other; they cannot be isolated without
lapsing into romantic abstraction.

The differences between novelistic conclusions are negligible. It is less a question of

opposition than of a shift of accent. The lack of balance between the various aspects of the
metaphysical cure reveal that the novelist has not rid himself entirely of his own
"romanticism"; he remains the prisoner of formulas whose function of pure justification he
does not perceive. Dostoyevsky's conclusions are not completely purified of the tendency to
wallow in misery. In Stendhal's conclusions can be found traces of the middle-class
romanticism which was rampant in the Delécluze salon. In the process of underlining these
differences it is easy to lose sight of the unity of novelistic conclusions. The critics ask no
better, for unity in their languages means banality, and banality is the worst charge of all. If
the critics do not reject the conclusion outright, they try to prove that it is original, that it
contradicts the conclusions of other novels. They always trace the author back to his romantic
origins. They think they are doing his work a good service. And this is doubtless true
according to the romantic taste of the educated public. But on a more profound level they are
doing it a disservice. They are exalting that in it which is contrary to novelistic truth.
Romantic criticism rejects what is essential; it refuses to go beyond metaphysical desire to the
truth of the novel which shines beyond death. The hero succumbs as he achieves truth and he
entrusts his creator with the heritage of his clairvoyance. The title of hero of a novel must be

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reserved for the character who triumphs over metaphysical desire in a tragic conclusion and
thus becomes capable of writing the novel. The hero and his creator are separated throughout
the novel but come together in the conclusion. Approaching death, the hero looks back on his
lost existence. He sees it with the "breadth and depth of vision" which suffering, sickness,
and exile gave to Mme. de Clèves and which is that of the novelist himself. This "breadth and
depth of vision" is not so different from the "telescope" mentioned by Marcel Proust in The
Past Recaptured, and from the supereminent position which Stendhal's hero attains in his
prison. All these images of distance and elevation are the expression of a new and more
detached vision, which is the creator's own vision. This ascending movement must not be
confused with pride. The aesthetic triumph of the author is one with the joy of the hero who
has renounced desire.

Therefore the conclusion is always a memory. It is the eruption of a memory which is more
true than the perception itself. It is a "panoramic vision" like Anna Karenina's. It is a
"revivification of the past." The expression is Proust's but he is not speaking of The Past
Recaptured, as one would immediately imagine, but of The Red and the Black. The
inspiration always comes from memory and memory springs from the conclusion. Every
novelistic conclusion is a beginning.

Every novelistic conclusion is a Past Recaptured.

Marcel Proust in his own conclusion merely uncovered a meaning that had previously been
hidden by a transparent veil of fiction. The narrator of Remembrance of Things Past makes
his way to the novel through the novel. But all the heroes of previous novels did the same.
Stepan Trofimovitch moves toward the Gospel which summarizes the meaning of The
Possessed. Mme. de Clèves moves toward the "breadth and depth of vision," that is, toward
novelistic vision. Don Quixote, Julien Sorel, and Raskolnikov have the same spiritual
experience as Marcel in The Past Recaptured. Proust's aesthetics do not consist of a number
of formulas and percepts; they are indissolubly united with the escape from metaphysical
desire. All of the characteristics of novelistic conclusions mentioned above may be found in
The Past Recaptured, but here they are represented as exigencies of creation. The novel's
inspiration springs from the break with the mediator. The absence of desire in the present
makes it possible to recapture past desires.

In The Past Recaptured Proust emphasizes that self-centeredness is a barrier to novelistic

creation. Proustian self-centeredness gives rise to imitation and makes us live outside
ourselves. This self-centeredness is other-centeredness as well; it is not one-sided egotism; it
is an impulse in two contradictory directions which always ends by tearing the individual
apart. To triumph over self-centeredness is to get away from oneself and make contact with
others, but in another sense it also im-

-50-
poses a greater intimacy with oneself and a withdrawal from others. A self-centered person
thinks he is choosing himself but in fact he shuts himself out as much as others. Victory over
self-centeredness allows us to probe deeply into the Self and at the same time yields a better
knowledge of Others. At a certain depth there is no difference between our own secret and
the secret of Others. Everything is revealed to the novelist when he penetrates this Self, a
truer Self than that which each of us displays. This Self imitates constantly, on its knees
before the mediator.

This profound Self is also a universal Self. The dialectic of metaphysical pride alone can help
us understand and accept Proust's attempt to reconcile the particular and universal. In the
context of the romantic's mechanical opposition between Self and Others, such an attempt
would be absurd.

This logical absurdity no doubt struck Proust, and he occasionally gives up his attempt at
reconciliation and slips back into the clichés of twentieth-century romanticism. In a few
isolated passages of The Past Recaptured he declares that the work of art must permit us to
grasp our "differences" and makes us delight in our "originality."

These scattered passages are the result of Proust's lack of theoretic vocabulary. But the
attempt at logical coherence is quickly swept away by inspiration. Proust knew that in
describing his own youth he was describing ours as well. He knew that the true artist no
longer has to choose between himself and Others. Because it is born of renunciation, great
novelistic art loses nothing and regains everything.

But this renunciation is very painful. The novelist can write his novel only if he recognizes
that his mediator is a person like himself. Marcel, for example, has to give up considering his
beloved a monstrous divinity and seeing himself in the role of an eternal victim. He has to
recognize that his beloved's lies are similar to his own.

This victory over a self-centeredness which is other-centered, this renunciation of fascination

and hatred, is the crowning moment of novelistic creation. Therefore it can be found in all the
great novelists. Every novelist sees his similarity to the fascinating Other through the voice of
his hero. Mme. de la Fayette recognizes her similarity to the women for whom love has been
their undoing. Stendhal, the enemy of hypocrites, recognizes at the end of The Red and the
Black that he is also a hypocrite. Dostoyevsky, in the conclusion of Crime and Punishment
gives up seeing himself alternately as a superhuman and as a subhuman. The novelist
recognizes that he is guilty of the sin of which he is accusing his mediator. The curse which
Oedipus hurls at Others falls on his own head.

This is the meaning of Flaubert's famous cry: "Mme Bovary, c'est moi!" Flaubert first
conceived Mme. Bovary as that despicable Other

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whom he had sworn to deal with. Mine. Bovary originally was Flaubert's enemy, as Julien
Sorel was Stendhal's enemy and Raskolnikov Dostoyevsky's enemy. But while remaining that
Other, the hero of the novel gradually merges with the novelist in the course of creation.
When Flaubert cries, "Mme Bovary, c'est moi," he is not trying to say that Mme. Bovary has
become one of those flattering doubles with whom romantic writers love to surround
themselves. He means that the Self and the Other have become one in the miracle of the
novel.

Great novels always spring from an obsession that has been transcended. The hero sees
himself in the rival he loathes; he renounces the "differences" suggested by hatred. He learns,
at the expense of his pride, the existence of the psychological circle. The novelist's
selfexamination merges with the morbid attention he pays to his mediator. All the powers of a
mind freed of its contradictions unite in one creative impulse. Don Quixote and Emma
Bovary and Charlus would not be so great were they not the result of a synthesis of the two
halves of existence which pride usually succeeds in keeping separate.

This victory over desire is extremely painful. Proust tells us that we must forego the fervent
dialogue endlessly carried on by each one of us at the superficial levels of our being. One
must "give up one's dearest illusions." The novelist's art is a phenomenological epochē. But
the only authentic epochē is never mentioned by modern philosophers; it is always victory
over desire, victory over Promethean pride.

Some texts written shortly before Marcel Proust's great creative period throw a brilliant light
on the connection between The Past Recaptured and classical novelistic conclusions. Perhaps
the most important of them is an article published in Le Figaro in 1907 entitled "The Filial
Sentiments of a Parricide." The article is devoted to the drama of a family whom the Prousts
knew slightly. Henri Van Blarenberghe had killed himself after murdering his mother. Proust
gives a short account of this double tragedy concerning which he seems to have no special
information. At the conclusion there is a widening of the perspective and the tone becomes
more personal. The Van Blarenberghe affair becomes a symbol of the mother-son
relationship in general. The vices and ingratitude of children make their parents age
prematurely. This theme is already present in the conclusion of Jean Santeuil. After
describing in his article how terribly decrepit a mother, worn-out by suffering, seems to her
son, Proust writes:

Perhaps women who could see that, in that belated moment of lucidity which may occur even
in lives completely obsessed by illusions, since it happened even to Don Quixote, perhaps that
someone, like Henri Van Blarenberghe after he stabbed his mother to death, would recoil
from the horror of his life and snatch up a

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gun, in order to put an immediate end to his existence. [Emphasis added.]

The parricide recovers his lucidity in the course of expiating crime, and expiates his crime in
the course of recovering his lucidity. His terrifying vision of the past is a vision of truth; it
stands in direct opposition to his life "obsessed by illusions." The "Oedipal" atmosphere of
these lines is quite striking. It is the year 1907, Proust has just lost his mother and is obsessed
with remorse. In this brief paragraph we are given a glimpse of the process which enables a
Stendhal, Flaubert, Tolstoy, or Dostoyevsky to give expression to his experience as a man
and a writer in an ordinary news item.

In his "belated moment of lucidity" the parricide joins the ranks of all the heroes of previous
novels. How can we deny this when Proust himself compares this death to that of Don
Quixote? "The Filial Sentiments of a Parricide" provides the missing link between classical
conclusions and The Past Recaptured. This attempt will have no immediate sequel. Proust
will discard the classical method of transposition in the novel. His hero will not kill himself;
rather he will become a novelist. But nevertheless the inspiration will come from death, that
death which Proust is in the process of living in 1907, and whose horror is reflected in all his
writing of that period.

Is this giving too much importance to a few forgotten lines? Perhaps it will be objected that
the text has no literary value, that it is written in a hurry for a daily newspaper, and that its
conclusion wallows in melodramatic clichés. That may be, but such considerations carry little
weight in the face of Proust's own evidence. In a letter of Calmette, which accompanied the
article, Proust gave Le Figaro full permission to edit and cut his text -- except for the last
paragraphs, which he demanded should be published in their entirety.

The allusion to Don Quixote's belated lucidity is all the more precious since it reappears in
the notes which were published in an appendix to Contre Sainte-Beuve, and this time in a
purely literary context. The many comments on Stendhal, Flaubert, Tolstoy, George Eliot,
and Dostoyevsky in these same notes show us Proust's awareness of the unity of novelistic
genius. Proust notes that all Dostoyevsky's and Flaubert's works could be entitled Crime and
Punishment. The principle of the unity of all the great works is clearly stated in the chapter on
Balzac: "All the writers come together at certain points and they seem like different and
sometimes contradictory elements of a single genius."

There can be no question that Proust was aware of the connection between The Past
Recaptured and the classical novelistic conclusions. He could have written the one book on
the unity of novelistic genius which would have been worthy of such a great topic.

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Under the circumstances it is surprising that Proust never broached the theme of novelistic
unity in his own conclusion, The Past Recaptured, which broadens into a meditation on
novelistic creation. His silence on the topic of other novels is all the more surprising when we
consider the number of literary references he makes. He acknowledges forerunners of the
"affective memory" in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Chateaubriand, and Gérard de Nerval. But he
does not mention a single novelist. The intuitions of Contre Sainte-Beuve are never taken up
and developed. What happened?

In Proust, as in all persons who experience a very intense and solitary spiritual experience,
the fear of appearing extravagant is superseded only by that of seeming ridiculous by
repeating universally accepted truths. The wish to avoid both of these opposite dangers would
seem to have suggested to Proust the compromise he finally adopted. Fearing that he would
be accused on the one hand of leaving the royal paths of literature, and on the other of
plagiarizing the great novels, Proust picks out some literary ancestors but scrupulously avoids
the novelists.

Proust, we know, lived only for his work. Léon-Pierre Quint has demonstrated the forces he
could marshal in the art of literary strategy. This final "idolatry" does not blemish the
perfection of The Past Recaptured, but it somewhat limits its universality. The author of
Remembrance of Things Past is not interested in indicating similarities of structure among the
great novels. He is afraid of putting his critics on a track that would lead to too many
discoveries. He knows the importance given to originality in his time, and he is afraid of
having some of his literary glory taken from him. He emphasizes and brings into relief the
most "original" elements of his novel's revelation, especially the affective memory which we
discover upon examination to play a much less central role in the works which precede The
Past Recaptured than that assigned to it in this final novel. 1.

What explanation other than "literary strategy" can be given for Proust's silence? How are we
to explain the omission, in his reflections of the art of the novel, of Stendhal's conclusion
whose every characteristic we had pointed out in his Contre Sainte-Beuve, characteristics
which can be found in The Past Recaptured: "An exclusive taste for sensations of the soul,
revivification of the past, detachment from ambition and lack of interest in intrigue." How
can we not be impressed by the fact that Proust is the only one to have seen the part played by
memory in

____________________
1.
We are far from seeing in that central position given to the affective memory a "fault" of
the novelist or a betrayal of the original experience. This position is justified by reasons of
economy in the novel. We wish only to note that Proust managed to combine very cleverly
the superior demands of revelation in the novel with the practical demands of "literary
strategy."

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Julien's death, and that he perceived this role at the very moment he was preparing to write
The Past Recaptured?

Proust was also very interested, at the same time and in that same conclusion, in the visit paid
to Julien by the Abbé Chélan, very much weakened by age. "The weakening of a great
intelligence and a great heart linked to that of the body. The old age of a virtuous man: moral
pessimism." Julien's lucid death stands out marvelously against the background of this slow
and terrible decomposition of the flesh.

Again the attention given by Proust to this episode is not disinterested. He builds the whole of
The Past Recaptured on a similar contrast between two antithetical deaths. The hero is lucid
when he dies to be reborn in the work, but around him people continue to die without hope of
resurrection. The spiritually fertile death of the narrator is contrasted with the cruel spectacle
of the Guermantes's soirée with the horrible and useless aging of the members of high
society. This contrast is already to be found in "The Filial Sentiments of a Parricide," but
from now on it gains its classically novelistic meaning and achieves unity with the
Dostoyevskian apocalypse. In fact we must see in The Red and the Black and The Past
Recaptured the two inseparable and opposed faces of the novelistic apocalypse as they were
first revealed in the work of Dostoyevsky. In all genuine novelistic conclusions death as spirit
is victoriously opposed to death of the spirit.

Are we being carried away by our imagination? To dispel any doubts we will introduce a
final witness in favor of the unity of novelistic conclusions: Balzac. This novelist has not
been included in our group, but his creative experience is just as close in certain points to
those which we have been considering. For proof of these analogies we need only look at the
following passage taken from the conclusion of Cousin Pons. Balzac is describing his hero's
death and in doing so he defines the double face of the novelistic apocalypse:
Ancient and modern sculptors have often placed on either side of the tomb genies holding
flaming torches. These flames illuminate for the dying their faults, their errors, as they light
up the paths of Death. Sculpture there represents great ideas, it formulates a human fact.
Death has its wisdom. Often simple girls, at a very tender age, are found to have the wisdom
of old men, become prophets, judge their family and not be taken in by any deception. This is
the poetry of Death! But it is a strange thing and should be noticed that one dies in two
different ways. This poetry of prophecy, this gift of penetration, whether before or after, is
only found in those who are merely dying in the flesh, who are dying through the destruction
of the organs of carnal life. Thus people suffering, like Louis XIV, from gangrene, consump-

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tion, people who die of fever like Pons, or of a stomach ailment like Mme de Mortsauf, enjoy
this sublime lucidity, and achieve amazing and admirable deaths; whereas people who die of
intellectual sicknesses, as it were, where the trouble is in the brain, in the nervous system
which serves as an intermediary for the body to provide it with the brain's fuel; these die in
entirety. In them, body and mind founder together. The first, souls without bodies, become
biblical spirits; the others are corpses. This virgin, this unascetic Cato, [ Pons, the hero] this
just and almost innocent man eventually penetrated the pockets of gall which made up the
heart of the magistrate's wife. He understood the world as he was about to leave it. Several
hours before he had resigned himself to the inevitable, like a joyful artist for whom
everything is a pretext for caricature and raillery. The last ties binding him to life, the chains
of admiration, the powerful knots which link the connoisseur to the masterpieces of art had
been broken in the morning. When he saw that he had been robbed by the Cibot woman he
made a Christian farewell to the pomp and vanity of art.

We must not begin from reality as we see it and subject novelistic creation to the standards of
this vision. In this conclusion, historical figures like Louis XIV are put side by side with
fictional creation like Pons and Mme. de Mortsauf. Behind the veil of pseudo-physiology, as
elsewhere beneath phrenology, Martinism, or magnetism, Balzac is incessantly telling us
about his novelistic experience. Here in a few sentences he sums up the essential
characteristics of the novelistic conclusion: the double face of death, the role of suffering, the
detachment of passion, the Christian symbolism, and that sublime lucidity which is both
memory and prophecy, and which throws an equal light on the soul of the hero and the soul
of the other characters.

In Balzac, as in Cervantes, Stendhal, and Dostoyevsky, the tragic event expresses the advent
of a new vision, the novelist's vision. This is why Balzac compares the dying man's state of
soul to that of a "joyful artist." The conclusion of Cousin Pons is a Past Recaptured.

It is easy to prove the unity of novelistic conclusions if we compare texts. But in theory, at
least, this last proof is not necessary. Our analyses inevitably lead to the message
unanimously proclaimed by all the great conclusions. When he renounces the deceptive
divinity of pride, the hero frees himself from slavery and finally grasps the truth about his
unhappiness. There is no distinction between this renunciation and the creative renunciation.
It is a victory over metaphysical desire that transforms a romantic writer into a true novelist.

Up to this point this truth had only been hinted at, but at last we have reached it; we can grasp
and possess it here in the last pages of
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the novel. All we needed was the author's permission, and this we now have: "I loathe
Amadis of Gaul and all the infinite number of his kind." The novelists themselves, through
the medium of their heroes, confirm what we have been asserting all the way through this
book: the sickness is rooted in pride and the universe of the novel is a universe of people
possessed. The conclusion is the stationary axle around which the wheel of the novel turns.
The whole kaleidoscope of appearances depends on it. The conclusion of novels is also the
conclusion of our present investigation.

Truth is active throughout the great novel but its primary location is in the conclusion. The
conclusion is the temple of that truth. The conclusion is the site of the presence of truth, and
therefore a place avoided by error. If error cannot destroy the unity of novelistic conclusions
it tries to render it powerless. It attempts to sterilize it by calling it a banality. We should not
deny that banality but loudly proclaim it. In the body of the novel, novelistic unity is mediate,
but it becomes immediate in the conclusion. Novelistic conclusions are bound to be banal
since they all quite literally repeat the same thing.

This banality of novelistic conclusions is not the local and relative banality of what used to be
considered "original" and could again be given oblivion followed by a "rediscovery" and a
"rehabilitation." It is the absolute banality of what is essential in Western civilization. The
novelistic dénouement is a reconciliation between the individual and the world, between man
and the sacred. The multiple universe of passion decomposes and returns to simplicity.
Novelistic conversion calls to mind the analusis of the Greeks and the Christian rebirth. In
this final moment the novelist reaches the heights of Western literature; he merges with the
great religious ethics and the most elevated forms of humanism, those which have chosen the
least accessible part of man.

The theme of reconciliation has been so constantly harped on by unworthy authors that it is
easy to become convinced, in this time given to indignation and scandal, that it never did and
never could have any concrete content. It seems to emanate from the most superficial areas of
novelistic consciousness. To put reconciliation in its proper perspective we must look on it as
the conquest of a possibility that has long been denied the writer. The conclusion must be
considered as a successful effort to overcome the inability to conclude. The criticism of
Maurice Blanchot can help us in this task. Maurice Blanchot portrays Franz Kafka as the
exemplary representative of a literature doomed to inconclusiveness. Like Moses, Kafka's
hero will never see the promised land. This inability to conclude, Blanchot tells us, is an
inability to die in the work and to free oneself in death.

The impossible conclusion defines a "literary space" which is not beyond but this side of
reconciliation. The fact that this space is the only

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one accessible to our own time of anguish is disquieting but not surprising to anyone who
bears in mind the evolution of the structure of the novel. The fact would not have surprised
Dostoyevsky, who has already given us characters doomed to inconclusiveness and was
traversing Maurice Blanchot's "literary space" at the time he wrote Notes from the
Underground. This story, like so many of Kafka's and those of writers after Kafka, has no
conclusion:
The notes of this paradoxialist do not end here, however. He could not refrain from going on
with them, but it seems to us that we may stop here.

Notes from the Underground is the turning point between romanticism and the novel,
between the preceding inauthentic reconciliations and the authentic reconciliations which
follow. The great novelists cross the literary space defined by Blanchot but they do not stay
there. They push beyond that space toward the infinity of a liberating death.

In contrast to the incompleteness of the contemporary narrative, an incompletion which in the

best writers reflects not a passing fashion but a particular historical and metaphysical
situation, the conclusion of the novelistic work embodies not only a historical but an
individual possibility finally and triumphantly actualized.

The great novelistic conclusions are banal but they are not conventional. Their lack of
rhetorical ability, even their clumsiness, constitute their true beauty and clearly distinguish
them from the deceptive reconciliations which abound in second-rate literature. Conversion
in death should not seem to us the easy solution but rather an almost miraculous descent of
novelistic grace.

The truly great novels are all born of that supreme moment and return to it the way a church
radiates from the chancel and returns to it. All the great works are composed like cathedrals:
once again the truth of Remembrance of Things Past is the truth of all the great novels.

We carry within us a whole hierarchy of the superficial and the profound, the essential and
the subordinate, and we apply it instinctively to the novel. This hierarchy, which is often
"romantic" and "individualist" in character, conceals from us certain essential aspects of
artistic creation. For example, we are in the habit of never taking Christian symbolism
seriously, perhaps because it is common to many works both mediocre and sublime. We
attribute a purely decorative function to the symbolism when the author is not a Christian,
and a purely apologetic function when he is a Christian. Truly "scientific" criticism would
discard all these a priori judgments and would note the amazing points of similarity among
all the different novelistic conclusions. If only our

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prejudices pro and con did not erect a watertight barrier between aesthetic experience and
religious experience, we would see the problems of creation in a new light. We would not cut
off Dostoyevsky's work from all its religious meditations. In The Brothers Karamazov, for
example, we would discover texts as important for the study of novelistic creation as those of
The Past Recaptured. And we would at last realize that Christian symbolism is universal, for
it alone is able to give form to the experience of the novel.

We must therefore look at this symbolism from the point of view of the novel. The task is all
the more difficult since the author himself sometimes tries to throw us off the scent. Stendhal
attributes Julien Sorel's "German mysticism" to the extreme dampness of his prison cell. But
the conclusion of The Red and the Black remains a meditation on Christian themes and
symbols. In it the novelist reaffirms his skepticism, but the themes and symbols are
nonetheless present in order to be clothed in negations. They play exactly the same role as in
Proust or Dostoyevsky. We shall see everything which touches on these themes, including the
monastic vocation of Stendhal's heroes, in a fresh light which the author's irony cannot hide
from us.

Here, as before, we must interpret the novelists by comparing them to one another. We
should not treat the religious question externally but if possible look on it as a purely
novelistic problem. The question of Christianity in Stendhal, the question of "mysticism" in
Proust and in Dostoyevsky can be understood only through comparisons.

"If the seed does not die after it has been sown, it will remain alone, but if it dies it will bear
much fruit." The verse from St. John reappears in several crucial episodes of The Brothers
Karamazov. It expresses the mysterious connections between the two deaths in the novel, the
link between the prison and Dmitri's spiritual healing, the link between the mortal sickness
and the redeeming confession of the "unknown visitor," the link between Ilusha's death and
the charitable work of Alyosha.

Proust has recourse to the same verse from the Gospel of St. John when he wants to explain
to us the part played by sickness, that younger sister of death, in his own creation. "When
sickness, like a harsh spiritual director, caused me to die to the social world, it did me a good
service for if the seed does not die after it is sown it will remain alone and will not bear much
fruit."

Mme. de la Fayette too could have quoted St. John, for one finds in The Princess of Clèves
the sickness of Proust's narrator. This sickness comes at the same point in the novel's
development as in Proust and has exactly the same spiritual consequences: "The necessity of
dying, which she saw was very near, made her used to detachment and the length of her
illness made it a habit. . . . Worldly passions and activities appeared to her in the same way as
to people who have broader and

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deeper vision." This breadth and depth of vision belongs to the new being who is literally
born of the death.

The verse from St. John serves as an epigraph for The Brothers Karamazov, and it could
serve as an epigraph for all novelistic conclusions. Repudiation of a human mediator and
renunciation of deviated transcendency inevitably call for symbols of vertical transcendency
whether the author is Christian or not. All the great novelists respond to this fundamental
appeal, but sometimes they manage to hide from themselves the meaning of their response.
Stendhal uses irony. Proust masks the true face of novelistic experience with romantic
commonplaces but he gives the stale symbols a profound and secret brilliance. In his work
symbols of immortality and resurrection appear in a purely aesthetic context and only
surreptitiously do they transcend the banal meaning to which romanticism reduces them.
They are not operetta princes; they are true princes disguised as operetta princes.

These symbols make their appearance long before The Past Recaptured, in all the passages
which are both an echo and annunciation of the original experience. One of these passages is
devoted to the death and funeral of the great writer Bergotte:
They buried him, but all through the night of mourning, in the lighted windows, his books
arranged three by three kept watch like angels with outspread wings and seemed, for him who
was no more, the symbol of his resurrection.

Bergotte is famous and Proust obviously is thinking of his posthumous glory, to that
consolatrice affreusement laurée which so irritated Valéry. But this romantic cliché is no
more than a pretext in this passage: it is merely an excuse to introduce the word
"resurrection," without disturbing the external positive and "realist" order. The death and
resurrection of Bergotte foreshadow the death and resurrection of the author himself, the
second birth from which Remembrance of Things Past springs. The true resonance of the
sentence just quoted is derived from the expectance of that resurrection. Along with the
images of deviated transcendency we can discern the outlines of the symbolism of vertical
transcendency. Contrasted with the demoniacal idols who drag the narrator down into the
abyss are angels with outspread wings. We must interpret this symbolism in the light of The
Past Recaptured: "The greatness of Proust," André Malraux correctly notes, "became evident
when the publication of The Past Recaptured revealed the significance of a literary
achievement which, up to that point, did not seem to surpass that of Dickens."

It was The Past Recaptured, to be sure, which gave Proust's creation its meaning, but other
novelistic conclusions contributed to that meaning as well. The Brothers Karamazov makes it
impossible for us to

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consider the resurrection of Bergotte simply a romantic commonplace. And in the same way,
The Past Recaptured, which Proust first entitled Perpetual Adoration, makes it impossible for
us to see in the religious meditations of The Brothers Karamazov merely religious
propaganda, external to the novel itself. If Dostoyevsky suffered so much while writing those
pages it is not because he found it a boring task but because he considered them of prime
importance.

In the second part of The Brothers Karamazov little Ilusha dies for the sake of all the heroes
of Dostoyevsky's novels, and the communion which springs from that death is Balzac's and
Proust's sublime lucidity shared by many. The structure of crime and redeeming punishment
transcends the solitary consciousness. Never did a novelist make such a radical break with
romantic and Promethean individualism.

The conclusion of The Brothers Karamazov is borne on the highest crest of Dostoyevsky's
genius. The last distinctions between novelistic and religious experience are abolished. But
the structure of experience has not changed. It is easy to recognize in the words "memory,"
"death," "love" and "resurrection" found in the mouths of the children of this novel the
themes and symbols that inspired the creative ardor of the agnostic author of The Past
Recaptured:

"We love you, we love you!" they all caught it up.

There were tears in the eyes of many of them.

"Hurrah for Karamazov!" Kolya shouted ecstatically.

"And may the dear boy's memory live for ever!" Alyosha added again with feeling.

"For ever!" the boys chimed in again.

"Karamazov," cried Kolya, "can it be true what's taught us in religion, that we shall all rise
again from the dead and shall live and see each other again, all, Ilusha too?"

"Certainly we shall all rise again, certainly we shall see each other and shall tell each other
with joy and gladness all that has happened!" Alyosha answered, half laughing, half
enthusiastic.

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Chapter 5 The Goodness of Mimetic Desire

This is an excerpt from an interview of Girard conducted by Rebecca Adams in November of
1992 and published as "Violence, Difference, Sacrifice: A Conversation with René Girard" in
Religion and Literature 25, no. 2 ( 1993): 9-33. This selection is taken from pages 22-26. It is
important as one of Girard's recent clarifications that mimetic desire is good in itself; it is the
basis of love even though it often -- and inevitably in terms of the history of the human race -
- takes destructive forms. It cannot be renounced by the Christian because what Jesus
advocates is imitation of himself just as he imitates God the Father. This clarification is found
also in Quand ces choses commenceront . . . Entretiens avec Michel Treguer ( Paris: arléa,
1994), 70-71, 76.

Rebecca Adams: Let's go on with some more theological implications of your arguments. At
the end of Things Hidden, then, you make the statement that to follow Christ means to "give
up" or renounce mimetic desire, yet the hominization section implies that mimetic desire is
the only kind of desire there is. There seems to be a covert suspicion, throughout the theory,
of real agency. The theory of mimetic desire itself seems to entail an -- again, almost
Augustinian -- idea of the bondage of the will. Freedom of the will is an illusion which must
be renounced. But in your thought, it's not even as if we once had real agency before the
"fall," as Calvin, for instance, believed.

René Girard: No, that impression is not true. I believe in freedom of the will. Jesus says that
scandals must happen, and he tells his disciples that they will all be scandalized when he is
arrested; but at the same time he says: happy are those to whom I will not be a scandal. So
there are nevertheless a few who are not scandalized. That scandals must happen might sound
like determinism, but it is not.

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RA: So are you saying that mimesis, imitation and the violence it engenders, is extremely
seductive and powerful like a current in a river, but it is not as if a person cannot resist it?

R.G.: Even if persons cannot resist it, they can convert away from it.

R.A.: But again, that's the idea of renunciation of the will, isn't it?
R.G.: The idea of renunciation has, no doubt, been overdone by the Puritans and the
Jansenists, but the blanket hostility that now prevails against it is even worse. The idea that
renunciation in all its forms should be renounced once and for all may well be the most
flagrant nonsense any human culture has ever devised. But as to whether I am advocating
"renunciation" of mimetic desire, yes and no. Not the renunciation of mimetic desire itself,
because what Jesus advocates is mimetic desire. Imitate me, and imitate the father through
me, he says, so it's twice mimetic. Jesus seems to say that the only way to avoid violence is to
imitate me, and imitate the Father. So the idea that mimetic desire itself is bad makes no
sense. It is true, however, that occasionally I say "mimetic desire" when I really mean only
the type of mimetic desire that generates mimetic rivalry and, in turn, is generated by it.

R.A.: This is an important clarification. It seems that it wouldn't make sense, in light of your
theory itself, to say mimetic desire should be renounced, because mimetic desire is itself a
pharmakon -- a medicine or a poison. The claim at the end of Things Hidden that to "give up"
or renounce mimetic desire is what we must do is, I think, particularly misleading in this
regard. Perhaps mimetic desire per se is not to be done away with, but is to be fulfilled --
transformed, "converted."

R.G.: A simple renunciation of desire I don't think is Christian; it's more Buddhist.
Undoubtedly there are similarities between what I am saying and Buddhism. If you read the
descriptions of Buddhism, they are very profound; they are very aware of mimetic desire, and
of contagion, and of all the things that matter in human relations. Like all great religious
writing. The thing that is unique about Christianity is that it wants to go back to the origin, to
the sacrificial origin, and uncover it. Buddhism is not interested in doing this at all. And
Buddhism advocates getting out of the world altogether. Christianity never does that.
Christianity says, the Cross will be there for you, inevitably. But that kind of renunciation is
very different.

R.A.: What you are advocating, actually, is not renunciation of desire but imitation of a
positive model. St. Paul, too, says "imitate me." He also says, think upon these positive
things, the fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace, and so forth. In his book The Peace of the
Present: An Unviolent Way of Life, John S. Dunne has a short section in which he has an
exchange with you over this issue of desire. His concept of "heart's desire" seems initially to
be very similar to what you mean when speaking of "imitating" Christ; if the heart's desire is
indeed mimetic, in other

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words, it would express itself in imitating Christ, or God through Christ. But Dunne doesn't
talk about desire in mimetic terms. He speaks as if we have an active, positive agency to
desire the good, the capacity and choice to desire nonviolently.

R.G.: But I would say that mimetic desire, even when bad, is intrinsically good, in the sense
that far from being merely imitative in a small sense, it's the opening out of oneself.

R.A.: Openness to others.

R.G.: Yes. Extreme openness. It is everything. It can be murderous, it is rivalrous; but it is

also the basis of heroism, and devotion to others, and everything.
R.A.: And love for others and wanting to imitate them in a good sense?

R.G.: Yes, of course. And the fact that novelists and playwrights, and that primitive religion,
are inevitably concerned with rivalry -- conflictual mimetic desire, which is always in the
way and is a huge problem for living together -- doesn't mean it is the only thing there is.
Now writers are what I would call "hypermimetic," which cannot be considered necessarily
pathological. Literature shifts into hypermimeticism, and therefore writers are obsessed with
bad, conflictual mimetic desire, and that's what they write about -- that's what literature is
about. I agree with Gide that literature is about evil. That doesn't mean evil is the whole of
life. I hear this question all the time: "Is all desire mimetic?" Not in the bad, conflictual sense.
Nothing is more mimetic than the desire of a child, and yet it is good. Jesus himself says it is
good. Mimetic desire is also the desire for God.

R.A.: For those who would not a priori accept a religious framework, nor a concept of the
"imitation of Christ" as you employ it, it might be understood also as the desire for love, for
creativity, for community.

R.G.: Cultural imitation is a positive form of mimetic desire.

R.A.: In Saints and Postmodernism: Revisioning Moral Philosophy, Edith Wyschogrod, a

contemporary moral philosopher, talks about excessive desire on behalf of the Other as the
basis for ethics: desiring for the other because of the otherness of the other. Note how this
would look in terms of mimetic desire. Positive mimetic desire works out to recapitulate the
Golden Rule: we desire for the other what the other desires for her or himself This kind of
desire is therefore neither colonialist, nor does it scapegoat. Wyschogrod calls for a new
postmodern sainthood based on this excessive desire and the genuine valuing of difference. I
guess I'm wondering whether it's possible within your theory to fully account for this desire
on behalf of the Other -- for nonviolent, saintly desire -- as an excess of desire rather than as a
renunciation of desire.

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R.G.: Your question makes sense to me, and more so these days since I no longer hesitate to
talk about theology. Wherever you have that desire, I would say, that really active, positive
desire for the other, there is some kind of divine grace present. This is what Christianity
unquestionably tells us. If we deny this we move into some form of optimistic humanism.

R.A.: Divine grace is present, you would say, whether or not it is recognized as such?

R.G.: Whether or not it is recognized as such.

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