Authors: RENÉ GIRARD
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