Authors: RENÉ GIRARD
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
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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. a
re, 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
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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.