Triangular Desire | Blog & Mablog

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Metaphysical Desire

We come now to a fascinating engine of conflict, both in real life and in great fiction. As you will see, Girard argues that poor fiction sidesteps this reality, while great fiction confronts and exposes it wonderfully. We are beginning a genuine study of ourselves and, while we’re at it, a rewarding study of the kind of literature that enables us to really see ourselves.

It is important to emphasize at the beginning here, that although this desire is profoundly destructive, Girard believes it to be a creational good, twisted by pride and sin. As Christians we are to imitate others ahead of us as they in turn imitate Christ. Mimesis is not to be understood as inherently sinful (Reader, p. 63)

First, the Mechanism

Except in a basic, trivial sense, desire is not a two-part operation (thirsty person > water). Rather, desire is triangular—a three way thing. According to Girard, there is 1. the self, 2. the mediator (or model), and 3. the object desired because the self believes or suspects (rightly or wrongly) that the model desires it. This is triangular desire.

The mediator may be distant or close. If distant, this results in what Girard identifies as external mediation. If the model or mediator is the Virgin Mary, or the family legends of one’s great, great grandfather, or the example of Martin Luther, this would be called external mediation. The person can be driven, but is not going to find himself in endless conflicts with the mediator. In external mediation, the subject knows what is happening. “He worships his model openly and declares himself his disciple” (Reader, p. 39).

It is not that no problems can arise with external mediation, but the real possibilities for confusion and violence arise with internal mediation. “We shall speak of internal mediation when this same distance is sufficiently refused to allow these two spheres to penetrate each other more or less profoundly” (Reader, p. 39). This is the kind of thing you have when you have two men, the best of friends, falling in love with the same girl. It happens when you have twin brothers wanting the favor or blessing of their father, or the rule of the city. It happens when one church is enormously blessed when the other church across town “should have been.” In other words, the subject and the model are constantly underfoot. And it is not always clear who is the subject and who is the model.

This is because there are many things going on.

“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 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 to opposite feelings toward his model—the most submissive reverence [carefully hidden, even from himself, DW] 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” (Reader, pp. 39-40).

Death and Resurrection in the Novel

According to Girard, great writers are hyper-mimetic (p. 64), and consequently they (in their personal lives) were all caught up in the tangles that this causes. They write from personal experience. And the climax of the novel is when the protagonist becomes capable of writing the novel himself. He comes to the point where he sees what has been driving him the entire time, and renounces it. He might renounce it and die, with the resurrection in the next life implied, or he might be transformed in this life. The issue is not the fact of the transformation, but rather the nature of it.

Now this means that Girard is maintaining that great novels are death and resurrection stories, conversion stories, just like all those Billy Graham movies, or cheesy Christian romances at the Christian gift shop. But the thing that makes great novels great is the nature of the repudiation, the great renunciation. What is dying? What rises?

Ham-handedness is writing is consistently recognized in creative writing workshops, and then the poultice is applied to the wrong wound. “Show, don’t tell,” actually means don’t tell me that way, tell me another way. A novel in which there is a marked conversion in the next to last chapter gets an “oh, puh leeze” response—unless it turns out we are talking about Crime and Punishment, Pride and Prejudice, Don Quixote, and carry on with this list on your own time. The problem is not “conversion” stories. The problem lies in the nature of what we think we need converting from, and what we believe we are being converted to.

Pedestrian fiction by-passes the possibilities and complications of triangular desire. “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 object” (p. 34). But of course, ultimately, this results in someone trying to write a novel about a dog finding a piece of meat.

Of course, there are the mechanics of writing a good sentence and all that, but a work of fiction suspended on the dilemmas caused by triangular desire will be a lot easier to make interesting than a subject > object story. And don’t think that this problem can be fixed by having a two subjects > one object story. That is just two dogs racing for the piece of meat.

Originality

The greatest originality is shown by those writers who know what affects and drives all men, and yet which is invisible to almost all men. We are so accustomed to blinding ourselves to the machinery of triangular desire that it can be quite obvious in a text—those of you reading Theater of Envy will see this—and yet be missed by virtually everyone.

What Girard calls the writing of romances is that which departs from the patterns followed by just about everybody—originality. And those who return to the “banal” conclusion (his word), time after time, will find themselves haled as strikingly original writers. “That which is common to man” is an important phrase to remember.