Roman, Transcendenta, Modernitate

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F O R U M :

165

T H E NOVEL

DEVIATED

TRANSCENDENCY AND

MODERNITY

Pierpaolo Antonello

ensonge romantique et vérité romanesque 1961 ) is an eloq uen t boo k of impli

statements, a book that is as bold in its theoretical an d cridcal am bidon as it

is shy in its ideological premises. Keeping in mind R ené Girard's personal

and intellectual trajectories in the years that follow, however, one can see,

upon closer scrutiny, tha t it reflects the contextual condidons in which it was

produced and the motivations that inspired its composition. Among these

are not only Girard's own conversion,' which dnts the general ideological

perspective at the core of

D eceit,

Desire, and

theNovel,

but also the coeval tren

of literary cridcism, or, in general, the mod ern reception of m odern novels

(against which Girard took a polemical stance), and the interpretation of

desire in the consdtudon of modern subjectivity that

was

current at the time

of Girard's writing.

Taken together, these may have led G irard to ado pt a sort of moralistic

tone in his argum ent and even a sort of theoredcal m anicheism in his

early formulation of mimetic theory, which posits an intrinsic polarity

between the positive m ediadon of desire by God, and the negative,

idolatrous mediation w ielded by othe rs: Choice always involves choosing

a model, and true freedom lies in the basic choice between a human or a

divine model. The impulse of the soul toward God is inseparable from a

retrea t into the Self Inversely the tu rnin g in on itself of pride is inseparable

from a movement of panic toward the Other

{DDN

58 . From a cridcal

standpoint, however, we should step back from the moralistic connotation

of terms such as positive and negative, lie and truth, in orde r to

fully appreciate the historical and theoredcal implications of Girard's theory

A possible critical move to explore some of the issues at the center of

Decát, Desire, and the Novel

is

to look at its paratex t: the polariza tion betwee

mensonge (lie) an d vérité (truth) in the original French dde is evidendy dnted

by m oral overtones and by the polemic charac ter of Girard's book, but also



166 Religion Leiterattire

the rea l ; between the mythical transfiguration of the desired objects

(which, according to Girard, constitutes the unity of internal and externa

mediation), on the one hand , and the realism of the novels (which is

the unm asking of the mythical character of metaphysical desire ) on the

other. Th is distinction also arguably parallels the considerations formulated

in Things Hidden since the Eoundation

of

the World (1987), in which Girard

formulated his theo ry of the sacrificial origins of culture and the critical role

performed by the Christian revelation in unmasking the mythical character

of natura l religions and of the sacred, including mythical texts and literary

works—for instance, Greek tragedy, which stOl covers the vestiges of the

sacrificial origins of human culture. If we adop t the overarching theoretica

perspective formulated by Girard in his later work we may have to abandon

the conceptual polarity {mensonge/vérité) in the French titie of Deceit

and the Novel and think rather in terms of a complex historical process

progressive revelation. Girard's theory is not a Gnostic theory but it is his-

torically grounded.^

As a matter of fact, Girard may be enlisted into a generation of critics

who were convinced of the possibOity of thematizing literature within a

longu£ durée,

inspired by a Vichian understanding of the hum an imagina

I am thinking in particular of two of the greatest twentieth-century liter

ary critics: Eric Auerbach (particularly in Mimesis) and Nor tho rp Frye (w

reference to bo th Anatomy

of

Criticism and The Great Code). In a

less

sys

way,

we may say that G irard, in Deceit Desire, and

the

Novel sketched a s

trajectory: the idea of inscribing the novel within a progressive history of

Western imagination, in which what is in question is the deceptive dimensio

of spo ntaneous desire, and the unstable bound aries of subjectivity. Thi

was not his main task, as his structural analysis of the novels became p ivota

in defining the contour of a theory that would then extend way beyond the

scope of literary criticism, but it is part of the fascination and interest thi

book

St l

wields fifty years after its publication.

StOl looking for paratex tua l clues, if we lift the cover of

Deceit Desire,

the

Novel and read the first pages of the English ed ition, we may also not

that there

is

one bit missing with respect to the French original— namely, th

initial epigraph taken from Max Scheler's Das

Ressentiment

which is cru

for the understanding of G irard's first book: M an has either a God or an

idol {L hommepossède ou un Dieu ou une idole [9]). Th is polarity is non



FORUM 167

Western culture and the etiology of what we could caU secularized tran-

scendence as it is expressed and thematized by modern novels: from the

external mediation of chivalric epic in on Quixote, to die underground

interpersonal apocalypticism of Dostoevsky in his various novels. Besides

providing textual examples of deviated transcendence, either tiirough liter-

ary or social structures, what

is

at stake in the implicit trajectory delineated

by Girard is a process of progressive disenchantment of the world, a

process of de-idealization, which not only regards the sacred or religion

(particularly Christianity in die Western context) in the first instance, but

a

substitutive forms of immanent religiosity (literature, elitism, snobbism,

glamour, capitalism, romantic love, etc.) that substitute for the overarching

umbreUa of historical religion, as Girard suggests.^

Taken in broader historical terms, the increasing spread of internal

mediation could be seen as the inevitable and, from a political and ethical

standpoint, welcome result of the democratic transformation of the pagan

world which was based on radical social separations, aristocratic elitism,

slavery, tribal identity, etc. Man has always been idolatrous in his history,

and Christianity, in Girardian terms, represents the progressive moving

away from this perspective towards a more realistic, immanent, dem ocratic

understanding of social, cultural, political, and psychological forces, even

at the price of being thrown, in the most patiiological cases, into the abyss

of the internal mediation and deviated transcendence.

Inca rnation thus understood is a movement by which the vertical order

of the transcendental God is graduaUy substituted by the social horizontality

of universal Christian brodierhood. If modern individualism is, according

to Girard , a by-product of Christianity, the deviated transcendence m ay be

also seen as the way tiirough which mankind explores both material and

social reality T he

fiel

of m ankind's existential possibilities—many of which

may lead to the Dostoyevskian Apocalypse — stem from the freedom of

choice which is intrinsic to Christian

ethics:

M en who cannot look freedom

in die face are exposed to anguish. They look for a banner on which they

can fix their eyes [DDN65 .

In a way, Girard finds in Stendhal one of the expressions of the m odern

individual not affected by metaphysical desire: the

egotist.

Stendhal's

egotist

unlike the romantic, is not trying to inflate his ego to universal

proportions. Such an attempt is always based on some hidden mediation. The



168 Religion Literature

Girard's final comment, in this regard, provides a demarcation between

remarkable novels of high genius and less successful ones: Interesting as

this attempt is, it has hardly any repercussions on the business of writing

the novels (65). T he successful novel is either a magnifier of the pitfaüs

of metaphysical desire or, according to Girard , is ultimately uninteresting.

The history of the novel has also an ambivalent role in this respect. On

the one hand, it is the expression of the need for self-representation of a

particular social class, the bourgeoisie, which, in its radical redefinition of

the class system in Europe, contributed to the exasperation of the dynamics

of internal mediation; on the odier hand, however, being tiie literary form

that absorbed the social, cultural, and aesthetic functions performed

by

the

Bible, assuming the role of secularized scriptures,* it maintains an aesthetic

energy that, according to Girard , stems from its revelatory power and it

demystifying force.

In a simüar fashion, this revelatory power contains an intrinsic ambiva-

lence that needs to be fleshed out. As Stefano Brugnolo comments on this

score: to interpret Don Qu ixote, Em m a Bovary, Anna Karen ina only as

anti-models, as ülustrations of the danger of mimetic

desire,

prevents us from

grasping that their power and greatness rely also on their very 'innocent

mim etic meandering, which is com mon to everybody

(24-25);

the proces

of recognition (and eventuaüy of conversion) on the part of the reader is

first of au based on the process of identification, of compassionate identifi

cation with novelistic charac ters. Stefano Giglioli also argues that in order

to criticize the protagonist, for being under the mesmerizing speü of his/

her mediator, the novelist ought to make him or her an object of interes

and fascination, that

is,

both a mediator and a scapegoat (4).

Mimetic theory does not

llow

for clear-cut distinctions in geom etrical an

Cartesian terms, but provides an answer to the ambivalences, antinomies

and paradoxes of social and cultural phenom ena. For example, Girard titled

chapter two of Deceit Desire and the Novel M en become Gods in the

of Each Other. In that chap ter Girard writes: Th e imitation of Chris

becomes the imitation of one's ne ighbor (59). T he sentence, like the tide

is ambiguous, because it at once condemns idolatry and evokes the Chris

tian caüing to find

Christ in others

(see Matt 25:40). That is to say, it m

be interpreted as a caü not to turn away from internal mediation towards

external mediation but rather to move from negative internal mediation



FORUM 169

art, including die novel

(139).

However, as Dan te has made it quite clear in

Can to V of the

Inferno,

it

is

not important what

w

read but

how w

read.^ In

the end, G irard's pen chant toward double-meaning, even in his declaration

of sharply defined alternatives, reveals him to be more Dantesque than he

himself recognized in the historical movem ent of his own conversion.

University of Cambridge, St. John's C ollege

NOTES

1.

For an account of Girard's own conversion at the time of the composition of Deceit

Desire, andtheNovet see Girard,

Quand ces choses commenceront

190-95.

2.

See £üote'on 218-19.

3. O ne way to look at this problem is to consider som e of the issues discussed by G irard

with Gianni Vattimo in their recent Chr i s t i an i t y , Tru th , and Weakening Faith (2010). Here th

contend with one of the most interesting historical tenets brought forward by Girard's

mimetic theory, which maintains that Christianity, through its desacralizing force became

the religion of the exit from religion, and democracy, civil rights, individual freedoms,

laicism, have all been, if not precisely invented in the absolute sense, facilitated in their

development and expression by the Christian cultures. Secularization in its various cultural

aspects is a Christian by-product, as it were. In particular, see my introduction (1-22) and

the first chapter, Christianity and M ode rnity (23-47).

4.

For this, see Iser 132.

5.

On this, see Heather Webb's contribution to this forum.

WORKS CITED

Auerbach, Erich.

Mim es is : The Representation of Reality in Western Literature.

Trans. Willar

Trask. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1953.

Brugnolo, Stefano. La visione rom anzesca e la visione cristiana: un a rilettura illuministica

d i

Menzogna romántica e verità rom ancesca . Nuova corrente

137 (2006): 13-41.

Fornari, Giuseppe. La bellezza e i l nul la: L'antropolog ia cristiana d i Leonardo da Vinci. Milan-G

Ma rietti, 2005.



170

Religion Literature

Lansing, MI: Michigan State UP, 2010.

. W i t h G i an n i V a t d mo . Christianity Truth

and

Weakening Faith:

A

Dialogue [Verità

o

F

Dtbole

2006]. Ed. Pierpaolo Antonello. Trans. William McCuiag. New York: Columb

UP,

2010.

. Deceit

Desire

and the Novel: Self and Other

in

Literary

Structure.

Trans . Yvonne Frecc

1966.

Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1988.

.

With P. Antonello and J. C. de Castro Rocha. Evolution and Conversion: Dialogue

Origins of Culture. London: Continuum, 2008.

. Quand ces choses

commenceront:

Entretiens avec Michel

Treguer.

Paris : Arléa,

1994.

Iser, W olfgang. Prospecting:from reader response to literary

anthropology.

Ba l t i mo re : J o h n s H

UP,

1993.

RE NÉ GI RARD'S CONCE PT OF CONVE RSI ON

AND T H E

VIA NEGATIVA:

REVISITING

DECEIT

DESIRE

AND THENOVEL

Robert Doran

In the famous conclusion

t

Decát Desire and

theNovel

René Girard

manifest an opposidon that had been suggested but not fully fleshed ou

in the body of the work, namely that between verdcal and deviated

transcendence: the first referring to die properly religious concept of tra

scendence, the second to what Girard calls metaphysical desire, the desir

for the Other's being, the desire to be the model of desire. Indeed, Th

Conclusion develops more explicidy and

to a

greater extent die religiou

implications of Girard's theory of mim edc or mediated desire (based on th

idea that desire is in ter subjective or socially mediated),' and it does so

exploring the essential ambiguity of religious terminology^ For the relado

between verdcal and deviated transcendence can also be thought in term

of the re ladon between the literal-religious and figuradve-secular levels o

significadon. Girard exploits the tension between the two levels to buttre

his view tha t secularism

is

simply

a

perversion

of

religious forms, th

the desire

to

negate

or

transcend religion results

in a

parody

of

the sacre



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