Deceit and Desire in Proust

The French historical philosopher and anthropologist Rene Girard believes that all of our desires are stolen from others. In his book, Deceit, Desire and the Novel, Girard constructs a sort of uniform thesis on the "great modern novels" and their writers, making the claim that these writers (he uses Dostoyevsky, Balzac, Flaubert, Cervantes, Stendhal, and most importantly, Proust) all write about the same thing: mimetic desire.

According to Girard, every desire expressed in Proust's In Search of Lost Time is a triangular desire, or a "mimetic desire." When the characters of Proust's novel desire a person, an object, or even an idea, that desire is not authentic. Rather, it is provoked and mediated by someone else, a third consciousness. We imitate desires from others. Girard believes that we look to others to know what to desire; every want and wish in Proust is therefore stolen from others. A third consciousness, or what Girard likes to call the mediator, "allows" us to have a desire over an object or person.

In other words, Swann doesn't fall in love with Odette because he truly loves her; he falls in love with Odette because he sees that others also desire her. The narrator's desire for Gilberte or Albertine is not passionate amour, it is the stolen desire of a different person or another consciousness. Girard gives the illustrious example of an episode in Swann's Way involving the narrator (the imitator), la Berma (the object or desire) and Bergotte (the model or mediator). The narrator, as a child, admires the author Bergotte. The slightest word from the writer becomes law to him. Bergotte expresses intense desire to see the great actress, La Berma. Our narrator has never seen or heard of this actress, but nonetheless she continues to exist outside of his self. Thanks to Bergotte, our narrator starts desiring La Berma and expresses deep interest in seeing her live. Girard writes:

The narrator has not invented the great Berma. The actress is quite real;

she exists outside the self who desires her…. It is not an object which

assures this contact; it is another consciousness. A third person indicates

to the narrator the object he will begin desiring passionately.

(Girard)

To further illustrate Girard's point, I have found quotes in Swann's Way that reveal the true nature of Proustian desire:

If only Bergotte had described the place in one of his books, [the Champ-

Elysees], I should, no doubt, have longed to see and to know it, like so

many things else of which a simulacrum first found its way into my

imagination.

(Swann's Way)

In other words, Bergotte's word allows the narrator to desire over someone or something. This is not the extent of Girard's argument, however. Mimetic desire has a myriad of implications. According to Girard, we turn our own model into a rival, an obstacle in the process of imitating their desires: towards our model we feel “the most submissive reverence and the most intense malice. This is the passion we call hatred.” We feel hatred towards our model because we want to hide from ourselves, and from others, the true devilish nature of our desire, the fact that it is not authentic to us. We project and displace hatred for the fact that we are frauds in terms of our desires and turn our own model into our own rival. We can see this in the example of Bergotte; in the beginning of the novel, the narrator feels only attraction and admiration for the great writer. However, once the narrator gets older and the novel progresses, our narrator soon starts to despise the great Bergotte. According to Girard, this hatred for Bergotte owes to the fact that mimetic desire is self-destructive; we admire and at the same time hate the model that allows us to have desire.

Girard also makes the radical argument that the Other and only the Other set desire in motion. Even when our own experience contradicts the testimony of the Other, the latter always takes preference. Girard uses the La Berma example again. Our narrator finally gets permission to see La Berma in concert, but once he sees her he is deeply disappointed. He returns home to his parents and M. de Norpois, who is having dinner with them. The narrator expresses disappointment to Norpois. In response, Norpois (who may or may not have actually seen La Berma in person) pays homage to the great actress. Once Norpois leaves, faith is restored in our narrator's mind, and La Berma becomes desirable once again. In other words, even when our own experience contradicts the testimony of a mediator, we conform to the desires of the mediator. Girard thus makes the radical claim: "Each and every Proustian desire is the triumph of suggestion over impression."

What is recapturing the Past, according to Girard? Where do the themes of Memory and Truth fit into his theory of desire? Girard believes that recapturing the past is simply recognizing the fraudulent mechanics of mimetic desire; recapturing the past is seeing through your own desires and acknowledging that they are not actually yours. Girard states, "Recapturing the past is recapturing the original impression beneath the opinion of others which hides it; it is to recognize that one’s opinion is not one’s own... Recapturing the past is to welcome the truth which most men spend their lives trying to escape, to recognize that one has always copied Others in order to seem original in their eyes and in one’s own." Moreover, the only way to reach this profound truth, to repent over your stolen desire, is through novelistic creation; through writing about the past we can recognize that the desires we felt are not actually ours.

To Girard, this is the sole foundation of Proust's entire work: the mechanisms of mimetic desire and our characters' struggles with the implications.