The Girard Reader (11 page)

fundamental categories seem to be distinguishable from the outset: those conclusions which

portray a solitary hero who rejoins other men and those which portray a "gregarious" hero

gaining solitude. Dostoyevsky's novels belong to the first category, Stendhal's to the second.

Raskolnikov rejects solitude and embraces Others, Julien Sorel rejects Others and embraces

solitude.

The opposition seems insurmountable. Yet it is not. If our interpretation of the conversion is

correct, if it puts an end to triangular desire, then its effects cannot be expressed either in

terms of absolute soli-

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tude or in terms of a return to the world. Metaphysical desire brings into being a certain

relationship to others and to oneself. True conversion engenders a new relationship to others

and to oneself. The mechanical oppositions of solitude and gregariousness, involvement and

noninvolvement are the result of romantic interpretations.

If we examine Stendhal's and Dostoyevsky's conclusions more closely we find that the two

aspects of true conversion are always present but that they are not equally developed.

Stendhal places more emphasis on the subjective aspect and Dostoyevsky more on the

intersubjective aspect. The neglected aspect is never completely suppressed. Julien wins

solitude but he triumphs over isolation. His happiness with Mme. de Rênal is the supreme

expression of a profound change in his relationship with Others. When the hero finds himself

surrounded by a crowd at the beginning of his trial, he is surprised to find that he no longer

feels his old hatred for Others. He wonders whether Others are as bad as he once thought

them. When he no longer envies people, when he no longer wishes to seduce or dominate

them, then Julien no longer hates them.

Similarly Raskolnikov, in the conclusion, triumphs over his isolation but he also gains

solitude. He reads the Gospel; he recovers the peace which has so long escaped him. Solitude

and human contact exist only as functions of each other; they cannot be isolated without

lapsing into romantic abstraction.

The differences between novelistic conclusions are negligible. It is less a question of

opposition than of a shift of accent. The lack of balance between the various aspects of the

metaphysical cure reveal that the novelist has not rid himself entirely of his own

"romanticism"; he remains the prisoner of formulas whose function of pure justification he

does not perceive. Dostoyevsky's conclusions are not completely purified of the tendency to

wallow in misery. In Stendhal's conclusions can be found traces of the middle-class

romanticism which was rampant in the Delécluze salon. In the process of underlining these

differences
it is easy to lose sight of the unity of novelistic conclusions. The critics ask no better, for unity in their languages means banality, and banality is the worst charge of all. If

the critics do not reject the conclusion outright, they try to prove that it is
original
, that it contradicts the conclusions of other novels. They always trace the author back to his romantic

origins. They think they are doing his work a good service. And this is doubtless true

according to the romantic taste of the educated public. But on a more profound level they are

doing it a disservice. They are exalting that in it which is contrary to novelistic truth.

Romantic criticism rejects what is essential; it refuses to go beyond metaphysical desire to the truth of the novel which shines beyond death. The hero succumbs as he achieves truth and he

entrusts his creator with the heritage of his clairvoyance. The title of hero of a novel must be

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reserved for the character who triumphs over metaphysical desire in a tragic conclusion and

thus becomes
capable of writing the novel
. The hero and his creator are separated throughout

the novel but come together in the conclusion. Approaching death, the hero looks back on his

lost existence. He sees it with the "breadth and depth of vision" which suffering, sickness, and exile gave to Mme. de Clèves and which is that of the novelist himself. This "breadth and

depth of vision" is not so different from the "telescope" mentioned by Marcel Proust in
The
Past Recaptured
, and from the supereminent position which Stendhal's hero attains in his

prison. All these images of distance and elevation are the expression of a new and more

detached vision, which is the creator's own vision. This ascending movement must not be

confused with pride. The aesthetic triumph of the author is one with the joy of the hero who

has renounced desire.

Therefore the conclusion is always a memory. It is the eruption of a memory which is more

true than the perception itself. It is a "panoramic vision" like Anna Karenina's. It is a

"revivification of the past." The expression is Proust's but he is not speaking of
The Past
Recaptured
, as one would immediately imagine, but of
The Red and the Black
. The

inspiration always comes from memory and memory springs from the conclusion. Every

novelistic conclusion is a beginning.

Every novelistic conclusion is a
Past Recaptured
.

Marcel Proust in his own conclusion merely uncovered a meaning that had previously been

hidden by a transparent veil of fiction. The narrator of
Remembrance of Things Past
makes

his way to the novel through the novel. But all the heroes of previous novels did the same.

Stepan Trofimovitch moves toward the Gospel which summarizes the meaning of
The

Possessed
. Mme. de Clèves moves toward the "breadth and depth of vision," that is, toward novelistic vision. Don Quixote, Julien Sorel, and Raskolnikov have the same spiritual

experience as Marcel in
The Past Recaptured
. Proust's aesthetics do not consist of a number

of formulas and percepts; they are indissolubly united with the escape from metaphysical

desire. All of the characteristics of novelistic conclusions mentioned above may be found in

The Past Recaptured
, but here they are represented as exigencies of creation. The novel's

inspiration springs from the break with the mediator. The absence of desire in the present

makes it possible to recapture past desires.

In
The Past Recaptured
Proust emphasizes that
self-centeredness
is a barrier to novelistic creation. Proustian self-centeredness gives rise to
imitation
and makes us live
outside

ourselves
. This self-centeredness is other-centeredness as well; it is not one-sided egotism; it is an impulse in two contradictory directions which always ends by tearing the individual

apart. To triumph over self-centeredness is to get away from oneself and make contact with

others, but in another sense it also im-

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poses a greater intimacy with oneself and a withdrawal from others. A self-centered person thinks he is choosing himself but in fact he shuts himself out as much as others. Victory over

self-centeredness allows us to probe deeply into the Self and at the same time yields a better

knowledge of Others. At a certain depth there is no difference between our own secret and

the secret of Others. Everything is revealed to the novelist when he penetrates this Self, a

truer Self than that which each of us displays. This Self imitates constantly, on its knees

before the mediator.

This profound Self is also a universal Self. The dialectic of metaphysical pride alone can help

us understand and accept Proust's attempt to reconcile the particular and universal. In the

context of the romantic's mechanical opposition between Self and Others, such an attempt

would be absurd.

This logical absurdity no doubt struck Proust, and he occasionally gives up his attempt at

reconciliation and slips back into the clichés of twentieth-century romanticism. In a few

isolated passages of
The Past Recaptured
he declares that the work of art must permit us to

grasp our "differences" and makes us delight in our "originality."

These scattered passages are the result of Proust's lack of theoretic vocabulary. But the

attempt at logical coherence is quickly swept away by inspiration. Proust knew that in

describing his own youth he was describing ours as well. He knew that the true artist no

longer has to choose between himself and Others. Because it is born of renunciation, great

novelistic art loses nothing and regains everything.

But this renunciation is very painful. The novelist can write his novel only if he recognizes

that
his
mediator is a person like himself. Marcel, for example, has to give up considering his beloved a monstrous divinity and seeing himself in the role of an eternal victim. He has to

recognize that his beloved's lies are similar to his own.

This victory over a self-centeredness which is other-centered, this renunciation of fascination

and hatred, is the crowning moment of novelistic creation. Therefore it can be found in all the

great novelists. Every novelist sees his similarity to the fascinating Other
through the voice of

his hero
. Mme. de la Fayette recognizes her similarity to the women for whom love has been

their undoing. Stendhal, the enemy of hypocrites, recognizes at the end of
The Red and the

Black
that he is also a hypocrite. Dostoyevsky, in the conclusion of
Crime and Punishment

gives up seeing himself alternately as a superhuman and as a subhuman. The novelist

recognizes that he is guilty of the sin of which he is accusing his mediator. The curse which

Oedipus hurls at Others falls on his own head.

This is the meaning of Flaubert's famous cry: "Mme Bovary, c'est moi!" Flaubert first

conceived Mme. Bovary as that despicable Other

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whom he had sworn to deal with. Mine. Bovary originally was Flaubert's enemy, as Julien

Sorel was Stendhal's enemy and Raskolnikov Dostoyevsky's enemy. But while remaining that

Other, the hero of the novel gradually merges with the novelist in the course of creation.

When Flaubert cries, "Mme Bovary, c'est moi," he is not trying to say that Mme. Bovary has

become one of those flattering doubles with whom romantic writers love to surround

themselves. He means that the Self and the Other have become one in the miracle of the

novel.

Great novels always spring from an obsession that has been transcended. The hero sees

himself in the rival he loathes; he renounces the "differences" suggested by hatred. He learns, at the expense of his pride, the existence of the psychological circle. The novelist's

selfexamination merges with the morbid attention he pays to his mediator. All the powers of a

mind freed of its contradictions unite in one creative impulse. Don Quixote and Emma

Bovary and Charlus would not be so great were they not the result of a synthesis of the two

halves of existence which pride usually succeeds in keeping separate.

This victory over desire is extremely painful. Proust tells us that we must forego the fervent

dialogue endlessly carried on by each one of us at the superficial levels of our being. One

must "give up one's dearest illusions." The novelist's art is a phenomenological epochē. But the only authentic epochē is never mentioned by modern philosophers; it is always victory

over desire, victory over Promethean pride.

Some texts written shortly before Marcel Proust's great creative period throw a brilliant light

on the connection between
The Past Recaptured
and classical novelistic conclusions. Perhaps

the most important of them is an article published in
Le Figaro
in 1907 entitled "The Filial Sentiments of a Parricide." The article is devoted to the drama of a family whom the Prousts

knew slightly. Henri Van Blarenberghe had killed himself after murdering his mother. Proust

gives a short account of this double tragedy concerning which he seems to have no special

information. At the conclusion there is a widening of the perspective and the tone becomes

more personal. The Van Blarenberghe affair becomes a symbol of the mother-son

relationship in general. The vices and ingratitude of children make their parents age

prematurely. This theme is already present in the conclusion of Jean Santeuil. After

describing in his article how terribly decrepit a mother, worn-out by suffering, seems to her

son, Proust writes:

Perhaps women who could see that,
in that belated moment of lucidity which may occur even

in lives completely obsessed by illusions, since it happened even to Don Quixote
, perhaps that someone, like Henri Van Blarenberghe after he stabbed his mother to death, would recoil

from the horror of his life and snatch up a

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gun, in order to put an immediate end to his existence. [Emphasis added.]

The parricide recovers his lucidity in the course of expiating crime, and expiates his crime in

the course of recovering his lucidity. His terrifying vision of the past is a vision of truth; it

stands in direct opposition to his life "obsessed by illusions." The "Oedipal" atmosphere of these lines is quite striking. It is the year 1907, Proust has just lost his mother and is obsessed

with remorse. In this brief paragraph we are given a glimpse of the process which enables a

Stendhal, Flaubert, Tolstoy, or Dostoyevsky to give expression to his experience as a man