René Girard, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The straight line between a subject and an object is a fiction — the most seductive fiction modernity has produced. What actually operates is a triangle: subject, object, and between them, always, a third term, the mediator whose desire teaches the subject what to want.1 The clearest illustration is the contrast between Cervantes and Stendhal.
Don Quixote desires according to the model of Amadis of Gaul, a legendary knight so remote, so enthroned in an inaccessible heaven, that no real rivalry can develop between them.2 Amadis cannot slaughter giants in Don Quixote's place; he cannot compete for the same objects in the same world. The mediation is peaceful precisely because the distance is absolute.
Stendhal's characters enjoy no such serenity. When Valenod can steal the tutor from M. de Rênal, when the Maréchale de Fervacques can take Julien from Mathilde, the mediator has come down to earth and the triangle tightens into a trap.3 The mediator himself desires the object, or could desire it — and it is this very desire, real or presumed, that makes the object infinitely desirable in the subject's eyes.4
Two competing desires now occupy the same space, and the model who showed the disciple the gate of paradise forbids him to enter with one and the same gesture.5 The distance between mediator and subject is therefore not incidental; it is the structural variable that determines everything. Vary it, and you measure the spiritual gap between Don Quixote and the most despicably vain of Stendhal's characters.6
Sancho Panza illustrates the point from the other direction: his hunger for cheese and wine is his own, but his ambition to govern an island, his desire for a duchess's title for his daughter — these do not arise spontaneously in a simple man. Don Quixote put them in his head, and from the moment that influence is felt, the sense of reality is lost and judgment is paralyzed.7
The triangle is not a mechanical model in the manner of Lévi-Strauss. It is a family of models that always alludes to what is transparent yet opaque in human relations.8 The great novelists grasped this structure intuitively and concretely before any critic formalized it — which is why I insist that literary interpretation must be systematic, that it is the continuation of literature itself, and that the triangle must be borrowed from the novels rather than imposed upon them.9
Proust understood it as well as anyone: women rise in our estimation because of the dead weight of the men with whom we compete for them, and when the counterpoise is removed, the charm declines.10 Dostoevsky's Pavel Pavlovitch, in The Eternal Husband, enacts this compulsively — dragging his rival Veltchaninov to the woman he has chosen precisely so that Veltchaninov's desire might guarantee her erotic value.11
That is triangular desire: not a pathology of unusual people, but the structure beneath ordinary wanting, the mechanism the Romantic tradition spent two centuries pretending did not exist.
Don Quixote is Sancho's mediator. The effects of triangular desire are the same in the two characters. From the moment the mediator's influence is felt, the sense of reality is lost and judgment paralyzed.The Girard Reader, pp. 29–30
Obviously this distance is greatest in Cervantes. There can be no contact whatsoever between Don Quixote and his legendary Amadis.Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, pp. 18–19
Valenod, on the other hand, can steal the tutor from M. de Rênal; the Maréchale de Fervacques can take Julien from Mathilde de la Mole.The Girard Reader, p. 32
In most of Stendhal's desires, the mediator himself desires the object, or could desire it: it is even this very desire, real or presumed, which makes this object infinitely desirable in the eyes of the subject.The Girard Reader, p. 32
The mediator can no longer act his role of model without also acting or appearing to act the role of obstacle. Like the relentless sentry of the Kafka fable, the model shows his disciple the gate of paradise and forbids him to enter with one and the same gesture.The Girard Reader, p. 32
The clear distinction between these two types of relationship between mediator and subject indicates the enormous spiritual gap which separates Don Quixote from the most despicably vain of Stendhal's characters.Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, pp. 18–19
These desires do not come spontaneously to a simple man like Sancho. It is Don Quixote who has put them into his head... From the moment the mediator's influence is felt, the sense of reality is lost and judgment paralyzed.The Girard Reader, pp. 29–30
The triangle is a model of a sort, or rather a whole family of models. But these models are not 'mechanical' like those of Claude Lévi-Strauss. They always allude to the mystery, transparent yet opaque, of human relations.The Girard Reader, pp. 29–30
Literary interpretation must be systematic because it is the continuation of literature. It should formalize implicit or already half-explicit systems.The Girard Reader, pp. 29–30
often women rise in our estimation only because of the dead weight of men with whom we have to compete for them, although we can hardly bear the thought of that competition; the counterpoise removed, the charm of the woman declines.Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, pp. 58–59
Pavel Pavlovitch can desire only through the mediation of Veltchaninov... He drags Veltchaninov along to the house of the lady he has chosen, so that he might desire her and thus guarantee her erotic value.Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, pp. 58–59