Autobiography and invention

Commenting on the “models” that Dostoevsky used for Stavrogin, Girard says “Knowledge of oneself is perpetually mediated by knowledge of others. The distinction between the ‘autobiographical’ characters and those that are not is thus superficial; it grasps only the superficial works, those that succeed neither in revealing the preexisting mediations between the Other and the Self nor in making themselves the vehicle of new mediations. If the work is profound, one can no more speak of ‘autobiography’ than of ‘invention’ or ‘imagination’ in the usual sense of these terms.”