The Poetics of Space by gaston bachelard

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

July 15,2025

Wish I could have delved deeper into this. It's a poetico-phenomenological exploration of home.

Regrettably, a significant portion of it literally seemed as if I was perusing a poetics of space, which felt rather empty, generalizing highly specific experiences.

I do appreciate what Bachelard endeavored to achieve here and his overall project. I concur that the introduction is indeed the most engaging part.

I hadn't progressed far before it started to become repetitive. Apparently, he dwells on snail shells for some time.

This book would be markedly improved if it were approximately 120 - 140 pages in length.

Nonetheless, Bachelard intrigues me. Perhaps this isn't the most ideal starting point with his works. It's a book that I'll have to revisit and give a second chance at some future date.

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StrawbbDevilCake

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

July 15,2025

”But we still have books, and they give our daydreams countless dwelling places.”

At times, I found myself completely captivated by Bachelard’s poetic exploration of the imagination and the memories that fuel and drive us towards creative expression. His ideas seemed to dance on the page, painting vivid pictures in my mind. However, I must admit that this book, as a whole, can be rather abstract and overly verbose. It requires a certain level of concentration and patience to fully grasp its depth.

Yet, as someone who has often felt more attuned to her dreams than to the harsh realities of the world, it is impossible for me to deny the power this book holds to inspire the chronic dreamer within. It encourages us to look closely at the significant moments and images that shape our corner of the world. To cherish them, to hold onto them, and to keep them alive through the magic of our dreams.

”It is on the plane of the daydream and not on that of facts that childhood remains alive and poetically useful within us.” This quote speaks volumes, reminding us that our dreams are a precious gift, a source of inspiration and creativity that can transport us back to the innocence and wonder of our childhood. Let us embrace our dreams, let them guide us, and let us use them to create a world that is rich with meaning and beauty.

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Yuri-san

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

July 15,2025

This book is truly a remarkable distillation of the process by which our imaginations are formed and extended in accordance with the spaces we inhabit.

I was particularly enamored with the passage on shelters. It described how they not only keep us warm and safe but also foster imaginative growth. Bachelard astutely notes that we experience a sense of warmth and coziness in our homes precisely because it is cold outside. What a wonderful and yet mundane epiphany this is. We relish the warmth precisely because we are aware of the cold!

He further elaborates on the concepts of resonance, reverberations, and all the various ways in which nooks and crannies, locks, shells (which serve as homes for turtles and snails), attics, cottages, castles, and all these aspects of our spaces provide us with imaginative relief. It is truly astonishing to think about how these seemingly ordinary elements of our living environments can have such a profound impact on our creative minds.

Wow, this book really makes one look at the spaces we live in from a whole new perspective.

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makawaiikitty

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

July 15,2025

A great book, by a greater writer.

It has taken my ignorance by the hand through the places of the soul and its beauties in the details of details, and the allusions of the imagination and the dreams of awakening and the expressions of the poets.

Moreover, it has talked about poetry and poets as no writer or critic or poet has talked before.

It is important for every writer and reader, for everyone who wants to keep his spirit fresh and original despite its maturity, far from psychological analysis and the science of the soul and the dry sciences that deprive us of our imaginations by judging them without their logic. A wonderful introduction to揭开 the secrets of literature in general and poetry in particular.

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artemisxii

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

July 15,2025

That's a truly beautiful text.

It is sometimes provocative and, in any case, is as inspired by poetry as it surely must have been. Bachelard is speaking here of phenomenology.

In a sense, it is all the more flexible for the time because he does not oppose it to metaphysics (just as he did not favor idealism, rationalism, empiricism, or materialism in epistemology).

As you will have understood, his aim is not to reach the psychological or psychoanalytic origin of poetic images.

Rather, it is to seize the meaning of the poetic image in its creativity and in all its depth.

This depth demands an unceasing transfer between the poem and philosophy.

However, such a transfer is not in the mode of simple analogy, for the poet liberates from being.

This essay is, above all, a poetic ontology, for no word should be underestimated.

Each word holds within it the potential to unlock new dimensions of understanding and perception, and Bachelard's exploration of the poetic image through the lens of phenomenology offers a rich and rewarding journey into the heart of creativity and meaning.

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Dr_Stoned

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

July 15,2025

When I think of my childhood,

I am often filled with vivid memories of my grandparents' house.

It was like a magical world of its own,

with countless secrets waiting to be discovered,

memories to be relived,

and corners to explore both inside and out.

Each visit felt too short,

as if I could never fully uncover all that it had to offer.

This book that I have come across recently,

in a strange way, reminds me of that special place.

It delves deep into the philosophy of the space within the walls and outside,

making me realize that there is still so much I have yet to learn from it.

Maybe on my next visit to that house of my childhood,

I will be able to see it with new eyes and gain a deeper understanding of its significance in my life.

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SleepyBear

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

July 15,2025

Bachelard, who assumes the role of a phenomenologist, has delved deep beneath the fluctuating mirror surfaces of communication. His exploration has unearthed precious pearls of comprehensive meaning. He guides us to understand and grasp the power of poetic images that are founded upon emotions, existence, and truth.

By immersing himself in the study of communication and its various manifestations, Bachelard is able to uncover the hidden depths and significance within. His work reveals how poetic images can have a profound impact on our perception and understanding of the world around us.

These images, based on our emotions and our sense of existence, hold a certain truth that can touch our hearts and minds. Bachelard's insights offer us a new way of looking at communication and the role that poetic images play within it. His work encourages us to pay closer attention to the power of language and the emotions it can evoke.

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klesun

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

July 15,2025

Bachelard desires to rent a house from "himself" with all its angles and boundaries. The house is a haven that allows him to give shape to his imagination in peace. He attempts, in the phenomenological analysis of space, to interpret the elements of a house, from the basement to the attic, in accordance with the pattern of the human pronoun. In this way, the house is both the nurturer and the birthplace of his dreams. According to Bachelard, architecture is both a foundation and a function, both an expression of a dream and a means of comfort. The house, in the interpretation of a dream, is a symbol of "oneself". The self that has come from the past and is moving towards the future.

The main source of Bachelard's studies is poetry because he searches for the most naïve images in the original poems of poets and in the language system, and has less acquaintance with other arts. Bachelard focuses more on the imagination itself than on any art and makes the achievements of his research applicable to other arts because all of them have a single essence. Of course, Bachelard has not ignored painting. For example, in the last chapter, when he wants to deal with the phenomenology of the circle, he also places Van Gogh, the painter, beside the philosopher Husserl and the poet Lafontaine.

The phenomenology of imagination is considered the main subject of Bachelard's phenomenological studies. This subject has also been of interest to others such as Sartre. But Bachelard's writing is of a different kind. For Bachelard, phenomenology is, more than anything, a research method that provides him with the possibility to be freed from the prejudices that have dominated philosophy and Western culture for centuries and have caused the elimination of imagination from the stage of life.

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The Poetics of Space

gaston bachelard maria jolas john r. stilgoe

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