I had read certain parts of the book before, and I held a rather more negative view. However, despite the numerous assumptions that Bachelard brings into the book, it still holds value.

Firstly, he spatializes Bergsonian ideas, which is beneficial in organizing a spatial narrative. This allows for a unique perspective and a different way of approaching the subject matter.

Secondly, he unifies philosophy and poetics, resulting in a dual method that is more effective than either one alone. By combining these two disciplines, he is able to offer a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding.

If you choose to read the book as a subjective experience rather than as a comprehensive, philosophical work, it turns out to be a very strange and yet altogether enjoyable text. It offers a different way of looking at the world and can stimulate the imagination in unexpected ways.

In conclusion, while the book may have its flaws and assumptions, it still has much to offer and is worth reading for those interested in philosophy, poetics, or simply a unique reading experience.

“We build within ourselves stone
on stone a vast haunted castle.”
-Vincent Monteiro, Vers sur verre

”Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.”
-Bachelard

“A house that stands in my heart
My cathedral of silence
Every morning recaptured in dream
Every evening abandoned
A house covered with dawn
Open to the winds of my youth.”
-Jean LaRoche, Memoires d'ete

”...the unlimited solitude that makes a lifetime of each day, toward a communion with the universe, in a word, space, the invisible space that man can live in nevertheless, and which surrounds him with countless presences.”
-Rilke, Lettres


It is my inclination to compose this entire piece on Bachelard with citations from his book and the fragments of poems he collects. His phenomenological study of the oneiric life, The Poetics of Space, delves deeply into the subject of intimate, poetic, personalized space. It is truly remarkable how he explores this topic, leaving little room for improvement. As other reviewers have noted, once you have read Bachelard and attempt to view the world through your own perceptions again, you are not the same person.

Bachelard affects you not through intellectual shocks or mind-bending paradoxes, but by encouraging you to look closely and quietly at the simplest interactions in your life. He focuses on the intimate places of our memories, habitations, and childhoods. The Poetics of Space is essentially a study of happiness, similar to Proust's work. Both books center around the belief in the supremacy of the creative imagination and the pursuit of happiness in our lived experiences.

Bachelard's introduction clarifies his concept of the poetic image and the importance of its novelty. The idea of reverberation is crucial to him, as a unique image can bring new vitality to the intellect and imagination. His entire thesis is based on the ontology of the imagination, which exists outside the realms of psychology and psychoanalysis.

The initiators and signifiers of our personal resonance are universally ordinary objects and places. Houses, doors, walls, and more are our intimates, the symbolic extensions of our language and dreams. We exist within these constructs, and the way we interact with them shapes the mythology of our lives. Bachelard hunts down the essence of our poetic existence in these places.

Bachelard maintains his points of reference in the world of literature, poetry, and imaginative prose. He seeks no external justification for his arguments, as he believes that if something exists in the realm of the imagination, it is valid. The Poetics of Space is mainly concerned with the dialectic between the regions of the imagination and the places where they are nurtured.

Among the many poets Bachelard references, Rilke and Baudelaire are two of his favorites. He sees Rilke as the poet of inhabited space and Baudelaire as the poet of "correspondences" between disparate things. Bachelard dissects Baudelaire's use of the word "vast" and claims that it represents "intimate immensity" for him.

Bachelard seeks resonances with the physical world in the expressions of humanity. Language is the beginning of all things human, and anything expressed contains a kernel of truth and humanity. He pursues the interchange between man and world through various aspects of inhabiting the world, such as hermetic huts, corners, and the composition of shells and bird's nests.

What we take away from reading The Poetics of Space is a heightened awareness of the dialogue between our psyche and its environment. We learn how our being fluctuates in different surroundings and the importance of keeping the values on which we construct our lives alive and open to change. The human consciousness is mutable, constantly interacting with the images it has hoarded and the places it has inhabited. We never truly leave the places we have dwelled, as memory and the unconscious ensure that fragments of ourselves remain, speaking to us and helping us construct our current world.

Forces are manifested in poems which do not pass through the circuits of knowledge.

I have encountered this concept countless times through secondary sources, often without even realizing it, dating all the way back to when I was a teen reading House of Leaves. This idea had already been deeply ingrained in my thinking long before I finally and essentially read the original work. While much of Bachelard's thinking may seem familiar, it is still a great pleasure and revelation to access the unmediated source in all its greater richness. Bachelard, a former postman who became a professor and a leading phenomenologist, is primarily concerned here with the mysterious workings of poetic images (both written and, I believe, applicable equally to film or painting). These images possess a piercing specificity and universality, often both in complex resonance and contradiction. The spatiality of his concerns here focuses on personal obsessions such as the deeper dream-logic embedded in the physical layouts of homes or in the mythic vastness of the desert. He is not so much interested in pinning them down as in suggesting their cosmic richness compared to the narrowness of a metaphor, which is a kind of impoverished image with a prescribed meaning. He also reflects on how such images spark the imagination.

"How many dreams told objectively, have become nothing but oneirism reduced to dust! In the presence of an image that dreams, it must be taken as an invitation to continue the daydream that created it."

Bachelard's writing here has a rambling, ruminative quality rather than a focused rigor. However, this is only an issue if you are not willing to simply surrender to the flow of his thinking. So many asides could open up into entire worlds of their own if you allow them. I wish I had realized earlier how much I needed this; it is both essential and a pleasure.