39 pages • 1 hour read
Gaston BachelardThe Poetics of Space
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1957A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 3-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary and Analysis: “Drawers, Chests, and Wardrobes”
At the beginning of this chapter, Bachelard draws a distinction between image and metaphor, the latter of which he claims cannot be viewed through any type of phenomenological lens. He speaks out strongly against metaphor, claiming it is a perpetuation of deceit. He does not find it useful to look at a house or the spaces within it through the lens of what they might represent metaphorically. Instead, he chooses to focus entirely on image.
Bachelard asserts that image is born of imagination, and he suggests that image is an occurrence that can only be attributed to being and consciousness. A drawer is conjured in the imagination, and the image of the drawer is placed in a house through the expression of that creative thought. It then engages in the cycle Bachelard refers to earlier in the book; the drawer feeds and is fed by the creative mind. Bachelard asks the reader to consider the image of the drawer and to reject it as a metaphor for categorizing things. The drawer is an example of what Bachelard calls “images of secrecy” (99). Like chests and wardrobes, drawers conjure intimacy, small spaces for daydreaming that are not open to everyone.
Locks, such as those found on a box, are less about keeping thieves out than about inviting them in: Bachelard claims that the lock actually entices the thief by spilling the secret that something spectacular lies inside. He rejects the sexual connotation of the lock and key, as he eschews most psychoanalysis of the physical realm. Instead, Bachelard suggests that the function of the lock is to intensify intimacy. The poetic image, he asserts, is about something more than the baser forms of human psychology. Rather, it connects us to the collective consciousness. Conversely, the opening of a box or chest is about discovery. For example, the ability of a casket to be closed invites imagination about both its interior and its exterior.
This chapter begins a succession of chapters that focus on smaller, more intimate spaces. Bachelard shows that even within the familiar space of a home smaller, even more personal spaces that invite reverie exist. These spaces, considered most often for how they hold and categorize things—filing cabinets for alphabetized files, kitchen drawers for spoons—are much more than containers. Bachelard suggests that viewing them as merely receptacles for objects limits an understanding of the poetic image.
Chapter 4 Summary and Analysis: “Nests”
This chapter, along with Chapter 5, addresses the primitive side of homes. When poets speak about the comforts of home, they often conjure images that parallel the roles of animal shelters and structures. Like the animals that inhabit these shelters, the individual in the home hides and protects itself. For example, Bachelard describes coming across nests in nature. Those found in late fall or winter, having been abandoned by the birds that built them, enter the category of things. For Bachelard, they hold no real magic. However, when he comes across a living nest, one that is inhabited by a bird or eggs, he finds himself trembling.
Bachelard suggests that there is an intense moment of feeling when one comes across a living nest in the wild. He recalls many passages from authors about nests, and each time, the author assigns strong emotion to the discovery. He posits that the nest nearly always conjures the image of a modest house. The nest itself invites reverie; Bachelard says that he cannot help but image a small king living inside a nest. Similarly, the American writer and environmentalist Henry David Thoreau connected the idea of the nest to that of returning home, as nests are often reused and returned to. The thought of returning to a home also evokes daydreams. The nest house is inviting; it draws the individual in. There is intimacy in its simplicity.
The intimacy of the nest derives partly from the fact that the bird’s body constructs it. The mother bird uses her body to press against the inside of the nest, forming the circular indentation where eggs can nestle safely. Bachelard is moved by this knowledge, and it closely mirrors his sentiments in Chapter 2, as he describes the influence of a woman, in a traditional role, on the home and her everyday actions of housekeeping that add warmth and newness to the house. The daydreams of nests are centered on protection and security; for the home to be conducive to daydreams, it must feel safe to the individual and inspire confidence.
This chapter seems to contradict Bachelard’s argument in Chapter 3 that he does not support using metaphor to think about the home. He spends the first portion of Chapter 4 suggesting that thinking of nests as metaphors or applying human characteristics to them is foolish. He condemns the treatment of nests in most literature, claiming that it is childish. However, he appears to contradict his own arguments when he explores the house as a nest. Bachelard finds in nests certain components that he feels should be integral parts of the home. The home as a nest should be a place of security of being; it is the place where life is created (eggs, children) and the place where safety allows for daydreams. The joy and intense emotion that emerge when coming across a nest should reflect the intense feeling of going home to a simple house.
Chapter 5 Summary and Analysis: “Shells”
Like nests, shells conjure security and daydreams. Bachelard again rejects looking at shells through a scientific lens. He states that although a phenomenologist of imagination would have much to learn from a scientist who studies shells, the bulk of that learning must come from learning about the scientist’s initial wonder and amazement.
One of the shell’s contributions to the imagination and to the emotion of wonder is the fact that whatever inhabits the shell is divided into two parts: the exposed part of the animal and the hidden part of the animal. This fact invites imaginative thinking about the difference between those two parts, and literary examples of mixed creatures inhabiting shells abound. Another contribution is that they evoke a sense of emergence. Bachelard states that “in the imagination, to go in and come out are never symmetrical images” (128). The image of the shell conjures a feeling of surfacing.
These evocations place the shell within dual categories: image and idea. Bachelard argues that ideas are just as powerful to incite imagination. He considers the extravagance of ideas and their tendency toward extremes, and he recognizes them as daydreams. He provides the example of the fossil, which would be considered simultaneously both dead and alive, representing two extremes. The daydreams spurred by a shell are as seemingly infinite as its spiral.
This spiral—Fibonacci's spiral—adds to the mysticism and infinite quality of the daydream surrounding shells. Bachelard states that the daydreaming surrounding “inhabited stone” is limitless. The phenomenologist is concerned not with how a shell is formed or with the science of the shell but with what it means to exist within the shell. In other words, phenomenology explores what it is to be within a shell. Shells are such an important part of the imagination that the image of them can be conjured immediately. Like nests, they appeal to a sense of security and protection. They also conjure images of solitude. According to Bachelard, the dream of solitude is one that appeals to all people at different points in their lives.
At the end of the chapter, Bachelard connects the image of the shell to the poetic space of the home. A home can have chambers, small places of retreat like a shell, where the individual can hide and be alone. He also connects shells to “dark entrance halls” (150). He emphasizes that darkness or shade in a home is as important as the light. Just as the shell evokes ideas of both an exterior and an interior, a home must contrast the public-facing exterior with the opportunity for a hidden interior. This tie between the sense of being and the qualities of design reflects the importance of Phenomenology as a Method of Interpreting Architecture.
At the end of Chapter 5, Bachelard asserts that the tiniest detail can elicit a great spark of imagination. He repeatedly considers nests and shells together, although he insists that they differ in their relationship with the phenomenology of the imagination. Both, however, live in the kingdom of the small and spark the poetic image. At times, Chapters 4 and 5 appear to abandon the thesis of the home, but it is important to note that in these chapters Bachelard considers the home in all its forms, including the natural forms of the shell and the nest and the emotional architecture that can be gleaned from them.
