The Poetics of Space

“The mind is able to relax, but in poetic revery the soul keeps watch, with no tension, calmed and active. To compose a finished, well-constructed poem, the mind is obliged to make projects that prefigure it. But for a simple poetic image, there is no project; a flicker of the soul is all that is needed.”

This quotation presents two important ideas of Bachelard’s work. First, Bachelard suggests that reverie—or daydreaming—is a mental space in which the mind can wander through consciousness, uninhibited and without limitations. Second, Bachelard emphasizes that his work examines the birth of the poetic image alone, not the poem or the output of the poetic image.

“The resonances are dispersed on different planes of our life in the world, while the repercussions invite us to give greater depth to our own existence. In the resonance we hear the poem, in the reverberations we speak it, it is our own.”

Here, Bachelard defines resonance, and the repercussions within that resonance, as the cosmic vibration of being that an individual can tap into in search of the poetic image. Reverberations allow the individual to then translate the poetic image into words or logos, divine expression.

“For our house is our corner of the world. As has often been said, it is our first universe, a real cosmos in every sense of the word. If we look at it intimately, the humble dwelling has beauty.”

Bachelard emphasizes the relationship between the human mind and the home. The individual dwells inside the house, and the house dwells inside the individual. For a child, a house seems very large—an expansive space, a universe.

“Through poems, perhaps more than through recollections, we touch the ultimate poetic depth of the space of the house. This being the case, if I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.”

The protective space of the home allows the individual to engage in reverie, or daydreaming. This directly corresponds with Humanity’s Relationship with Interior Space.

“Within the being, in the being of within, an enveloping warmth welcomes being. Being reigns in a sort of earthly paradise of matter, dissolved in the comforts of an adequate matter. It is as though in this material paradise, the human being were bathed in nourishment, as though he were gratified with all the essential benefits.”

Bachelard explains that his book is concerned with ontology, that is, the study of being. This passage reveals how the home both encompasses being and is a part of being itself. The house both provides nourishment to the soul and is a part of the soul.

“Over-picturesqueness in a house can conceal its intimacy. This is also true in life. But it is truer still in daydreams. For the real houses of memory, the houses to which we return in dreams, the houses that are rich in unalterable oneirism, do not readily lend themselves to description.”

Bachelard’s idea of a home that perpetuates the poetic image rejects homes that are cellular, clinical, overly decorated, or perfect. The term “oneirism” refers to being dreamlike, but his critique is that these spaces are so excessively decorated or ornate, and too rigid, to allow for reverie. The intimacy of a home is reliant upon those necessary small spaces, corners, and crannies that engage the unconscious mind.

“House and space are not merely two juxtaposed elements of space. In the reign of the imagination, they awaken daydreams in each other, that are opposed.”

Like so many other elements of the home described by Bachelard, the outside world and the inner world of the home have an important duality that gives each one value. Bachelard asks the architect to consider the transference between outside world and inside world—the door, the doorknob, the passageway—and the importance of these spaces in signaling the entry into reverie and consciousness.

“All great, simple images reveal a psychic state. The house, even more than the landscape, is a ‘psychic state,’ and even when reproduced as it appears from outside, it bespeaks intimacy.”

The house as a physical space reveals information about the psychic state of its inhabitants. Bachelard often refers to the house as a persona; for the philosopher, the house and the individual are intertwined.

“Contrary to metaphor, we can devote our reading being to an image, since it confers being upon us. In fact, the image, which is the pure product of absolute imagination, is a phenomenon of being; it is also one of the specific phenomena of the speaking creature.”

Here, Bachelard affirms that the focus of his work is ontology and that he seeks to understand the home as a component of existence and consciousness. Everything within the house is a result of the point at which the imagination meets divine expression, the ability to put the daydream into the tangible world. He also identifies the image as unique to humans by connecting it to speech and claims that the image is what gives humans “being.” 

“And the poetic daydream cannot content itself with the rudiments of a story; it cannot be tied to a knotty complex. The poet lives a daydream that is awake, but above all, his daydream remains in the world, facing worldly things. It gathers the universe together around and in an object.”

The poetic image is separate from metaphor; it is a manifestation of the imagination that draws upon the collective unconscious. The house—or the item in the house, such as a drawer or a casket—functions in a similar manner. It becomes a point of intersection between the imaginative realm and the physical realm.

“A nest-house is never young. Indeed, speaking as a pendant, we might say that it is the natural habitat of the function of inhabiting. For not only do we come back to it, but we dream of coming back to it, the way a bird comes back to its nest, or a lamb to the fold. This sign of return marks an infinite number of daydreams, for the reason that human returning takes place in the great rhythm of human life, a rhythm that reaches back across the years and, through the dream, combats all absence.”

Bachelard concerns himself with the emotional architecture of the home. He proposes that the nest, in its simplicity of design, provokes images of safety, confidence, and return. A house should share these qualities.

“And so when we examine a nest, we place ourselves at the origin of confidence in the world, we receive a beginning of confidence, an urge toward cosmic confidence. Would a bird build its nest if it did not have its instinct for confidence in the world?”

The importance of security in a home is closely linked to its ability to endow the individual with confidence, especially the confidence to daydream. The “cosmic confidence” Bachelard refers to here may be a reference to the collective consciousness or resonance where the poetic image emerges.

“Mankind’s nest, like his world, is never finished. And imagination helps us to continue it.”

Bachelard draws many connections between the exterior and interior realms. He takes the images from the small and interior—the nest, the shell, the simple house—to the larger exterior—the world. The duality of the exterior and the interior is essential to constructing the sense of safety and coziness of the interior, which exists in contrast to the expansiveness of the outdoors.

“If, however, we were able to recapture absolute naïveté in our observation itself, that is, really to re-experience our initial observation, we should give fresh impetus to the complex of fear and curiosity that accompanies all initial action on the world. We want to see and yet we are afraid to see. This is the perceptible threshold of all knowledge, the threshold upon which interest wavers, falters, then returns.”

The phenomenology of the imagination can best be studied if the phenomenologist attempts to recapture wonder as though experiencing images for the first time. Throughout the book, Bachelard reminds the reader that the child’s capacity to daydream connects to the idea that the child swims in a sea of newness. Everything is fresh and new and, therefore, excites the imagination.

“But a phenomenologist’s projects are more ambitious: he wants to live as the great dreamers of images lived before him. And since I have underlined certain words, I shall ask the reader to note that the word as is stronger than the word like, which as it happens, would omit a phenomenological nuance.”

It is the work of the phenomenologist to embody an experience. Bachelard is not interested in studying something from afar. Rather, he wants to consider what it means to exist within that other space or life.

“Consciousness of being at peace in one’s corner produces a sense of immobility, and this, in turn, radiates immobility. An imaginary room rises up around our bodies, which think that they are well hidden when we take refuge in a corner. Already, the shadows are walls, a piece of furniture constitutes a barrier, hangings are a roof.”

The corner gives an illusion of protection and immobility. Bachelard connects the simple concept of a corner to the complex and diverse emotions that it can conjure. He frequently mentions children’s fondness for corners as spaces that feel protected and sheltered.

“Words--I often imagine this—are little houses, each with its cellar and garret. Common-sense lives on the ground floor, always ready to engage in ‘foreign commerce,’ on the same level as the others, as the passers-by, who are never dreamers. To go upstairs in the word house is to withdraw, step by step; while to go down to the cellar is to dream, it is losing oneself in the distant corridors of an obscure etymology, looking for treasures that cannot be found in words. To mount and descend in the words themselves—this is a poet’s life.”

This quotation speaks directly to the theme explained above: The Poetic Image and Language. Bachelard suggests that words hold a similar verticality to homes and consciousness, transporting people from dreams to the practical, and back again, as they ascend and descend the levels of the home or the mind.

“I myself consider literary documents as realities of the imagination, pure products of the imagination. Why should the actions of the imagination not be as real as those of perception?”

Bachelard views language as the gift of the speaker, a form of divine expression. For him, literature can be closer to reality than reality itself, because literature allows the reader to inhabit other experiences and gain a fuller picture of the world and imagination.

“Daydream undoubtedly feeds on all kinds of sights, but through a sort of natural inclination, it contemplates grandeur. And this contemplation produces an attitude that is so special, an inner state that is so unlike any other, that the daydream transports the dreamer outside the immediate world to a world that bears the mark of infinity.”

Bachelard, who is concerned with the phenomenology of the imagination, admires the daydream for its ability to allow the daydreamer to inhabit other worlds and other consciousnesses. It enables individuals to experience the sensation of being outside themselves in a realm that is limitless is its scope, leading them to broader, unrestrained thoughts.

“Immensity is within ourselves. It is attached to a sort of expansion of being that life curbs and caution arrests, but which starts again when we are alone. As soon as we become motionless, we are elsewhere; we are dreaming in a world that is immense. Indeed, immensity is the movement of motionless man.”

The relationship between space and self is both nuanced and strong. Bachelard suggests that this is why such great feelings are evoked when the individual experiences certain elements of space, including immensity, or vastness. These spaces speak to things inside the self.

“The two kinds of space, intimate spaces and exterior space, keep encouraging each other, as it were, in their growth.”

Dualities such as those found in immensity and miniature, interior and exterior, are necessary in that each clarifies the other. The house in winter is made more cozy by the presence of the exterior world; in turn, the exterior world is made wilder by the presence of the home. Dualities in space and architecture can enhance the features of each component.

“Being is alternately condensation that disperses with a burst, and dispersion that flows back to a center. Outside and inside are both intimate—they are always ready to be reversed, to exchange their hostility.”

Bachelard emphasizes the importance of duality in design. Incorporating elements of what, at first, seem to be opposing forces manages to refine a space and offers opportunity for reverie.

“How concrete everything becomes in the world of the space when an object, a mere door, can give images of hesitation, temptation, desire, security, welcome and respect. If one were to give an account of all the doors one has closed and opened, of all the doors one would like to re-open, one would have to tell the story of one’s entire life.”

This quotation epitomizes the connection between emotion and design. Bachelard declares here that design offers narrative and expresses a sense of being. He frequently discusses the importance of doors as places that both invite one in and close one off, marking the importance of the threshold as an indicator of transitions and change.