The Poetics of Space

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Paul Simon was right. Now even the photo has faded. But the song Bachelard inspired my heart to sing hasn’t! I had had a sensory key given to me - just as Proust was given the grace of a little cake of Madeleine to permit an instant of exact recall... I was thinking of how to explain why I love reading Bachelard so much, and the best I can come up with for now is my love for his unusually deep way of thinking. This book, like others I have read of his, delves into the poetry of experience. In this book he approached space, as in the places that surround us and that we occupy. In the table of contents: The House: from cellar to garret; House & Universe; Drawers, Chests and Wardrobes; Nests; Shells; Corners; Miniature; Intimate Immensity; Dialectics of Outside and Inside; Phenomenology of Roundness. These are not esoteric overly metaphysical spaces.

The Poetics of Space is a 1958 book about architecture by the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard. Commentators have compared Bachelard's views to those of the philosopher Martin Heidegger.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 the outside, it bespeaks intimacy. Psychologists generally, and Francoise Minkowska in particular, together with those whom she has succeeded interesting in the subject, have studied the drawing of houses made by children, and even used them for testing. Indeed, the house-test has the advantage of welcoming spontaneity, for many children draw a house spontaneously while dreaming over their paper and pencil. To quote Anne Balif: "Asking a child to draw his house is asking him to reveal the deepest dream shelter he has found for his happiness. If he is happy, he will succeed in drawing a snug, protected house which is well built on deeply-rooted foundations." It will have the right shape, and nearly always there will be some indication of its inner strength. In certain drawings, quite obviously, to quote Mme. Balif, "it is warm indoors, and there is a fire burning, such a big fire, in fact, that it can be seen coming out of the chimney." When the house is happy, soft smoke rises in gay rings above the roof. Naturally, too, the door-knob could hardly be drawn in scale with the house, its function taking precedence over any question of size. For it expresses the function of opening, and only a logical mind could object that it is used to close as well as to open the door. In the domain of values, on the other hand, a key closes more often than it opens, whereas the door-knob opens more often than it closes. And the gesture of closing is always sharper, firmer, and briefer than that of opening. It is by weighing such fine points as these that, like Francoise Minkowska, one becomes a psychologist of houses.” For Baudelaire, man’s poetic fate is to be the mirror of immensity; or even more exactly, immensity becomes conscious of itself, through man. Man for Baudelaire is a vast being”. By means of poetic language, waves of newness flow over the surface of being. And language bears within itself the dialectics of open and closed. Through meaning it encloses, while through poetic expression, it opens up.”

Cit. in Denis Hollier, ed., The College of Sociology, 1937–39, trans. Betsy Wing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 397, n.2.Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation, trans. Susan Hanson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 320–321. The reveries of mind cumulate into creating those images which bring harmony in the existence. Harmony brings joy within the being. Camus’ invincible summer, in presence of Algerian Sun and Sea, spring forth due to the reveries his mind is captivated with. Reveries of the places of his childhood – the house he lived in. For him, this summer is the harmony between his existence and an indifferent Universe.This harmony is his revolt.