Gaston Bachelard - The Poetics of Space

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THE POETICS OF SPACE

GASTON BACHELARD was born in Bar-sur-Aube, in the Champagne region of France, in 1884 . The son of shoemakers, he first worked as postmaster general, but soon left to earn his bachelors and doctoral degrees. During his illustrious academic career, he became inaugural Chair in History and Philosophy of the Sciences at the Sorbonne, a position he held from 1940 to 1954 . For his work in phenomenology, epistemology, and psychoanalysis, he earned the French Legion of Honor prize in 1951 and the Grand Prix National des Lettres in 1960 . Bachelards early work pioneered the concept of an epistemological break, a notion that explains how obstacles to thinking interrupt the flow of knowledge, forcing the creation of new ideas. Yet, later in his career, he unexpectedly turned to studies of the imagination and consciousness in works like The Psychoanalysis of Fire, Lautramont, and The Poetics of Reverie. While he is best known today for his development of topoanalysis in The Poetics of Space, his larger body of work influenced intellectual titans like Foucault, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze, and Althusser. Perpetually questioning establishment ideas, Bachelard built his work upon conflict and complements: art and science; rationalism and idealism; experiment and experience; empiricism and rationalism. Among his myriad achievements, perhaps his lasting heritage is a renewal of emphasis on symbol and poetic meaning in fields like architecture that became overwhelmingly concerned with form and structure. Bachelard died in Paris in 1962 , his legacy upheld by his daughter Suzanne, also a Sorbonne professor.

MARK Z. DANI ELEWSKI is the author of Houseof Leaves. His other novels include Only Revolutions, a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award, and The Fifty Year Sword. He lives in Los Angeles.

RICHARD KEARNEY is Charles B. Seelig Chair of Philosophy at Boston College. He is the author of two novels, a volume of poetry, and more than twenty books on European philosophy and literature, including The Wake of Imagination and Poetics of Imagining. He is international director of the Guestbook Project.

MARIA JOL AS was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1893 . She spent much of her lifetime in Europe, where she devoted herself to antiwar activism and translated many works. A member of James Joyces Parisian literary circle, she cofounded the literary journal transition with her husband, Eugne Jolas. She died in Paris in 1987 .

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First published in the United States of America by The Orion Press, Inc. 1964

This edition with a foreword by Mark Z. Danielewski and an introduction by Richard Kearney published in Penguin Books 2014

Copyright 1958 by Presses Universitaires de France

Translation copyright 1964 by Penguin Group (USA) LLC

Foreword copyright 2014 by Mark Z. Danielewski

Introduction copyright 2014 by Richard Kearney

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Originally published in French under the title La poetique de lespace by Presses Universitaires de France, Paris.

ISBN --- 17043

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Contents

THE POETICS OF SPACE

Foreword

M ARK Z . D ANIELEWSKI

For you without imagination, who can matter-of-factly claim that youre not the creative typemind you, not proudly claim; for an imagination of ruin must burn beneath defiances against personal inventionthen best put this book down and seek out instead some almanac of entertainment free from all such catalytic risks to a mind just mad enough to make out of one world another world.

Gaston Bachelards bookpublished originally in 1957 by Presses Universitaires de France as La potique de lespacehas as little to do with the House, Cellar and Garret, the Hut, Drawers, Chests and Wardrobes, not to mention Nests, Shells and even Roundness (these from chapter titles), as it has everything to do with how our comprehension of space, however confined or expansive, still affords an opportunity to encounter the boundaries of the self just as they are about to give way.

The lock doesnt exist that could resist absolute violence, and all locks are an invitation to thieves. A lock is a psychological threshold. Yet despite saying so, Bachelard does not turn to violence nor does he keep the company of thieves. There arent even many locks. In fact its hard, over the course of even one reading, not to detect the warmth of that rare personality who unmakes a thief simply by making every article of interest available. Sit down. Stay awhile. Something to nibble on? Generosity of spirit abounds. Doors swing open. Thresholds offer little impediment. All are welcome. And in return, Bachelard asks of us only to dream. Or rather he gives us the chance to dream. For a chamber is no more a cage than reverie is an escape. Improbable discoveries wait at every border. As when Bachelard extends Ren Chars invitation regarding

Discoverynot hostile spaceconcerns Bachelard. In the same way that Steve Ericksons Days Between Stations and Thomas Pynchons Against the Day revive the sands of time as a medium intent on voyage, Bachelard gently addresses those settings we live in, and finally die in, with the lightness of why we live in the first place. Suddenly a chapter on miniatures offers a reflection on a hermit who while watching his hour-glass without praying... heard the catastrophe of time. The matter of prayer seems incidental to the anecdote, and yet throughout these pages there arises something meditative. Call it a calculus of emotional continuity or a music that only the grieving can know because they chose to carry on: what warms the hearth long after catastrophe has razed both hearth and home.

The Poetics of Space is one of those books in the tradition of Edmond Jabss The Book of Questions, Harold Blooms The Anxiety of Influence, Anne Carsons Eros the Bittersweet, and Lewis Hydes The Gift. Whether portraiture of Sarah and Yukel; the designs poets inscribe upon each other; Sappho; the Kula exchange of necklaces and armshells, each of these aforementioned books becomes so much more: an indispensable guide for anyone set on becoming an artist.

Over the years I have discovered that it is not uncommon to mention Bachelard and hear in return a sigh of happy recognition. I have sat at tables crowded with journalists, graphic artists, urban planners, therapists, sculptors, and architects, all of whom carry some fond memory of their first encounter with The Poetics of Space