The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A bestowed mind, when undertaking the poetic journey of imagination, is elated at discovering sudden corners, pathways and bridges which lead to those places where the being surges to acquire intimacy with that notion which transpires oneness with life. Sometimes these places have always been there around waiting to be discovered. Sometimes the discovery is not sudden but gradual, brought about by a continuing familiarity with the places. The wooden door, whose smell begets a sense of warmth or security and also a promise of coming life, the book shelf which inhabits a life, the caress of whose surface makes one experience oneself in entirety; an entirety which is an accumulation of different lives lived through reading and rendered in that instance. The window which opens to a sea of faces at dusk, an assurance that life moves on irrespective of lingering darkness. The old stone stairs, erected steeply without a support to ascend, the steps of which unites the self with the child within. Places creating the spaces of reverie, oneiric experiences through which a self attains harmony; the house in which you live and which lives within you, those drawers and chests which are abode to memories to which you return again and again, the corner which stands as a retreat for solitude.

In the words of William Wordsworth, “We are less forlorn in a world which we meet with our imagination”.

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.


Gaston says:

"Tranquil foliage that really is lived in, a tranquil gaze discovered in the humblest of eyes, are the artisans of immensity. These images make the world grow, and the summer too. At certain hours poetry gives out waves of
calm. From being imagined, calm becomes an emergence of being. It is like a value that dominates, in spite of minor states of being, in spite of a disturbed world."


Through this work, he presents before us a phenomenology of imagination. How the creative consciousness associates with a poetic image to give a specific reality which is a reverberation creating harmony within a being. How such poetic image originates. Gaston here investigates simple images of felicitous space and name the investigation as topophilia. He does so by picking up spaces and citing various authors and poets referring to such spaces/ images along with presenting to us his own exploration of them. True to the name, the language of this work in itself is poetic and flows lucidly through the reader’s creative conscious, hence, succeeding in bringing those reverberations which author aims at.





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