On Poetic Imagination and Reverie

by Gaston Bachelard

Bachelard's genius has produced the single most important body of thought in the rehabilitation of imagination in this century. His books on the psychoanalysis of fire and poetics of air, water, earth, and space are excerpted here.

With an authoritative and comprehensive preface and bibliography by and about Bachelard.

Genres: Philosophy, Poetry, Nonfiction, Essays, Psychology, France, Theory

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1960

About the author

Gaston Bachelard was a French philosopher who rose to some of the most prestigious positions in the French academy. His most important work is on poetics and on the philosophy of science. To the latter he introduced the concepts of epistemological obstacle and epistemological break (obstacle épistémologique et rupture épistémologique). He influenced many subsequent French philosophers, among them Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser.

Reviews

[lisa_emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bachelard is one of my favourite writers. I cannot say that his books can be paraphrased or summed up- for they evoke the mood of perfect reading. It is the subliminal, midnight space filled with literate language and poetic phrasing. It is a dream written out so clearly as to be dreamt again. It is the possibility to breathe poetry.

[Forrest · Rating 5 out of 5]

How does such a slight book pack in so much insight? I think there's a corrollary here between On Poetic Imagination and Reverie and the works it uses for it's examples. Bachelard is careful and particular about using such examples, but is able to expand the readers understanding and appreciation with only a scant selection of representative samples. This fact mirrors his insight into the works themselves, works that don't speak to the reader, but speak with the reader, works that invite the reader between the letters and words immerse the reader in a hidden world that breathes behind the page.

For example, Bachelard cites Poe's "A Descent into the Maelstrom":

On a theme as slight as falling, Edgar Allan Poe succeeds in providing, by means of a few objective images, enough substance forthe fundamental dream to make the fall last. To understand Poe's imagination, it is necessary to live this assimilation of external images by the movement of inner falling, and to remember that this fall is already akin to fainting, akin to death. The reader can then feel such empathy that upon closing the book he still keeps the impression of not having come back up.

Conversely, he states:

The picturesque disperses the force of dreams. To be effective, a phantom should not have bright colors. A phantom lovingly described ceases to act as a phantom.

Which reflects one of the most common charges levelled against Lovecraft. With his overly-long descriptive passages, Lovecraft holds his terrors too dear, robbing them of both their cosmic aspect and their aspect of horror. This is why I find Aickman's horror so much superior. It is not what is said or how it is said, it is what is unsaid, but apparent to the reader who is paying close enough attention, that generates the real horror. It is the implication, the throbbing background "sound," rather than the brazen crash of trumpets that draws the reader in to be embraced by dread.

And this applies to other human emotions, joy, loss, love. It is more lasting to use an image to imply the unsaid, to, rather than impress the reader with words, to invite the reader through unspoken cues to become embraced by the implications that only images can foster. As the old Deep Purple song says "it's not the kill, it's the thrill of the chase".

The ideal image must seduce us through all our senses and draw us beyond the sense that is most clearly committed.

[Uroš Đurković · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sanjarija nije san.

Sanjarija je, veli Bašlar, realnija od realnosti – ona je povratak onom prvotnom, nepatvorenom, izvornom, istinskom – a san je stanje zarobljenosti u geometriji noći u kojoj subjekat ne može biti osvedočen. Tako je sanjarenje akt pupeće svesti, njeno razbokoravanje, samopotvrđivanje – u njemu se bdi, dok se u snu pripoveda. Noćni san jeste san bez sanjara. Sanjariti znači loviti poetske slike koje predstavljaju „budućnost jezika”, a koje su u svojoj budućnosti starije od svakog pamćenja. Na dnu bunara arhetipova nalazi se otvor za još jedan bunar, ispod kojih su fosili značenja. Kada sanjarimo, otkrivamo te fosile, a kada ih otkrivamo učestvujemo u sveopštoj radosti sveta u kojoj reči snivaju same sebe. Stoga nas snivani svet uči o mogućnosti širenja našeg bića – slivanje ja u ne-ja. Pesništvo je u svom najvrlijem svojstvu, najdublja arheologija. A zauzetost sanjarske svesti ocrtava tražilački put.

Jezik sanjarije jeste jezik bez cenzure koji istovremeno idealizuje svoj predmet i samog sanjara. Sanjarija asimiluje naše noćne košmare, ona je prirodna psihanaliza naših noćnih drama. (88) I sva unutrašnja zbivanja Bašlarovog subjekta, zasnivaju se na saodnosu dve dihotomije: 1) duša i duh; 2) animus (muškosti) i anima (ženskosti). Dok duh živi u vremenu i veruje u prošlost znanja kao kontinuirani proces, duša sabira vreme i traje u bezrezervnom prostoru. Slično je sa drugom podelom – animus organizuje brige i planove, anima obezbeđuje sanjarenje – ona je sadašnjost srećnih slika. Animus proizvodi koncepte, anima proizvodi (pesničke) slike. Svaki pojedinac jeste sanjalački hermafrodit, a Bašlar ženama daje apsolutno prvenstvo u odnosu na imaginativne kapacitete, koji su presudni za život. I tu je očito jasno suprotstavljanje sa određenjem čoveka kod Hajdegera kao bića brige (Sorge). Obradujem se kada pronađem kako poneki filozof tvrdi kako patnja nije osnova sveta i kako u svetu ima dobrote i lepote. Optimisti su civilizacijiski potcenjeni.

Spajajući fenomenologiju i bergsonizam sa psihoanalizom, uz vasionski književni dar, Bašlar samim svojim pisanjem osvedočuje mehanizam sanjarije – zato ova knjiga ne treba da se čita kroz animus, analitički, već u asocijativnom prostiranju, koje čini da zatitra detinje jezgro u nama. U tom poduhvatu valja se nadovezati i na Bašlarova prethodna dela – proučavanje poetike prostora i elemenata u književnoj imaginaciji, jer je „Poetika sanjarije” svojevrsna suma Bašlarovog delovanja.

Prepustivši se, dospevamo dalje nego što bi i jedan projektovani cilj mogao da dobaci. (Polovina popunjenog rokovnika beleškama vezanim za ovo delo, svedoči o tome.) Bašlar je inspirator, osnažitelj volje, vodič za svet nefigurativne poetske geografije, prvosveštenik pankalizma i nezaobilazna lektira za svako stvaralačko i snohvatno biće.

[Marko · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first philosophy book. ^^ I was pretty lucky, too, Gaston is a great and kind writer.

[natalia]

alguns textos são basicamente a hauntologia derridiana: o retorno ao passado como imaginação do futuro perdido. esse futuro perdido se reanima em imagens vivas - o devaneio como afirmação de vida. gostei muito do livro

[Rhesa · Rating 5 out of 5]

To give a comment about Bachelard, one must surpass his thinking, and that I can't do. When I first read this book, I felt like a kid who was being taught the wonder of beings. Bachelard is my fantasy guru, because he will take and show you that everything you perceive and thought as it is [traditionally:], is subject to a change.

In one instance he says "a root is always a discovery" [p.84:]. I agree with that, the primary reason of the establishment of religious fundamentalist is a belief that the root is already "finished", all interpretations of holy writ must be built upon it, a slight deviation will be called heresy. A discovery doesn't mean refutation but extension and enrichment of the former.

You can not read Bachelard and don't come up with new words and phrase you coin yourself, tha's the magic of his imaginary reasoning. This book is a collection of his scattered writings. Breath-taking!

[Frank Prem]

This is the book that started me off on a helter skelter poetry writing journey that only ended over a thousand poems later.

Anyone with poetic aspiration should read this and Bachelard's other works. They are quite wonderful.

[Jericha · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of Bachelard's other classics, The Poetics of Space: The Classic Look at How We Experience Intimate Places, is among the most important books in my personal lexicon. So much so, in fact, that I took it as a kind of guidebook for my thesis work in college, an installation entitled "The Room That Resembled a Reverie," which was in many ways an exploration and evocation of the kind of spaces Bachelard examines. Imagine my delight, then, to see he'd written a book called The Poetics of Reverie! Obviously I had immediate high hopes. But I have to say that it took me a good six months to get more than halfway through. Although I appreciated a lot of what he had to say in a general sense, and in some ways I thought it was actually a more elegantly crafted book (clearer, more accessible, better explained), it simply didn't fill me with the same kind of quiet poetic joy.

This might be because there's just, well, less poetry IN the gosh-darned thing. One of the pleasures for me of The Poetics of Space is all the wonderful little scraps of poetry floating around like misplaced butterflies throughout the text. (Okay, not misplaced. But half the time I think he just put them in because he loves them so much, not because he actually has a point to make. Which is fine with me and one of the reasons I love it.) The major reason, though, that I was disappointed by The Poetics of Reverie is just because I didn't feel like there was that much reverie actually in it - whereas The Poetics of Space is just an series of invitations to go and daydream. There's a lot more of that in the second half of Poetics of Reverie, though, and once I finally got there I did enjoy the book a good deal more.

He also has a few of those oh-god-why-didn't-I-write-that lines in there about the experience of reading, which I absolutely love (for example, "Writing a book is a hard job. One is always tempted to limit oneself to dreaming it." Ouch. That's painfully accurate.) In the end, I think that my disappointment was misplaced; although I will never feel Poetics of Reverie to be quite so delicate and beautiful and full of marvelous images as Poetics of Space, I think I can say simply that Poetics of Reverie is a wonderful book for a writer to have when thinking about images, and Poetics of Space is a wonderful book for an artist to have when thinking about space. Both of them are well worth reading for anyone who loves a good moment of evocative sensory delight -- and if that isn't you, perhaps this book will help teach you how to find the pleasure of one.

[Leslie]

"From the time a child reaches "the age of reason," from the time he loses his absolute right to imagine the world, his mother, like all educators, makes it her duty to teach him to be objective - objective in the simple way adults believe themselves to be "objective." He is stuffed with sociability....To live in this atmosphere of another time, we must desocialize our memory and, beyond memories told, retold and recounted by ourselves and others, by all those who have taught us how we were in the first childhood, we must find our unknown being, the sum total of all the unknowable elements that make up the soul of a child."

"The soul and the mind do not have the same memory."

"We thus discover within ourselves an immobile childhood, a childhood without becoming, liberated from the gearwheels of the calendar."

"Pure memory has no date. It has a season."

-Gaston Bachelard

[Ahmed · Rating 4 out of 5]

#التفضيلات تحول الذوق الادبي الى عادات

#رأس الريشة عضو مو أعضاء الدماغ

#هناك شواطئ اطمئنان في قلب الكواليس

#إن الذكريات التعيسة تنتزع على الأقل السلام من الكآبة

#أليست الجنة فوق ، في السماء ، عبارة عن مكتبة هائلة ؟

[Castles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bachelard is a wonderful philosopher. poetic, smart, always referring to great works, and above all — a worm, optimistic and a happy believer in the power of reverie.

Is was fascinating to read his phonological interpretation of Schopenhauer, but mainly of Jung. It seems that Bachelard had some refreshing additions to some of Jung’s theory about the psyche, dreams and archetypes (whether Jung ever related to him, I don’t know).

Two things that I didn’t like about this books is:
1. It’s a compilation, which makes it less coherent and harder to follow Bachelard’s very delicate way of moving. In this sense, even though it’s a book you can definitely start from, if you’re new to Bachelard, i'd recommend “the poetic of space”.
2. No book should have an introduction that takes 35% of the book. It was a tiring one which half of it was written for people who never read Bachelard at all. This can only mean the editors of this book thought of it as a great introduction to his world, but again, it isn't the place to start.

[Mark W · Rating 4 out of 5]

Concerns creative imagination, or rather the process there of in regards to literary/poetic imagination, i.e., the process of imagination. Very valuable for those interested in the deeper process' of the psyche: the process of imagination; poetic imagination; the image making function of the psyche... .

[Aitana Monzón]

a Freud le diría unas cuantas cosillas...

[Manuel Lallana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un antes y un después

[HuDa AljaNabi]

أول تجربة لي في الفلسفة الظاهرية!

أطلق باشلار اسم psychisme dore "النفسية المذهبة" اي التي تبقى شارد الذهن لحظة الوعي مستيقظاً اذ إننا "لا نغفو أمام لهيب الشمعة
الإنسان وبوجه خاص "الحالم" بحاجة ماسة إلى صحبة فإنه حينما يحلم في العزلة يشعر بعزلة أقل أمام "الشمعة المشتعلة
لهيب الشمعة كما يعتقد باشلار يستثير لدى الحالم صور متخيلة بلا حدود وكأن اللهب ظاهرة " أليس العالم حياً في لهب، أليس للهب حيا
أنا الذي أحلم حلم اليقظة ، أنا هو السعيد لأنني أحلم حلم يقظتي، أنا هو السعيد بوقتي الرحب حيث لم أعد مضطراً للتفكير.
اسمع، اذا شعرت بالضجر في لحظة الانعزال فإنك تكون قد توقفت عن الحلم.
"الفرق الجذري بين الحلم الليلي وحلم اليقظة ، في الليل يفقد كل إرادة واعية، اما حلم اليقظة بوصفه نشاطاً حلمياً فيه بصيص من الوعي.

[ضيف فهد · Rating 4 out of 5]

من الكتاب : " لقد فقدنااللغة الفاتنة .. كتب دافيد تورو : " يبدو أننا نمضي السنوات الراشدة بالاشتياق ، لقول احلاما طفولتنا ، فتتلاشى من ذاكرتنا قبل أن تتمكن من تعلم لغتها " ... لاسترداد لغة الخرافات يجب أن نساهم في وجودية الخرافي ، أن نصبح جسدا و روحا ، كينونة إعجابية ، أن نحل الاعجاب محل الادراك أمام هذا العالم . يجب أن نتعجب امام الأشياء لكي نتلقى قيم ما ندركه . و في الماضي ذاته ، أن نتعجب للذكرى

[abdo aly · Rating 4 out of 5]

جميل

[بثينة العيسى · Rating 4 out of 5]

جميل :)

[Carolina · Rating 5 out of 5]

O pensamento do bachelard é poesia pura, não deixo de me encantar toda vez com a delicadeza com que trata de assuntos tão preciosos, da forma como fala da infância, do ato de criar; precisa de tempo pra aproveitar com calma cada pedacinho da obra dele.

[محمد جلال · Rating 5 out of 5]

متى يعاد طباعته ورقيا؟

[Katrinka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting observations hampered by outdated views of gender and a tendency to wax super romantic.

[Josée · Rating 5 out of 5]

Indispensable.

[Imogen McGindle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I drink and devour and dream. Bachelard says it himself;

“We never finish dreaming the poem, never finish thinking it. And sometimes there comes a great line, one charged with such pain or such thought that the reader - the solitary reader- murmurs: on that day, I shall read no further” p. 28

I haven’t read a man who exalts such emotion, such an attunement to the unseen, to all the ignored matter beyond the human eye, who attempts to hint at the beauty missing rather than seen. His explorations of a worldview missing poetry and heralding analytical thinking feel deeply ahead of his time.

I wonder what element I am.

I must ask Rosie.

This is Dad’s book. I came in red hot cynical and left levitating.

I prefer my reverie over my dreams. I like lucid longings, they are present.

I didn’t finish the second half because he lost me at a few wanky essays dedicated to Nietczche’s genius.

******************************************************


“The less we know, the more we name” - Bachelard, p. 157. PF.

- depth psychology, Freud and post-Freudian
- Elements favoured by alchemists (fire, air, water, and earth). First command of bachelards attention is fire

At the level of elemental relationship between object and subject, “dream is stronger than experiment” PF p.46- introduction xxxvii

“Metaphors evoke one another and are coordinated more than sensations, so that a poetic mind is purely and simply a syntax of metaphors” PF, 213. This “inspired monotony” of images points to a possible structure of oneiric life oriented by material elements.

Came to reject Freud and his focus on “causes”. Favours Jung and his concept of archetypes, which places symbols in the subconscious.

For Jung, an archetype of not an image- it is psychic energy spontaneously condensing the results of organic and ancestral experiences into images; it can be designated as the paradigm of a series of images. Introduction, xxxviii

Bachelard prefers reverie to nocturnal dreams. He also dismisses the idea of “common symbols of every man”.

It is only when they are taken up by great poets that old myths and old worlds regain their significance. For Bachelard, imagination must infuse a second life into familiar images, it must create “metaphors of metaphors” Inteoduction xl

Phenomenology is a philosophy of experience. For phenomenology the ultimate source of all meaning and value is the lived experience of human beings. All philosophical systems, scientific theories, or aesthetic judgments have the status of abstractions from the ebb and flow of the lived world. - google.

Images are not things. Images are “lived”, “experienced”, “re-imagined” in an act of consciousness which restores at once their timelessness and their newness. Therefore a poetic image does not duplicate present reality, and is not the echo of the past; it can be provoked by occasional circumstances, but has no true causes. The best way to study images is to explore their power of trans-subjectivity. They reverberate in the reader’s consciousness and lead him to create anew while communicating with the poet.” introduction xli

Bachelard believes meaning does not precede words. Very logo-centric Derrida would have a field day. But also beautiful. “Truly, words dream” PR, p.16

He shows that language which speaks of water absorbs “the lessons of the stream”; water becomes a “most faithful mirror of voices” p. xliii introduction.

“In contrast, for Bachelard, matter becomes the provocation of a basic relationship between subject and object, and the “mother substance” of all dreams. .. “sometimes, even when i touch things, i still dream of an element” (PS, p. xxxiv)

He believes certain people are defined by one element, “He who listens to the stream cannot be expected to understand the one who hears the singing of the flame” (PF. p. 178).

“Material imagination is “this amazing need for penetration which, going beyond the attractions of the imagination of forms, thinks matter, dreams in it, lives in it, or in other words, materialised the imaginary” AS, p. 14

“Water itself dreams”

Bachelard repeatedly denounces the temptation to favor images over imagination. For example, the symbol of the wing is too static to communicate the conviction of airy light; rather, it is flight’s logical embellishment.” P. xlviii

- imagination is autonomous in relation to perception, and also precedes perception - imagination is apriori to any psychological function
- Terror is present before he monster, nausea before the fall
- Poetry illustrates the metaphysics of creative imagination (intro, xlix)
- function of unreality vs function of reality “a being deprived of the function of unreality is neurotic as well as a being deprived of the function of the real… if the function of opening out, which is precisely the function of imagination, does not perform well, perception itself remains obtuse” (AS 164)
- Images properly fuse emotion and symbol operate neither at the surface of things nor the surface of language, “the poet does not describe, he exalts things” (PR, 164)
- Man realises himself only by reaching beyond himself
- “I would like so much to show that poetry is a synthesizing force for human existence!” (PR, 107).
- “Imagination is a tree” TR, p. 300. It is capable of integrating earth and sky, reality and ideal.

Bachelard expands the well known theory of correspondences, which he thinks more faithful to the dynamism of imagination than Rimbaud’s alchemy. “A doctrine of imagined qualities must not only achieve the Baudelairian synthesis by adding to it the deepest organic aspects of consciousness, it must also emphasise a daring, proliferating sensuousness, intoxicated with inexactitude” (TR, p. 81)

Bachelard’s poetics opens into an ethic of joy - “anguish is artificial: we were meant to breathe freely” (PR, p. 22)

“What is the source of our first suffering? It lies in the fact that we hesitated to speak… it was born in the moments when we accumulated silent things within us.” (ER, 262).

“The brook will nonetheless teach you to speak, in spite of sorrows and memories, it will teach you euphoria through euphuism, energy through the poem. It will repeat incessantly some beautiful, round word which rolls over rocks” (ER 262)

“We have only to speak of an object to consider ourselves objective. But, by our very act of choice, the object designates us more than we designate it, and what we consider our fundamental thoughts about the world are often an avowed of our immaturity of mind” - Two aspects of a career, science and poetry, the permanence of reverie p.3

“The axes of poetry and science are opposed from the start. All that philosophy can hope is to make poetry and science complementary, to unite them as two well chosen contraries” p. 4

“What i am looking for in history is this permanent document, the evidence of a resistance to psychological evolution: the old man within the young child, the young child in the old man, the alchemist behind the engineer” p. 5

The polarity of imagination and reason:

- masculine and feminine signs of the concept and the image
- “It might even be a good idea to stir up competition between conceptual and imaginative activity. In any case, all efforts to make them cooperate are doomed to disappointment. The image cannot give matter to the concept; the concept, by giving stability to the image, would stifle its existence” p. 6
- “Intellectual criticism of poetry will never lead to the center where poetic images are formed. We must avoid ordering the image as a hypnotist orders his somnabulistic subject” p.7
- “to listen to the somniloquy of the dreamer” p. 7
-

Creative imagination and language:
- images form along two lines - exposure to the new, the unexpected event
- and the other is the depths of being, at once primitive and eternal, rising above seasons and history
- formal imagination vs. material imagination
- Images of the heart must become formal
- “They have weight, they are a heart”
- the individualising power of matter
- Matter vs form, material vs formal
- “Poetic images, too, have their matter”.

Matter is dreamed and not perceived
- look

Imagination is the function of unreality.

“Imagination is not, as its etymology might suggest, the faculty of forming images which go beyond reality, which sing reality” p. 15

“A man must be defined by the tendencies which impel him to go beyond the human condition” p.16

“Here, in this commitment to the invisible, is the original poetry, the poetry that gives us our first taste of our inner destiny” p. 16

“The poem is essentially an aspiration to new images. It corresponds to this essential need for newness that characterises the human psyche” p.20
- images lose their imaginary power through repetition

“To acquire a feeling for the imaginative role of language, we must patiently seek, in every word, the desires for otherness, for double meaning, for metaphor” p.2

“To perceive and to imagine are as antithetical as presence and absence. To imagine is to absent oneself; it is a leap toward a new life” p. 21

“The dreamer drifts away” - imagination requires a voyage, a presence, not just reverie, we need a movement of imagination and dynamic reverie

“A beautiful poem is opium or alcohol. It is nutrient for the nerves. It must cause a dynamic induction in us.” P. 22

“How often has the universe suddenly answered. O my things, how we have talked!” P. 23

“The very law of poetic expression is to go beyond thought” p. 23

“We can classify poets by asking them to answer the question: “tell me what your infinite is and ill know the meaning of your universe: is it the infinite of the sea or the sky, is it the infinite of the earth’s depths or the pyre?” p. 23

- prosody
- undulations
- sudden accents
- prose poetry

“From the standpoint of its will to shape expression, the literary image is a physical reality which has its own relief” p. 28

“We never finish dreaming the poem, never finish thinking it. And sometimes there comes a great line, one charged with such pain or such thought that the reader - the solitary reader- murmurs: on that day, I shall read no further” p. 28

“The will must imagine too much in order to realize enough” p. 30

“At times, some really diverse images, which we believe hostile, incongruous, disintegrative, become blended into a ravishing image. The strangest mosaics of surrealism suddenly take on continuity of movement.” P. 32, the poetics of metamorphoses

- groups of metaphors in a poem, how they relate and ignite each other

“In order for a reverie to continue with enough persistence to produce a written work, for it to be more than the simple vacuous pastime of a fleeting moment, it must find its matter…” p. 35, the oneiric source of aesthetics

“… the least settled sojourns…” p. 36

“The crab would rather lose its claw than loosen its hold…. one must live to pinch, and not pinch to live” p. 40

“… vital synergy…” p. 41

Haha he loves Nietzsche 🤣

- material poetics related to the elements ie. water , but in a way that is ‘natural’ to human condition, whereas dynamic poetics uses elements still, but in a way that twists them; it’s not an expected use. Ie. Nietzsche poem “you womanly, wondrous waves, are you enraged against me?” P. 44

[H · Rating 5 out of 5]

ينقسم إلى خمسة فصول:
١/ تأملات شاردة في التأمل الشارد حالم الكلمات
٢/ تأملات شاردة في التأمل الشارد نفَس-نفْس
٣/ التأملات الشاردة نحو الطفولة
٤/ " كوجيتو" الحالم
٥/ التأملات الشاردة و الفضاء الخارجي


فنّ الشاعر يُقدم فائضًا من القدرة التفسية لسرد أحداث الحلم، تضاف وحدة شعر إلى وحدة التأملات.

مُلهم مُلهم و أستطيع القول أنه من الكتب التي أيقظت تأملات الذاكرة لديّ.

[ecuad_library · Rating 5 out of 5]

B829.5 .B313 2004. Looking through the lenses of childhood, language, and cosmology, Gaston Bachelard explores the importance of daydreams, wonder, and idle thought. If that sounds like your cup of tea, check it out!

[Dorianne Laux · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful!

[Don Socha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a touchstone for me.

[Ana · Rating 5 out of 5]

As good a guide to understanding the need to keep the wonder and stay open as any you could hope for. Bachelard's writing and thinking is like a jump into cool water on a hot day.

[nermin · Rating 5 out of 5]

G. Bachelard pozitif bilimlerden edebiyata, ordan felsefeye uzanan çok geniş bir alanda düşünce üreten bir zihne sahip. O zihinden çıkan söylemlerle zenginleşmek isteyenlere müthiş bir fırsat bu kitap. Düşleme fiilini, düş görmekten ayrı tutarak Jung'ı referans alarak, edebiyatın evreninden sesleniyor. Düşleme anında insana yoldaşlık eden edebiyatın, sözcüklerin evreninden.
"Sözcükler ise önde, hep önde gider, çekerek, sürükleyerek, yüreklendirerek, hem umut hem de kibir bildirirler. Tözlerin söylenen düşlemesi, maddeyi dünyaya gelmeye, yaşama, tinselliğe çağırır. Edebiyat burada doğrudan eylemektedir. Edebiyat olmadığında her şey söner, olgular taşıdıkları değerlerin halesini yitirirler."
Özellikle Çocukluğa Doğru Düşleme başlıklı bölüm çok etkileyici. Hatırladıklarımızın, okuduğumuz edebi eserlerle de nasıl şekillenip parladığını örneklerle açıklıyor yazar.
"Bir şairin hayalinin anılarımızı birdenbire yeniden yaşatması, ustaca bir araya getirilmiş sözcüklerden kalkarak hayallerimizi yeniden kurdurması için, varlığımızın en dibinde, çocukluktan kaynaklanan ne çok gerilimin yedekte beklemesi gerekir. Çünkü şairin hayali söylenmiş bir hayaldir, gözlerimizin göreceği bir hayal değildir. Dillendirilmiş hayalin tek bir çizgisi bile şiiri yitik bir geçmişin yankısı olarak okumamıza yeter."
"Güzel bir şiir, çok eskide kalmış bir acıyı affettirir bize."
Okurken çok büyük bir keyif aldığımı belirtmeliyim. Çeviri sıkıntısızdı ki bu tür kitaplarda çok önemli. Bu kitabın, edebiyat okur yazarları için keyifli ve verimli bir okuma deneyimi yaşatacağını düşünüyorum. En azından benim için öyle oldu. Aşağıya kitaptan alıntıladığım cümledeki "sözün" kelimesini "kitabın" olarak okursanız da olur.
""Güzel sözün kendisi derde devadır zaten."

[Goodnight Sweet Prince · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nie, no fajnie, ale jeszcze fajniej, że już po. Po pierwsze, autor chyba sam nie mógł się zdecydować czy jest poetą, filozofem, psychologiem czy nie wiadomo kim jeszcze i to było czuć. Połowa pierwszego rozdziału nie miała sensu, bo on pieprzył, że jakiś przedmiot ma charakter taki i taki, bo ma rodzaj żeński, tylko że u nas ma np. rodzaj męski. Przy drugiej połowie myślałam z kolei, że rzucę książką jakieś pięćdziesiąt razy, bo stale tylko czytałam coś tam coś tak łączy w sobie mądrość animusa(pierwiastka męskiego) i dobroć animy(pierwiastka żeńskiego. Albo anima pragnie życia spokojnego, prostego bez wiedzy. To marzenie o dzieciństwie mogło być ciekawe, gdyby nie brzmiało tak mądrze. Z kolei rozdział, który autor we wstępie zapowiadał jako jakieś naukowe nudziarstwo, to była chwila wytchnienia. Bo tam pojawiły się treści ciekawe, w miarę zrozumiałe, naprawdę coś wnoszące do mojego życia. Marzenia i kosmos to był rozdział, powiedzmy akceptowalny. Miał lepsze i słabsze momenty, pod koniec już mi się go naprawdę ciężko czytało, ale były też rzeczy, które autentycznie mnie zainteresowały. I teraz człowiek kończy i dostaje jeszcze trzydzieści stron eseju tłumacza.
I tłumacz wbija cały na biało i dissuje Bachelarda(przynajmniej ja tak to odbieram). I w sumie dowiadujemy się, że Bachelard gówno wiedział na temat tego, o czym się wypowiadał. I sam sobie tworzył swój własny, mały delulu land.
Jeeeej