Brain Pain discussion

This topic covers chapter 3, The Imaginary Fall, p. 91 - 109

This chapter, "La chute imaginaire" is, as the title indicates, about dreams of falling, falling into a pit, a chasm, falling into Hell. An obvious reference here that Bachelard loves is Edgar Allan Poe (he already wrote magnificent pages on the American poet in L'eau et les rêves). He endeavours to study some famous tales, "The Pit and the Pendulum", "A Descent into the Maelström", "The Fall of the House of Usher", "Ligeia", "The Masque of the Red Death", and in particular how nightmarish images of heaviness gradually creep into and infect Poe's descriptions of a real setting.

So far the best part of this book, which makes me think that Bachelard, had he had the chance, might also have liked to talk about Tolkien (the fall of Gandalf in The Fellowship of the Ring, published some ten years after L'air et les songes) and, of course, H. P. Lovecraft (first translated into French in the 1950s or 60s as well).