The Poetics of Space

Gaston Bachelard ( pub.1958, translated in 1964)

This book primarily concerns itself with our experience of space in the ‘house’ or ‘home’, a subject also central to In Praise of Shadows by Tanizaki, discussed previously. This book approaches it through an ontological viewpoint rather than aesthetically.

Bachelard was a phenomenologist, holding the view that there is an interplay between the mind and its surroundings. Here he examines the house as a portal to the imagination, to our dreams of lives we might live if only we could dwell in them. This home, which, in the future, will be better built, brighter, and larger than all those we occupied in the past, will enable us to lead the life of our dreams. It is the embodiment of everything we wish to be or do.

The chapters are predominantly named after structures or objects of containment; cellars, chests and wardrobes. Of most interest to me was that which explored corners, which, along with the alcove, is discussed at length by Tanizaki (mentioned earlier).

Bachelard interprets a corner as a place of solitude, half-box, part walls/door (not entirely enclosed) in which the imagination can reside and be given free rein. Dark corners, between furniture and wall are where the introvert or the child go to hide. The corner is symbolic, it is the germ of a room or a house.Subsequently, his discourse moves on to attributing geometrical constructs with negative and positive qualities. He quotes the poet Pierre Albert-Birot and Bergsonian theory; assigning warmth and the nesting/returning instinct to curves as opposed to the masculine notion of right angles and corners which reject us.

This alternate view is at odds with the previous argument in which the dark corner is sanctuary; where imagination soars and dynamic thoughts occur.

Also of interest was the penultimate chapter discussing the duality of outside and inside resulting (according to Hyppolite) in alienation. Inside and outside are the dialectics of inclusion and exclusion, of this side and beyond; of us and other. It can be the entrance hall, the door half open, a glimpse into the inner sanctum. It is the non-space we pass through but do not dwell in.

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