Gaston Bachelards Places oftheImagination

andImages ofSpace

CristinaChimisso

AbstractThis chapter explores Gaston Bachelards hermeneutics of place, or

topoanalysis, in the context of his philosophy of the imagination. In turn, his phi-
losophy of the imagination is considered as part of his whole philosophical project,
which includes his philosophy of science, and is based on his view of the double
anthropology of the diurnal man and the nocturnal man. By broadening the nar-
row focus on The Poetics of Space, which has been predominant in Anglophone
criticism, we can better understand Bachelards approach to the analysis of space. I
examine Bachelards approach to the study of space, and consider his use of Jungian
analytical psychology, phenomenology and hermeneutics. I conclude that he con-
sciously, and indeed explicitly, steered away from any fully-fledged and rational
method in his study of place. I also argue that the aims of his philosophy, including
his hermeneutics of place, are pedagogical.

1 Introduction: TheMind andIts Places

In The Formation of the Scientific Mind, Gaston Bachelard contrasted the alche-
mists workshop with the chemists laboratory. The former was in the private home
of the alchemist who had undisputed control over the experiments that took place
there, just as he had over his pupils. In fact, the alchemists teaching was a moral
initiation rather than transmission of rational knowledge (Bachelard 2002 [1938],
p.58). Alchemic theories for Bachelard were developed from human beings first
and most immediate image of the world; this is an image dominated by emotions
and desires. The alchemists did not see just combinations of substances, but rather
copulations from which offspring was issued; they did not see metals as inorganic,
but rather as having not only life but also souls (Bachelard 2002 [1938], Chapter 8).
In a private space, the alchemists imagination for Bachelard could rule unchecked
by peers and free from the constraints and rules of public spaces. For the alchemist
there was no distinction between his home and his workshop, between private and
public, and between nature and his private image of it.

C. Chimisso (*)
Open University, Milton Keynes, UK
e-mail: cristina.chimisso@open.ac.uk

Springer International Publishing AG 2017 183

B.B. Janz (ed.), Place, Space and Hermeneutics, Contributions to Hermeneutics 5,
DOI10.1007/978-3-319-52214-2_14
184 C. Chimisso

By contrast, the scientists laboratory is no longer at home, in attic or cellar, but

rather in a public space, which scientists leave in the evening to go back to their
homes and families (Bachelard 2002 [1938], p.58). In the laboratory, the scientist
must overcome the alchemists imaginative approach to nature and strive for a ratio-
nal and objective method. This can only be done in a public space, in which rational-
ity regulates both the relationships among people, and those between minds and
objects. The instinctive images and ideas that the alchemist used as a basis for his
art, become epistemological obstacles1 for the scientist, who needs to conquer
objective knowledge against spontaneous images, dreams and desires that natu-
rally dominate the human mind. For Bachelard the too intuitive and too personal
character of alchemy must be a warning to science teachers who should aim to
shield their students from the emotional lure of some phenomena (Bachelard 2002
[1938], p.61). He thought that, when engaged in rational discussion, we should aim
at abstraction, and fight against our longing for images and personal meanings.
But what happens when scientists leave their laboratories, and teachers their
schools? And can we all really give up the world of images that is our first approach
to reality, and that for Bachelard dominated our view of nature until the relatively
recent emergence of science?2 Sigmund Freud thought it impossible for people to
give up pleasures that they have once experienced. He suggested that when children
grow up and have to stop playing, they substitute that pleasure with day-dreaming
(Freud 1985 [1908], p.133). Bachelard presented us with a very similar situation.
Scientific rationality demands that we give up spontaneous fantasies: we can no
longer connect the study of chemical substances to dreams about sex, reproduction
and life. At the same time we cannot, and indeed should not, give up the pleasure
that the imagination affords us. We may not be able to play in an alchemic work-
shop, but we can still day-dream. Our early imaginings should find a place in our
adult life: Bachelard contrasted psychoanalysis with rhythmanalysis, which he
described as a theory of childhood rediscovered, of childhood that remains a pos-
sibility for us always, always opening a limitless future to our dreams (Bachelard
2000 [1936], p.153).
Whereas the alchemist enjoyed a holistic life, the scientist, the philosopher and
any modern person have to lead double lives. Bachelard envisaged a double anthro-
pology of the rational diurnal man and the day-dreaming nocturnal man
(Bachelard 1972b [1953], p.19) (Bachelard 1971 [1960], pp.534, 212). For him,
each of us should lead a life that follows a rhythm between rational and social time
on the one hand, and imaginative and solitary time on the other (Bachelard 2000
[1936], chapters 12). These times correspond to different spaces. Here space can
be understood in two different ways, in relation to either type of time. Science is
carried out in public places, and their configuration should not stimulate the imagi-
nation. Science also creates abstracts spaces: the spaces of geometry. Bachelard
celebrated the epistemological break that non-Euclidean geometries had brought

1
The concept of epistemological obstacle, alongside with that of epistemological break, is central
in Bachelards epistemology.
2
For Bachelard, science only emerged at the end of the eighteenth century.
Gaston Bachelards Places oftheImagination andImages ofSpace 185

Fig. 1 Places and spaces

of Bachelards double
anthropology

about. Non-Euclidean spaces are to be grasped by reason, rather than being repre-
sented by images. The places of the imagination follow the same axis in the oppo-
site direction.3 For Bachelard there are places where one can dream, and these
would be rather different from those of scientific work. There are also dreamed
spaces, which include the places we remember, although these are infused with our
dreams, just as the places about which we read are infused with the memory of the
places of our life (Fig. 1).
For Bachelard before the emergence of modern science there was a certain unity
of the human mind, as the imagination and rationality were not properly distinct. By
contrast in modern scientific times there is a dichotomy of the mind, and indeed of
life, and Bachelards life was no exception. In the unfinished book he was writing at
the end of his life, he remarked: my work life [has] two almost independent halves,
one under the sign of the concept, the other under the sign of the image... He wrote
that he lead a double life (Bachelard 1988, p.33, 34). These lines echoed those at
the end of La Flamme dune chandelle, when Bachelard emphasised that that book
only showed half of his life, and that after so many reveries, he was impatient to
learn again difficult and rigorous books thanks to which the mind constructs
and reconstructs itself (Bachelard 1961, pp.111112). These books would have
been about science and rationality.
In these quotations, Bachelard hinted at the fact that he employed different meth-
ods in his books about science and about the works of the imagination, respectively.
Whereas his philosophy of science did not change significantly, his interpretation of
the works of the imagination underwent a conscious evolution. At first, he mostly,
although not exclusively, analysed the works of the imagination from the point of
view of the diurnal man, or scientific rationality. In works such as the Formation
of the Scientific Mind, he aimed to psychoanalyse objective knowledge, or, as he
put in the Psychoanalysis of Fire, to cure the mind from its happy illusions
(Bachelard 1964 [1938], p.4). He never changed his mind about the negative role
that the imagination played in dialectic of scientific knowledge, but at the same time

3
Here I follow Bachelards view of his own investigation and indeed of our approach to objects:
from the first, immediate encounter with an object, we can follow an axis towards objectification
and science, or in the opposite direction, towards subjectivity and poetry; see (Bachelard 1964
[1938], pp.23).
186 C. Chimisso

he became increasingly interested in analysing the works of the imagination in their

own right.
His hermeneutics of space, or topoanalysis, as he called it, is part of his philoso-
phy of the imagination, for which he sought a different approach from that of his
philosophy of science. I shall discuss his search for this new approach in the third
section of this articles, after taking a tour of some of the places that Bachelard ana-
lysed in his works. I shall conclude with a reflection on the aims of Bachelards
hermeneutics of space.

2 Dreamed Spaces andPlaces Where toDream

Notwithstanding the variety of emotions that Bachelard connected with particular

places, his hermeneutics of place is above all about healthy day-dreaming, and
about places that suggest peace, silence, safety, rest and intimacy. The house (or
home) [la maison], in all its embodiments, plays a major role. The house shelters
day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in
peace (Bachelard 1994 [1957], p.6). Our imagination can work freely in a space
that protects our subjectivity, that is in a space in which we are free from the
demands of diurnal life, including social interactions, production of knowledge
and production of objects. Precisely because it is a place where we experience day-
dreaming, the house acquires great oneiric significance. Dreams feed on memories,
and memories of former homes are preserved through dreams. For Bachelard, diur-
nal life, or the real world, disappears when our memory takes us back to the home
of our birth, which is the house of absolute intimacy (Bachelard 1992b [1948],
p.95). It goes without saying that the memory of our birth home is not objective: the
oneiric home and the remembered home are interwoven in a dynamic unity that only
exists in the dreamers mind.
For Bachelard, although we may dream of ourselves as living with another per-
son, or with our family, generally in the oneiric home we are alone. Solitude is the
dreamed condition, just as it is the condition of happy reverie. The images that
Bachelard suggests emphasise this isolation: the hermits hut (Bachelard 1994
[1957], pp.31ff), the house besieged by winter (Bachelard 1994 [1957], p.38),
and the dark summers in the house (Bachelard 1994 [1957], p.45).4 Within the
house, there can be deeper levels of isolation: ones room (Bachelard 1994 [1957],
pp.1314), and even corners. In his words: [e]very corner in a house, every angle
in a room, every inch of secluded space in which we like to hide, or withdraw into
ourselves, is a symbol of solitude for the imagination: that is to say, it is the germ of
a room, or of a house (Bachelard 1994 [1957], p. 136). The corner becomes a
negation of the universe; once again, Bachelard counterpoised nocturnal and diur-
nal life: the withdrawal into a corner give us pleasure (Bachelard 1994 [1957],

4
The dark summers in the house suggest a house in which shatters prevent sunlight and heat from
entering, a rather geographically and culturally specific image.
Gaston Bachelards Places oftheImagination andImages ofSpace 187

p. 136), because it is rest from diurnal work, and affords us solitude. Images of
intimacy can become increasingly small and concentrated, and include wardrobes,
chests, drawers, and even small boxes, which suggest secrecy and an intuitive sense
of hiding places (Bachelard 1994 [1957], p.81).
The withdrawal and refuge that the house provides can take other forms in our
imagination, such as nests and shells. Nests for Bachelard are simple houses, and
images of rest and quiet (Bachelard 1994 [1957], p.98); they afford a special soli-
tude, but they are ambiguous, as they may simultaneously suggest refuge and dan-
ger (Bachelard 1972a [1943], p.242). Nests, and even more so shells, are closer to
nature than houses, and therefore more primitive; they can indeed be prehistoric,
as Bachelard labelled Jack Londons reverie about nests (Bachelard 1972a [1943],
p. 241). Reading and dreaming about them bring out the primitiveness in us
(Bachelard 1994 [1957], p.91). Primitiveness for Bachelard is connected with the
life of the imagination, with poetry and emotions. Unlike reason, which for him
evolves and brings about change, the imagination maintains its links with our primi-
tive self. Unlike Lucien Lvy-Bruhl, whose theory of primitive mentality had a
tremendous influence on a number of disciplines in the inter-war France, Bachelard
believed that the primitive approach to the world is not lost to modern people, but
rather survives in their imagination. This is why our dreams are populated by primal
images.
Bachelard considered the house in its multifarious versions (as room, corner,
nest, shell and others) as the image of intimacy. This is the centrality of the house.
But he also analysed the house in its verticality.5 Bachelards vertical house is a
synthesis of all other oneiric dwelling places; it has three or four storeys, each of
which is the image of a psychic state. The houses cellar roots the house in the
earth (Bachelard 1992b [1948], p.110), and in so doing it partakes of subterranean
force; descending into the cellar is a way to relive the primitivity and the specific-
ity of ones fears (Bachelard 1994 [1957], pp.1819). The ground floor is that of
common life; it comes as no surprise that Bachelard had little to say about this floor
which represents the platitude of common life (Bachelard 1992b [1948], p.110).
The interpretation of the upper floors may at first sight look rather confusing. In La
terre et les reveries du repos, Bachelard assigned sublimations to the upper floors.
In The Poetics of Space, he offered a more detailed analysis, in fact he appeared to
offer more than one. At first, he seemed to follow Carl Jungs lead, and presented a
house in which the cellar is the image of the irrational unconscious, whereas the
roof represents rationality. He employed Jungs images of the cellar and attic in
order to analyse the fears that inhabit the house. Bachelard quoted Jung as saying
that the conscious acts like a man who, hearing a suspicious noise in the cellar,
hurries to the attic, and, finding no burglars there decides, consequently, that the
noise was pure imagination (Bachelard 1994 [1957], pp.1819). Lucy Huskinson
has pointed out the discrepancy between Bachelards quotation and Jungs original,
in which the conscious acts like a man who hears a noise in the attic and goes to

5
Bachelard discussed verticality more generally in (Bachelard 1992a [1947], Chapter 12), and in
(Bachelard 1972a [1943]).
188 C. Chimisso

check the cellar. Factually, as Huskinson shows, Bachelard relied on a French

translation (of a different work from that erroneously indicated in the English
translation of The Poetics of Space) that had already reversed attic and cellar.
Huskinson interprets Bachelards use of the inversion of Jungs image as evidence
that Bachelards household is affected by a less disturbing personal complex,
whereas the Jungian household is within the grips of an autonomous complex. In
other words, Bachelards image would be closer to a Freudian conception of the
unconscious, by recognising only those personal complexes that can be repressed
by the rationalisations of the lofty attic (Huskinson 2012, p.72). I agree that
Bachelard did not deal with disturbing complexes, and that he did not espouse
Jungian psychoanalysis to the full, just as, I would add, he didnt Freudian. In fact,
we should not attempt to read Bachelards topoanalysis in terms of the production
of a full theory of the psyche, or indeed any theory. He had quite different aims, as
I shall discuss in the Conclusion, and a rather different approach from psychoana-
lysts, as I shall discuss in the next section. Here, it is important to point out that
Bachelard read Jung, and his image of the psyche as a house, just as he read his
other sources, including poetry and literature. In his analysis of the verticality of
the house, Bachelards use of Jung is not particularly different from his use of the
writer Henri Bosco and the poet Jo Bousquet, just to mention two.
It is clear that Bachelard used the theory of the house as image of the psyche
simply as an image, and indeed as one among others. Only a few pages after the
passage discussed above, Bachelard presented the oneiric house as having three or
four floors connected by stairs, that go down to the cellar, and also go up to the bed-
chamber, which for Bachelard is a private space for dreaming. They also go further
up to the attic, but this time the attic is not the image of rationality. The stairs to the
attic are more primitive, because they lead to a tranquil solitude, which promotes
the poetic exercise of ones imagination. Elsewhere, Bachelard presented other
oneiric values attached to the attic: the attic brings to the house the elevated qualities
of a nest, and it can also be a source of terror, similarly to the cellar in the Poetics of
Space. As Bachelard put it, the attic is a changeable universe (Bachelard 1992b
[1948], pp.109, 110). These variations make sense in Bachelards approach because
he did not aim to offer any theory, system or even a definitive catalogue of symbolic
values that we may attach to places.

3 A
 nother Method? TowardsaHermeneutics ofDreamed
Spaces

Bachelard did not change his mind about the imagination being an obstacle a
necessary one in the dialectic progress of science. In his books on science, he
always held the view that the scientific mind should be rectified and purified
from instincts and dreams, and that we should aim at a hortophychism (Bachelard
1970 [19341935]); (Bachelard 1986b [1949], p.48 and passim); (Bachelard 1951,
Gaston Bachelards Places oftheImagination andImages ofSpace 189

especially Introduction); (Bachelard 1972b [1953]). However, at first, as mentioned,

he studied the works of the imagination from the point of view of science. Then he
started engaging with the nocturnal man in addition to the diurnal man, and
studying the works of the imagination in their autonomy. In order to do this, the
rationalistic method that he employed in his science books proved increasingly less
suitable. After The Psychoanalysis of Fire, he dropped the term psychoanalysis
from the title of his books on material reverie. He explained this choice in Waters
and Dreams, where he wrote that his approach was now to live them [water images]
synthetically in their original complexity (Bachelard 1983 [1942], p.7). Since the
goal of his books on the imagination was no longer to cure the mind, psychoanaly-
sis, and especially Freudian psychoanalysis, was no longer his method of choice.6
Psychoanalysis, which studies dreams, was for him also less suited for his object,
namely reveries, that is conscious imagining (Bachelard 1994 [1957], p.26). In a
process which recalls his own philosophy of no (Bachelard 1968 [1940]);
(Bachelard 1984 [1934]), Bachelard said no to psychoanalysis, and adopted a new
approach that in fact dialectically incorporated psychoanalysis. Indeed, in his works
on the imagination, and the study of space in particular, psychoanalysis is still pres-
ent, but more as a source of images and suggestions than as a method. In his study
of space, Bachelard repeatedly mentioned Jung. Jung could be suitable to Bachelards
project in various ways, first of all for his rejection of Freuds rationalistic material-
ism (Jung 1928, p.151). Bachelard, author of a book titled Rational Materialism
(Bachelard 1972b [1953]), reserved the rational materialistic approach for the life
of the scientific mind, whereas he aimed to study images, including our images of
space, in an immediate, non-normative and subjective manner.
Bachelard also employed the Jungian concept of archetype. This, however,
should not be taken as a full acceptance of the Jungian theory of archetypes.
Bachelard believed that there is a primitive and imaginative self that, unlike rea-
son, does not evolve, and therefore is similar in people of all times. However, he
never suggested that archetypes could be acquired and then inherited. Moreover,
although he linked images to archetypes, he warned his reader that there is no causal
relation between an image and an archetype (Bachelard 1994 [1957], p. xvi). More
to the point, Bachelard had no theory; he rather observed that such images as the
house would elicit the same set of emotions and reveries in a number of disparate
authors. Another important set of concepts that Bachelard received from Jung is that
of animus and anima. These were very fitting for his own dualism of the active
rational life and of the imaginative life. However, the way in which he borrowed
them also shows that his aims were quite different from analytical psychology or
any other fully developed theory of the psyche. He realised that Jungs animus and
anima would be received by his readers as sexist; he must have read Jungs pro-
nouncements, such as a man should live as a man and a woman as a woman. The
part belonging to the opposite sex is always in the dangerous neighbourhood of the
unconscious (Jung 1928, p.170). Bachelard certainly had many normative ideas

6
Bachelards use of psychoanalysis was rather eclectic from the beginning: he variously employed
Freud and Jung and above all Marie Bonaparte and Ren Allendy.
190 C. Chimisso

about how to live together in his rationalistic books. However, in his books on the
works of the imagination he did not want to tell anyone how they should live their
diurnal life. Indeed, as the father of a female philosopher who had published books
on rationality and on Husserl, he may have found it difficult to accept that a woman
would find it boring if her husband examined her on the Critique of Pure Reason,
as Jung had remarked (Jung 1928, p.177). Bachelard therefore made it clear that in
trying to indicate how the masculine and the feminine especially the feminine
help fashion our reveries, we are limiting our observations only to oneiric situa-
tions. As for the womans situation in the modern world, he left it to experts
Simone de Beauvoir and F.J. J.Buytendijk. How little Bachelard was concerned
with evaluating male and female psychology outside his own reverie is apparent by
his lumping together the author of The Second Sex with an author whose aim was to
show that there is an essential difference between men and women, a difference
in nature, capabilities, inborn qualities, abilities, talents and character, and therefore
a difference in vocation, mission and destiny (Buytendijk 1968, p.26).
It is crucial to take Bachelard seriously when he tells us that we should read his
books on reverie in anima, because they have been written in anima (Bachelard
1971 [1960], p. 212). Reading in anima for Bachelard means to suspend critical
engagement, and to receive images in a sort of transcendental acceptance of gifts
(Bachelard 1971 [1960], p.65). Bachelards topoanalysis, that is his exploration of
dreamed spaces and spaces where to dream, is not a method in the strict sense of the
world, and I agree with E.S. Casey who calls it less a method than an attitude
(Casey 1997, p.288). Not by chance, Bachelards chapter of The Poetics of Reverie
dedicated to animus and anima is about Reverie on reverie: he invited us to read
his lines as we read poetry rather than rationalist philosophy.
In the last years of his life, Bachelard gave up his former obsession with psycho-
analytical culture (Bachelard 1971 [1960], p.3), and adopted a new approach that
he called phenomenology, which he defined as the consideration of the onset of
the image in an individual consciousness (Bachelard 1994 [1957], p. xix). When
reading descriptions of places, such as a house, a nest or a corner, Bachelard was no
longer interested in the causal link that they may have with their authors psyches or
lives. This marked a sharp departure from the method he had employed in
Lautramont, where he reconstructed the poets biography and complexes from an
analysis of his work (Bachelard 1986a [1939]). Similarly, he was not interested in
these images cultural past or historical setting; no scholarship is needed for their
reception, but rather a nave consciousness (Bachelard 1994 [1957], p. xix). Like
Husserls, Bachelards phenomenology is descriptive rather than normative, and is
carried out by the individual. However, Bachelards phenomenology is neither a
method nor a science, unlike Husserls presentation of his phenomenology in his
Cartesian Meditation (Husserl 1960 [1931]). As Paul Ricoeur has emphasised, for
Bachelard there was no crisis of the sciences, as there was for Husserl, because for
the former crises take place entirely within objectivity... and can be resolved only
through the progress of the sciences (Ricoeur 2007, pp. 16162) (Husserl 1970
[1936]). For Bachelard, the sciences and rationalistic philosophy set the norms for
our objective knowledge and our collective living, whereas his phenomenology and
Gaston Bachelards Places oftheImagination andImages ofSpace 191

hermeneutics describe the personal experiences that we have when we withdraw

into ourselves and let free our poetic and primitive self. Unlike Husserl, Bachelard
never thought of phenomenology as a philosophical science that could be applied to
the whole of human existence, nor did he think that it could clarify all species and
forms of cognition (Wrathall and Dreyfus 2006). Bachelards is a phenomenology
of the soul (Bachelard 1994 [1957], p. xx), as opposed to the mind; he explained
that a consciousness associated with the soul is more relaxed, less intentionalized
than a consciousness associated with the phenomena of the mind. Forces are mani-
fested in poems that do not pass through the circuits of knowledge (Bachelard 1994
[1957], p. xxi). Objective knowledge, which for him is always discursive, is the
domain of science. His phenomenology of the soul is an immediate activity, which
does not aim to produce a theory of knowledge, nor literary criticism. In fact, in his
study of space, he wrote that he had to forget his learning, and that nothing general
and co-ordinated [can] serve as a basis for a philosophy of poetry (Bachelard 1994
[1957], p. xv).
Bachelards reference for his phenomenology was Eugene Minkowkis Vers une
cosmologie. In this rather peculiar study, phenomenology, psychopathology, and the
philosophies of Louis Lavelle and Henri Bergson support a voyage in the authors
consciousness which merges with the idea of a voyage around the universe
(Minkowski 1999, p.13). What in particular Bachelard took from Minkowski is a
less defined, and in his eyes richer, relationship between the subject and poetic
images. Minkowski called this relation reverberation [retentissement], as it avoids
causality and undue generalisations. Bachelard was attracted by the dynamic and
consciously imprecise character of the concept of reverberation, which suggests a
relationship between the subject and the world that is more primitive than their
mutual opposition, as Minkowski writes (Minkowski 1999, p.106).
Bachelards hermeneutics of place may recall Martin Heideggers hermeneutics
in several ways. In particular, Bachelards presented our relationship with space as
pre-scientific and indeed pre-reflective, and in this it recalls Heideggers presenta-
tion of how the Dasein inhabits the world. Moreover, when Bachelard wrote that he
planned to study images direct ontology (Bachelard 1994 [1957], p. xvi), he did
not refer to any theory of being. His ability to understand the being of images of
space is rather close to Heideggers assertion that the Dasein is ontological not in
the sense of having a theory of being, but rather in the sense that the Dasein is in
such a way that [it] has an understanding of Being (Heidegger 1962 [1927], p.32).
However, one of the many differences between Bachelards and Heideggers herme-
neutics is that in the formers time is irrelevant. Time for Bachelard is the dimension
of science, and does not play a role, indeed is negated, in his exploration of our pre-
discursive relationships with images, including images of space. Bachelards rejec-
tion of time makes his hermeneutics equally distant from Ricoeurs, in which the
lived experience of phenomenology corresponds, on the side of hermeneutics, to
consciousness exposed to historical efficacy (Ricoeur 1976, pp. 1167). More
importantly, Bachelards hermeneutics is a far more modest enterprise than
Heideggers or Ricoeurs; it is not aimed at any comprehensive theory of being and
it is only half of his philosophy: he may talk about ontology in discussing images of
192 C. Chimisso

space, but he also discussed ontology and indeed ontogenesis when analysing sci-
entific discourse. In The Poetics of Reverie, published only two years before his
death, he emphasised that anima is not the whole of life, and expressed the wish to
write another work of animus, that is a work of philosophy of science (Bachelard
1971 [1960], p. 212). His hermeneutics of space is about the imagination and
dreams; but these make up only half of human existence. As I shall argue in the
Conclusion, he aimed to put forward a pedagogy for the nocturnal man, just as he
had done for the diurnal man in his books about science.

4 Conclusion

Bachelards hermeneutics of place offers the reader an exploration of our relation-

ship to those spaces that are meaningful to us. These spaces are dreamed spaces that
feed off and recreate the places of our lives; first of all, the house of our birth, which
we re-live in the oneiric house. The latter in turn re-shapes and loads with new
meanings our birthplace. Bachelard employed elements of psychology, psychoanal-
ysis and phenomenology in order to produce a topography of our intimate being
(Bachelard 1994 [1957], p. xxxvi), which is by no means aimed at an objective
description. He made his renunciation of a structured method in his approach to
space even clearer when he suggested that his topoanalysis is in fact topophilia
(Bachelard 1994 [1957], p. xxv, 149).
His hermeneutics of space is about intimacy and solitude; this in his anthropol-
ogy means that it applies to half of human life, the solitary part dedicated to rest,
poetry and reverie, and opposed to rational activities, science and objective thought.
These two halves correspond to the two philosophies that Bachelard developed in
his life: a rationalistic philosophy of science, and an imaginative philosophy of rev-
erie and poetry. These two philosophies are opposed as to contents, methods, and
the parts of the mind that they engage. They are also opposed with regard to the
conditions in which they are carried out: one only in a dialectic exchange with other
people, and the other in solitude. Time is central to the philosophy of science, which
describes and explains the discontinuous progress of science. By contrast, time is
absent from Bachelards philosophy of the imagination, including his hermeneutics
of space, in two distinct ways. The first is that for him the imaginative part of our
mind is our primitive self which does not undergo the changes that reason does.
Second, the contents of reveries and poetry that Bachelard presented do not exhibit
narratives; he studied autonomous images, considered in their singularity. Both
views are debatable. He did not offer an explanation for the supposed lack of narra-
tives of our imaginings, because he presented it in works in which he adopted a
non-rationalistic approach that does not require justifications.
It is tempting to find a symmetry between Bachelards philosophy of science, in
which time is central, and his philosophy of the reverie in which space is important.
This could suggest that Bachelard substituted time with space in his hermeneutics,
Gaston Bachelards Places oftheImagination andImages ofSpace 193

and in so doing he distinguished it from Heideggers and Ricoeurs.7 However

tempting and tidy this symmetry is, really it is stretched. I have already hinted at the
great differences that separate Bachelards project from Heideggers and Ricoeurs.
Bachelards project was not only far more modest, but also partial, in the sense of
only being half of his philosophy. More to the point, Bachelard investigated places
as he did other images. He developed his thought about the house of ones birth and
the oneiric house, the cave and labyrinth as part of his philosophy of the imagination
of matter, alongside for instance the image of the snake and the root (Bachelard
1992b [1948]). Places are a central part of Bachelards study of images but on his
part there is no attempt to use space as the key-stone of a system or theory. In the
English-speaking world The Poetics of Space was translated early (1964), while
some of Bachelards books have been translated into English more recently or are
yet to be translated. As a result, his analysis of space has mainly been read out of
context, as a stand-alone philosophy, rather than as part of a much larger project.
If he did not aim to present the reader with a theory, or a philosophy of space,
what was the aim of his topoanalysis? Just as his philosophy of science, his study of
the works of the imagination, including his topoanalysis, was pedagogical.8
Bachelard wanted to teach us how to live well; in his words, there is no well-being
without reverie (Bachelard 1971 [1960], pp.1523). His project was to live as
the great dreamers of images lived before him (Bachelard 1994 [1957], p.117):
reading about dreamed spaces would enable the reader to have better and richer
reveries. The therapeutic approach that he had renounced came back in another
form. The aim was no longer to cure the mind of his happy illusions but rather to
teach the mind how to dream well. His concerns were wellbeing (Bachelard 1971
[1960], p.1523), tranquillity (Bachelard 1971 [1960], p.173), and seizing the
felicity of speech offered by the poet (Bachelard 1994 [1957], p. xxx). His topo-
analysis concerns simple images of felicitous space (Bachelard 1994 [1957], p.
xxxv). Many of his readers have received his work as a guide to wellbeing and
indeed happiness. Bachelard has been seen as a teacher of the art of solitude
(Mettra 1983, p.107), and offering repose, the happy origin of which is reverie
(Laurans 1983, p.155). His was a pedagogy of reverie, which was successful with
some of his readers, such as the poet Jean Lescure who wrote that Bachelard had
taught him how to be happy (Lescure 1983, p.11).

References

Bachelard, Gaston. 1951. Lactivit rationaliste de la physique contemporaine. Paris: Presses

Universitaires de France.

7
See for instance (Kennedy 2011).
8
For my interpretation of Bachelards philosophy of science as a pedagogical project, see (Chimisso
2001). For a defence of the enduring pedagogical value of Bachelards philosophy, see (Favre
1995).
194 C. Chimisso

. 1961. La flamme dune chandelle. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

. 1964 [1938]. The Psychoanalysis of Fire. Boston: Beacon Press.
. 1968 [1940]. The Philosophy of No: A Philosophy of the New Scientific Mind. NewYork:
Orion Press.
. 1970 [19341935]. Idalisme discursif. In Etudes, 8797. Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France.
. 1971 [1960]. The Poetics of Reverie: Childhood, Language and the Cosmos. Boston:
Beacon Press.
. 1972a [1943]. Lair et les songes. Essai sur limagination du mouvement. Paris: Corti.
. 1972b [1953]. Le matrialisme rationnel. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
. 1983 [1942]. Water and Dreams. An Essay on the Imagination of Matter. Dallas: The
Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture.
. 1984 [1934]. The New Scientific Spirit. Boston: Beacon Press.
. 1986a [1939]. Lautramont. Paris: Corti.
. 1986b [1949]. Le rationalisme appliqu. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
. 1988. Fragments dune potique du feu. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
. 1992a [1947]. La terre et les rveries de la volont. Essai sur limagination de la matire.
Paris: Corti.
. 1992b [1948]. La terre et les rveries du repos. Essai sur les images de lintimit. Paris:
Corti.
. 1994 [1957]. The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press.
. 2000 [1936]. The Dialectic of Duration, with an Introduction by Cristina Chimisso.
Manchester: Clinamen.
. 2002 [1938]. The Formation of the Scientific Mind. Manchester: Clinamen Press.
Buytendijk, Frederik Jacobus Johan. 1968. Woman. A contemporary View. Glen Rock/New York:
Newman Press/Association Press.
Casey, E.S. 1997. The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Chimisso, Cristina. 2001. Gaston Bachelard: Critic of Science and the Imagination. London:
Routledge.
Favre, Michel. 1995. Bachelard educateur. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Freud, Sigmund. 1985. Art and Literature: Jensens Gradiva, Leonardo da Vinci and Other Works.
London: Penguin.
Heidegger, Martin. 1962 [1927]. Being and Time. Oxford: Blackwell.
Huskinson, Lucy. 2012. Housing Complexes: Redesigning the House of Psyche in Light of a
Curious Mistranslation of C.G. Jung Appropriated by Gaston Bachelard. International Journal
of Jungian Studies 5(1): 6480.
Husserl, Edmund. 1960 [1931]. Cartesian Meditations. An Introduction to Phenomenology. The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
. 1970 [1936]. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An
Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Translated, with an introd., by David Carr.
Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Jung, C.G. 1928. Contributions to Analytical Psychology. London: Kegan Paul & Co..
Kennedy, Miles. 2011. Home: A Bachelardian Concrete Metaphysics. Oxford: Peter Lang.
Laurans, Jacques. 1983. Rverie sur un onde. Solaire numro spcial 10e anniversaire, Bachelard
ou le droit de rver: 155157.
Lescure, J. 1983. Un t avec Bachelard. Paris: Luneau-Ascot.
Mettra, Claude. 1983. Lart de la solitude. Solaire numro spcial 10e anniversaire, Bachelard ou
le droit de rver:105108.
Minkowski, Eugne. 1999. Vers une cosmologie. Paris: Payot.
Ricoeur, Paul. 1976. Philosophical Hermeneutics and Theological Hermeneutics: Ideology,
Utopia, and Faith: Colloquy 17, 1975. Berkeley: Center for Hermeneutical Studies in
Hellenistic & Modern Culture.
Gaston Bachelards Places oftheImagination andImages ofSpace 195

. 2007. Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University

Press.
Wrathall, Mark, A and Hubert L. Dreyfus. 2006. A Brief Introduction to Phenomenology and
Existentialism In A Companion to Phenomenology and Existentialism, edited by Mark
Wrathall, A and Hubert L.Dreyfus: Blackwell Publishing.