Notions from Tom: On Gaston Bachelard and the Subversive Freedom of Poetry

On Gaston Bachelard and the Subversive Freedom of Poetry

Thomas L. Lynn, Jr.

That there is a temptation to dismiss the contemporary world as a dreary one stands as something of a cliché. This, though, hardly constitutes a refutation of the sentiment. In fact, it is an index of its veracity, though one to be read advisedly. To put the matter alternatively, the contemporary world is a prosaic one: it seeks refuge in the corner of the ordinary, the expected, the controlled. Perhaps the most convincing evidence of this impulse can be found in the particular temporality that the cultures and institutions of our upbringing… at least here in North America... would have us embrace. The startling insights of Einstein’s theories of relativity notwithstanding - its realization that there is not a timeline, but that there are timelines, or, if you like, timeframes - we are still called to walk in lockstep with a Newtonian metronome of invariant pace, our gazes ever transfixed by the uniform motion of the clock’s hand. That colour almost naturally bleeds out of our reflections on this world then is hardly surprising. Even the shadings of black and white prove almost too ebullient to describe it. For colour is surprising, and the maintenance of fidelity to this constriction of our Lebenswelt, or Lifeworld can scarcely tolerate surprise. Or, to spiral back upon our initial note, the prosaic forbids the poetic.

And, it is here we arrive then at one of the great values of Gaston Bachelard's Poetics of Space (La Poétique de L’Espace). For sometime now, it has been received as a work whose offerings can powerfully inform architecture, and indeed this is the case. For through Bachelard’s thoughts on the house as a space of evocative potency, through his drawing of its lines, its corners and curves, its verticality, its doors and windows, even its furniture, the architect is reminded of the profound responsibility of his task: it becomes not merely to serve the ‘function of reality’, but to blend that service with the ‘function of unreality’ to elicit an entering upon our freedom. But these reflections have a relevance not only for the architect, for they point to a shift not merely in the imagining of buildings, but in our imagining of the world, or, indeed, even ourselves. The Newtonian metronome has set us into a rationalist trance that has forgotten what may prove to be of greater moment to the human nature than ratiocination - imagination. Counterposing the lesser significance attributed to this faculty by Henri Bergson (who stands as a representative of Rationalism more generally), Bachelard relays,

I propose, on the contrary, to consider the imagination as a major power of human nature… By the swiftness of its actions, the imagination separates us from reality; it faces the future. To the function of reality, wise in experience of the past, as it is defined by traditional psychology, should be added a function of unreality, which is equally positive...If we cannot imagine, we cannot foresee. (Bachelard, xxx)

The full import of this revaluation becomes apparent when it is considered in connection specifically with the question of poetic imagination. For the imagination is also called forth to subsidiary or less momentous purposes, such as in the outlining of memory, or the task of mimetic productions. But in its poetic aspect, what is witnessed is not mere recollection, or reproduction, but creation. This unfolds in a twofold wise. It occurs through the action, the utterance, the writing of the poet. But it also recurs in our encounter with the poem, where the reverberation with being it evokes in turn compels personal resonances, personal repercussions such that one is left with the impression that it is a piece that one could have composed oneself. Or, to recall Bachelard again,

...The reverberations bring about a change of being. It is as though the poet’s being were our being. The multiplicity of resonances then issues from the reverberations’ unity of being. Or, to put it more simply, this is an impression that all impassioned poetry lovers know well: the poem possesses us entirely.

...The image offered us by reading the poem now becomes really our own. It takes root in us. It has been given us by another, but we begin to have the impression that we could have created it, that we should have created it. It becomes a new being in our language, expressing us by making us what it expresses; in other words, it is as at once a becoming of expression, and a becoming of our being. Here expression creates being…

...When considered in transmission from one soul to another, it becomes evident that a poetic image eludes causality. (Bachelard xviii-xx)

The trans-subjectivity of this experience has dramatic consequence. For one, it suggests that the touchstone of empathy or solidarity is not a conditioned affectivity, but rather a kinship in being itself. The human adventure is an adventure in a creative being, or, better yet, a creative becoming. The connection with that process then is embodiment of freedom.

The prosaic understanding would stunt that embodiment, confining the implications of the reverberations of poetic experience to what can be drawn from the antecedents of an arid biology, or tangled personal narrative. Yet Bachelard avers that this is but an inversion of what is occurring, an inversion which is revealed when we approach the poetic experience phenomenologically, when we allow the image to speak for itself. It is in this allowance, this openness that the reverberations of being unfold, a reawakening to the elan vital enabled. Thus, Bachelard also conveys,

The phenomenological situation with regard to psychoanalytical investigation will perhaps be more precisely stated if, in connection with poetic images, we are able to isolate a sphere of pure sublimation; of a sublimation which sublimates nothing, which is relieved of the burden of passion, and freed from the pressure of desire. (Bachelard xxv)

And in this space, to quote from Bachelard’s sequel work The Poetics of Reverie (La Poétique de la Rêverie), “...like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us.”

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Here is a video reflection upon Gaston Bachelard and The Poetics of Space of greater scope:

https://youtu.be/vFSpeD2GVtw

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

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Tuesday, September 1, 2015

On Gaston Bachelard and the Subversive Freedom of Poetry

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