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The Poetics of Space
Since its first publication in English in 1964, French philosopher Gaston Bachelard's Poetics of Space remains one of the most appealing and lyrical explorations of home. Bachelard takes us on a journey, from cellar to attic, to show how our perceptions of houses and other shelters shape our thoughts, memories, and dreams.
"A magical book. . . . The Poetics of Space is a prism through which all worlds from literary creation to housework to aesthetics to carpentry take on enhanced-and enchanted-significances. Every reader of it will never see ordinary spaces in ordinary ways. Instead the reader will see with the soul of the eye, the glint of Gaston Bachelard." -from the new foreword by John R. Stilgoe
"A magical book. . . . The Poetics of Space is a prism through which all worlds from literary creation to housework to aesthetics to carpentry take on enhanced-and enchanted-significances. Every reader of it will never see ordinary spaces in ordinary ways. Instead the reader will see with the soul of the eye, the glint of Gaston Bachelard." -from the new foreword by John R. Stilgoe
282 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1957
About the author
Gaston Bachelard
106 books655 followersGaston 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.
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March 5, 2024
Imagine you're magically transported back to your first home. You know - the one you lived in as an infant.
Eureka... suddenly the mists of time and faulty memory withdraw, and it all comes back to you!
Every nook and cranny, every secret, mystical corner, each minute detail of your home and of the enthralled childhood you once enjoyed would flood your heart with a forgotten, Elysial joy...
I used to retain a vivid and unmistakable memory of lying in bed as an infant in a dark, warm room and hearing the ominous and mysterious double booms - first low-pitched, then even lower - of a nearby fog horn.
But I was born in inland Michigan, nowhere near the ocean!
As a teenager I used to think “I CAN’T have just dreamed that up!” I used to remember it when listening to Beethoven, for some strange reason.
Why, for Pete’s sake?
Well, much later, I was reminded by my Mom that we had lived in Big Sur on the coast of California when I was one year old, where my Dad worked as a biologist at Hopkins Marine Station - we had lived, in fact, near Steinbeck’s own Cannery Row.
And of course, she always wanted me to have a good grounding in classical music.
Toscanini was her hero! As a mathematics major at Stanford, she learned to love the pure linear clarity and strength of the classical sounds he elicited from the NBC Orchestra.
Beethoven was ALWAYS playing in the later background in my childhood, too, as every so often Dad’s starting pay as a scientist would allow him to splurge on a new Toscanini 33RPM record for her from Frieman’s, where she worked part-time.
Wow!
I had had a sensory key given to me - just as Proust was given the grace of a little cake of Madeleine to permit an instant of exact recall...
And you know, these epiphanies can lead us down a wonderful rabbit hole - just like Alice - into an enchanted land that almost seems... well, make-believe.
No wonder! We, as infants, were COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than who we are now.
And, our world was completely, utterly, magically Alive!
Plato would have said we were then Closer to the Source...
And that is the essence of this fantastic book. At least as I envisaged it back in the dreamscapes of my uni Freshman Year. “Time it was, oh what a time it was... I have a photograph - “
Paul Simon was right. Now even the photo has faded. But the song Bachelard inspired my heart to sing hasn’t!
Yes, for Céline Dion is right too. The heart DOES go on. Our dreams live in a time beyond time.
And Bachelard, though I know him now to be a post-structuralist following in the drily rational footsteps of Levi-Strauss, inspired a remarkable heart-felt memory in an 18-year-old kid’s unawakened soul, that lives on - long after the usual “rance nuit de la peau” anointed me - for I am now a lot more careful than Mallarme’s Punished Clown.
Though I certainly was just that, at first.
I had the usual rough worldly Baptism by Fire, but I burned only as long as did the mythical Phoenix, rising out of the ashes to the New Life of the Spirit.
And it is through those New Eyes of the Spirit that I see clearly the veracity of my teenaged vision.
And the memory itself of it all is Alive in a world of timelessness beyond me.
“The soul that rises with us, our Life’s Star, has had elsewhere (and far away from here) its setting!” Long before my earliest memories.
And Wordsworth’s Intimations of Immortality, like mine at 18, found their proper dénouement in the Faith of my Fathers.
A quite unremarkable conclusion to his and my remarkably tumultuous lives.
And all the Intimations I needed were right here, in this book.
And so, if you can - buy, beg, borrow or steal it, if you’re a wide-eyed Dreamer like I was!
You’ll love it.
Eureka... suddenly the mists of time and faulty memory withdraw, and it all comes back to you!
Every nook and cranny, every secret, mystical corner, each minute detail of your home and of the enthralled childhood you once enjoyed would flood your heart with a forgotten, Elysial joy...
I used to retain a vivid and unmistakable memory of lying in bed as an infant in a dark, warm room and hearing the ominous and mysterious double booms - first low-pitched, then even lower - of a nearby fog horn.
But I was born in inland Michigan, nowhere near the ocean!
As a teenager I used to think “I CAN’T have just dreamed that up!” I used to remember it when listening to Beethoven, for some strange reason.
Why, for Pete’s sake?
Well, much later, I was reminded by my Mom that we had lived in Big Sur on the coast of California when I was one year old, where my Dad worked as a biologist at Hopkins Marine Station - we had lived, in fact, near Steinbeck’s own Cannery Row.
And of course, she always wanted me to have a good grounding in classical music.
Toscanini was her hero! As a mathematics major at Stanford, she learned to love the pure linear clarity and strength of the classical sounds he elicited from the NBC Orchestra.
Beethoven was ALWAYS playing in the later background in my childhood, too, as every so often Dad’s starting pay as a scientist would allow him to splurge on a new Toscanini 33RPM record for her from Frieman’s, where she worked part-time.
Wow!
I had had a sensory key given to me - just as Proust was given the grace of a little cake of Madeleine to permit an instant of exact recall...
And you know, these epiphanies can lead us down a wonderful rabbit hole - just like Alice - into an enchanted land that almost seems... well, make-believe.
No wonder! We, as infants, were COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than who we are now.
And, our world was completely, utterly, magically Alive!
Plato would have said we were then Closer to the Source...
And that is the essence of this fantastic book. At least as I envisaged it back in the dreamscapes of my uni Freshman Year. “Time it was, oh what a time it was... I have a photograph - “
Paul Simon was right. Now even the photo has faded. But the song Bachelard inspired my heart to sing hasn’t!
Yes, for Céline Dion is right too. The heart DOES go on. Our dreams live in a time beyond time.
And Bachelard, though I know him now to be a post-structuralist following in the drily rational footsteps of Levi-Strauss, inspired a remarkable heart-felt memory in an 18-year-old kid’s unawakened soul, that lives on - long after the usual “rance nuit de la peau” anointed me - for I am now a lot more careful than Mallarme’s Punished Clown.
Though I certainly was just that, at first.
I had the usual rough worldly Baptism by Fire, but I burned only as long as did the mythical Phoenix, rising out of the ashes to the New Life of the Spirit.
And it is through those New Eyes of the Spirit that I see clearly the veracity of my teenaged vision.
And the memory itself of it all is Alive in a world of timelessness beyond me.
“The soul that rises with us, our Life’s Star, has had elsewhere (and far away from here) its setting!” Long before my earliest memories.
And Wordsworth’s Intimations of Immortality, like mine at 18, found their proper dénouement in the Faith of my Fathers.
A quite unremarkable conclusion to his and my remarkably tumultuous lives.
And all the Intimations I needed were right here, in this book.
And so, if you can - buy, beg, borrow or steal it, if you’re a wide-eyed Dreamer like I was!
You’ll love it.
March 13, 2024
جماليّات المكان
هذا كتاب يتمنى كل ناقد ان يضع اسمه علي عمل مثله
جاستون باشلار فيلسوف الأدب
الذي يرى جمال المجاز حقيقة
في لوحة ممتدة من النص إلى مخيلة الأدباء
هذا الرجل لديه بصيرة بعالم الشعور الذي تنمو فيه الصور والأفكار
هذا العقل يتجاوز المنطق للحدس الذي ينطلق منه الملهمون في الأدب وفي تفاصيل الواقع اليومي أيضا
جاستون باشلار لن يكون نصا عابرا في حياتك
سيمد لك يدا صادقت الأقلام والأوراق
سينظر إليك بعين صافحت البيوت والقباب والشوارع والحدائق
يعشق حرية الفضاء الواسع
وأسرار الخزائن المغلقة
نفسه ثرية بروح مكتشف
يلتمس العالم السحري الذي يتشكل في صفحات الوعي
هذا قلم تحب كلماته لأنها تسكن عالمك
وتمنحك صداقة عميقة
يتردد صداها في محيط محبتك
للكون
والكتابة
يبحث جاستون باشلار عن وعي المبدعين بالعالم
إدراكهم له في مرايا خيالهم
وانعكاسه في أبجديات تعبيرهم
عالمنا هو ما انطبع في مخيلاتنا
هو خطوط وألوان
هو أشكال وتكوينات
هو انسياب وحدود
امتدادات وتقاطعات
مصدرها خبراتنا العاطفية والذهنية
وتراكمات المقولات التي تتردد في فضائنا الاجتماعي
عالمنا مصنوع من الرموز المتضامة في جاليري أعماقنا
الوعي مدير أتيليه في مدينة الذات
يعرض عليها خبراته
يصدر رؤاه للآخرين
بيننا مشترك لجوهر واحد
بيننا متغيرات الأقاليم والتجارب
فلننطر في المتحف الكبير
للظاهرة الجمالية الإنسانية
يحتضننا ذاك الجوهر
ونستمتع بتلك المتغيرات
كثير من الصور الشعرية تخرج من الأماكن
من الأرض والماء
من الجبال والبيداء
من البيوت والحارات
من الوديان والواحات
نحن ابناء الأماكن
نلوذ بها كحضن أم
نتحصن بها كدرع اب
نعشق تفاصيلها الدقيقة
كحبيبة حانية رقيقة
شخصيات الدراما تكتسب صفاتها من شخصية المكان
الطبيعة والطباع
الدوائر التي ندور فيها
ثم نعود إلى الديار
نواصل الحوار
مع حبيب مقيم
أو نحلم بحبيب
يرانا في مكان
بقلبه لم يره إنسان
المبدع الذي يجمع شخصياته في البيت ينتمي لنموذج حضاري يميل إلى الثبات والألفة والتقاليد
المقهى بيت الشارع، ملتقى الصحاب والغرباء، نموذج تكويني لحوار متعدد الأبعاد بهدف التواصل والفرار من اختناق حصار البيت
الشارع مساحة للمغامرة والاكتشاف
بعض البشر يمكن تصنيفهم طبقا لنماذج المكان
الشخصية البيت
الشخصية المقهى
الشخصية الشارع
الشخصية الحقل
الشخصية المصنع
الشخصية الشركة التجارية
الشخصية المدرسة
الشخصية الروضة
نحن أبناء الأكوان التي لمستنا ولمسناها
تصورت فيها ملامحنا
تصورت في لا وعينا امومتها
احتضنتنا ولفظتنا مثل كلمة خارجة عن النص
واستعادت أحلامنا شبابها الغارب
في صفحة الشعور تشرق شموسها من نوافذ الوحدة
تسبح اشعتها في انكسار البعد
تتناثر وجوه الصحاب في قصص تقاوم اليقظة والنوم معا
في صمتنا المشحون بالمعاني يروي لسان الحال بلاصوت
تاريخا لم يكن هكذا
لم نصنعه
توارثناه من فضاء أتوبيس متزاحم الخطابات المتخفية بالأقنعة
الأمكنة تسقط في أدغال الكلام
وتتحرر وحدها في وحدتنا
حينما تبتلع اطلال الاختيار الزائف
خطوات حبيب غادر المنزل
وتسعى الروح لاستحضاره كي تتضام خلاياها
كي لا تندرس آثاره خلف عقارب الساعة
تشحذ الوعي لنفض الغبار ونكت دهاليز التذكر
فيستعين بإشارات تومض بين متخيله وفضاء الوقت
في الإبداع درس لتاريخ الأمكنة بعمارتها البنيانية والشعورية
إن لها بيانها وأبجديته أطلالها
ولسان حالها الناطق في نفوس لم تبح بمكنونها
إلا لشاعر متوهج المشاعر
أو قاص يقص أثر الإنسانية
أو درامي يستنطق رموزها في حوار
يفتح نوافذ لأضواء تنير أفضية داكنة
تتوارى في عتمة الأحلام
هذا كتاب يتمنى كل ناقد ان يضع اسمه علي عمل مثله
جاستون باشلار فيلسوف الأدب
الذي يرى جمال المجاز حقيقة
في لوحة ممتدة من النص إلى مخيلة الأدباء
هذا الرجل لديه بصيرة بعالم الشعور الذي تنمو فيه الصور والأفكار
هذا العقل يتجاوز المنطق للحدس الذي ينطلق منه الملهمون في الأدب وفي تفاصيل الواقع اليومي أيضا
جاستون باشلار لن يكون نصا عابرا في حياتك
سيمد لك يدا صادقت الأقلام والأوراق
سينظر إليك بعين صافحت البيوت والقباب والشوارع والحدائق
يعشق حرية الفضاء الواسع
وأسرار الخزائن المغلقة
نفسه ثرية بروح مكتشف
يلتمس العالم السحري الذي يتشكل في صفحات الوعي
هذا قلم تحب كلماته لأنها تسكن عالمك
وتمنحك صداقة عميقة
يتردد صداها في محيط محبتك
للكون
والكتابة
يبحث جاستون باشلار عن وعي المبدعين بالعالم
إدراكهم له في مرايا خيالهم
وانعكاسه في أبجديات تعبيرهم
عالمنا هو ما انطبع في مخيلاتنا
هو خطوط وألوان
هو أشكال وتكوينات
هو انسياب وحدود
امتدادات وتقاطعات
مصدرها خبراتنا العاطفية والذهنية
وتراكمات المقولات التي تتردد في فضائنا الاجتماعي
عالمنا مصنوع من الرموز المتضامة في جاليري أعماقنا
الوعي مدير أتيليه في مدينة الذات
يعرض عليها خبراته
يصدر رؤاه للآخرين
بيننا مشترك لجوهر واحد
بيننا متغيرات الأقاليم والتجارب
فلننطر في المتحف الكبير
للظاهرة الجمالية الإنسانية
يحتضننا ذاك الجوهر
ونستمتع بتلك المتغيرات
كثير من الصور الشعرية تخرج من الأماكن
من الأرض والماء
من الجبال والبيداء
من البيوت والحارات
من الوديان والواحات
نحن ابناء الأماكن
نلوذ بها كحضن أم
نتحصن بها كدرع اب
نعشق تفاصيلها الدقيقة
كحبيبة حانية رقيقة
شخصيات الدراما تكتسب صفاتها من شخصية المكان
الطبيعة والطباع
الدوائر التي ندور فيها
ثم نعود إلى الديار
نواصل الحوار
مع حبيب مقيم
أو نحلم بحبيب
يرانا في مكان
بقلبه لم يره إنسان
المبدع الذي يجمع شخصياته في البيت ينتمي لنموذج حضاري يميل إلى الثبات والألفة والتقاليد
المقهى بيت الشارع، ملتقى الصحاب والغرباء، نموذج تكويني لحوار متعدد الأبعاد بهدف التواصل والفرار من اختناق حصار البيت
الشارع مساحة للمغامرة والاكتشاف
بعض البشر يمكن تصنيفهم طبقا لنماذج المكان
الشخصية البيت
الشخصية المقهى
الشخصية الشارع
الشخصية الحقل
الشخصية المصنع
الشخصية الشركة التجارية
الشخصية المدرسة
الشخصية الروضة
نحن أبناء الأكوان التي لمستنا ولمسناها
تصورت فيها ملامحنا
تصورت في لا وعينا امومتها
احتضنتنا ولفظتنا مثل كلمة خارجة عن النص
واستعادت أحلامنا شبابها الغارب
في صفحة الشعور تشرق شموسها من نوافذ الوحدة
تسبح اشعتها في انكسار البعد
تتناثر وجوه الصحاب في قصص تقاوم اليقظة والنوم معا
في صمتنا المشحون بالمعاني يروي لسان الحال بلاصوت
تاريخا لم يكن هكذا
لم نصنعه
توارثناه من فضاء أتوبيس متزاحم الخطابات المتخفية بالأقنعة
الأمكنة تسقط في أدغال الكلام
وتتحرر وحدها في وحدتنا
حينما تبتلع اطلال الاختيار الزائف
خطوات حبيب غادر المنزل
وتسعى الروح لاستحضاره كي تتضام خلاياها
كي لا تندرس آثاره خلف عقارب الساعة
تشحذ الوعي لنفض الغبار ونكت دهاليز التذكر
فيستعين بإشارات تومض بين متخيله وفضاء الوقت
في الإبداع درس لتاريخ الأمكنة بعمارتها البنيانية والشعورية
إن لها بيانها وأبجديته أطلالها
ولسان حالها الناطق في نفوس لم تبح بمكنونها
إلا لشاعر متوهج المشاعر
أو قاص يقص أثر الإنسانية
أو درامي يستنطق رموزها في حوار
يفتح نوافذ لأضواء تنير أفضية داكنة
تتوارى في عتمة الأحلام
February 14, 2008
I've failed to explain Bachelard to so many people by now that I should know better. I should write some sort of meta-review/hymn/grocery list here, but I'm afraid. I'm afraid to wash the freaking hem of this book.
Probably the best thing I can say about The Poetics of Space is that, in thinking so hard about what makes a poetic image work, it really becomes more of a prose poem than a book of philosophy. Bachelard is trying to understand the "happy mind" - the mind making itself a home everywhere, no matter how hostile the environment. He calls this a phenomenology (as opposed to psychology's obsession with neurosis, damage, the "unhappy mind"), also "daydreaming," "reverie." The terms get conflated, maybe by the translation (which is beautiful), but the demonstrations are so powerful and right on that you come away with this burst of energy: as if the world were a car you'd been sitting in on a hot day in the Safeway parking lot, and of course you're wet from swimming so you've got the wet seat smell, and your crotch itches, and there's a homeless person collecting plastic bags by the cart-dispenser and a dog staring at you from three cars over, and yeah its hot as hell, and then suddenly your mom comes back and the car starts going with the windows down and its FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC.
Talking about what you learned from this book is hard, partially because that initial transfer of energy and excitement is the main thing. But like Claude Levi-Strauss or Rene Girard, Bachelard also leaves you with a form, a process that you can use to think about how you think. He makes you more conscious of, not just your mind, but your mind's movement, your mind's happiness. And no matter how unhappy we are, our mind's are all trying to be happy (happy meaning at times, unfortunately, unhappy, but then maybe the "happiness" Bachelard is talking about is only movement and life, the happiness of the seed).
As domestic a book as Anna Karenina, as accordion-expansive as Walden, as razor sharp as Candide. Could also be seen (again, like Girard), as one gigantic digression on Proust.
Probably the best thing I can say about The Poetics of Space is that, in thinking so hard about what makes a poetic image work, it really becomes more of a prose poem than a book of philosophy. Bachelard is trying to understand the "happy mind" - the mind making itself a home everywhere, no matter how hostile the environment. He calls this a phenomenology (as opposed to psychology's obsession with neurosis, damage, the "unhappy mind"), also "daydreaming," "reverie." The terms get conflated, maybe by the translation (which is beautiful), but the demonstrations are so powerful and right on that you come away with this burst of energy: as if the world were a car you'd been sitting in on a hot day in the Safeway parking lot, and of course you're wet from swimming so you've got the wet seat smell, and your crotch itches, and there's a homeless person collecting plastic bags by the cart-dispenser and a dog staring at you from three cars over, and yeah its hot as hell, and then suddenly your mom comes back and the car starts going with the windows down and its FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC.
Talking about what you learned from this book is hard, partially because that initial transfer of energy and excitement is the main thing. But like Claude Levi-Strauss or Rene Girard, Bachelard also leaves you with a form, a process that you can use to think about how you think. He makes you more conscious of, not just your mind, but your mind's movement, your mind's happiness. And no matter how unhappy we are, our mind's are all trying to be happy (happy meaning at times, unfortunately, unhappy, but then maybe the "happiness" Bachelard is talking about is only movement and life, the happiness of the seed).
As domestic a book as Anna Karenina, as accordion-expansive as Walden, as razor sharp as Candide. Could also be seen (again, like Girard), as one gigantic digression on Proust.
September 3, 2020
La Poétique de l'Espace = The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard
The Poetics of Space is a 1958 book about architecture by the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard. Commentators have compared Bachelard's views to those of the philosopher Martin Heidegger.
"Sometimes the house of the future is better built, lighter and larger than all the houses of the past, so that the image of the dream house is opposed to that of the childhood home…. Maybe it is a good thing for us to keep a few dreams of a house that we shall live in later, always later, so much later, in fact, that we shall not have time to achieve it. For a house that was final, one that stood in symmetrical relation to the house we were born in, would lead to thoughts—serious, sad thoughts—and not to dreams. It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality." Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز دوازدهم ماه جولای سال 2009 میلادی
عنوان: بوطیقای فضا؛ نویسنده: کاستون (گاستن) باشلار؛ مترجمها: مریم کمالی، محمد شیربچه؛ تهران، روشنگران و مطالعات زنان، 1387؛ در 287ص؛ چاپ دوم 1392؛ شابک 9789641940128؛ موضوع تخیل، شعر، فضا و زمان، از فیلسوفان و نویسندگان فرانسوی - سده 20م
بوطیقای فضا را باید اثری از جنس شعر و خیال دانست، کتابی که فرآورده ای از «خیال شاعرانه»؛ و از «علیت، گریزان» است؛ کتاب، محصول هفتادوچهار سالگی «باشلار» است، و در واقع جزء آخرین مراحل کار فلسفی ایشان؛ کتابی سنگین و به لحاظ مفهومی، دیرهضم، که شاید به ادبیات خود «باشلار» نیز باید گفت: «کتابی خوب»؛ چرا که ایشان باور دارند که «هر کتاب خوبی به محض آنکه تمام شد، باید از نو خوانده شود؛ پس از خوانش اول است که خواندن خلاقانه آغاز میشود.» نقل از (ص 62)؛
خوانشگر این کتاب، برای فهمیدنش نیازمند دوباره و دوباره خواندن آنست؛ هیچ نویسنده ی دیگری، همچون «باشلار»، تا این اندازه دقیق و استادانه، به مفهوم فضای خانگی نپرداخته است...؛ باریکه های نور، از «چارچوب خا��ه»، «کلون در»، «قفسه»، «اتاق زیر شیروانی»، «دخمه های قدیمی»، و «کلبه های روستایی»، در این کتاب؛ هماره سوسو میزنند...؛ «باشلار» خود را، «اسیر تاریخ معماری»، و «جزئیات ساختن یک بنا»، نمیکنند، و به خانه، نه با چشمان بیننده ای معمولی، که با نگاه اندیشمندی بزرگوار، و انسانی کیهانمدار مینگرند «خانه ای که زمانی در آن زیسته ایم، جعبه ای بی خاصیت نیست؛ فضای مسکون، فضای هندسی را تعالی میبخشد»؛ موضوع بحث این است که خانه، آشیان رویاپردازی، و پناه خیال است؛ و او...؛
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 12/06/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
The Poetics of Space is a 1958 book about architecture by the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard. Commentators have compared Bachelard's views to those of the philosopher Martin Heidegger.
"Sometimes the house of the future is better built, lighter and larger than all the houses of the past, so that the image of the dream house is opposed to that of the childhood home…. Maybe it is a good thing for us to keep a few dreams of a house that we shall live in later, always later, so much later, in fact, that we shall not have time to achieve it. For a house that was final, one that stood in symmetrical relation to the house we were born in, would lead to thoughts—serious, sad thoughts—and not to dreams. It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality." Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز دوازدهم ماه جولای سال 2009 میلادی
عنوان: بوطیقای فضا؛ نویسنده: کاستون (گاستن) باشلار؛ مترجمها: مریم کمالی، محمد شیربچه؛ تهران، روشنگران و مطالعات زنان، 1387؛ در 287ص؛ چاپ دوم 1392؛ شابک 9789641940128؛ موضوع تخیل، شعر، فضا و زمان، از فیلسوفان و نویسندگان فرانسوی - سده 20م
بوطیقای فضا را باید اثری از جنس شعر و خیال دانست، کتابی که فرآورده ای از «خیال شاعرانه»؛ و از «علیت، گریزان» است؛ کتاب، محصول هفتادوچهار سالگی «باشلار» است، و در واقع جزء آخرین مراحل کار فلسفی ایشان؛ کتابی سنگین و به لحاظ مفهومی، دیرهضم، که شاید به ادبیات خود «باشلار» نیز باید گفت: «کتابی خوب»؛ چرا که ایشان باور دارند که «هر کتاب خوبی به محض آنکه تمام شد، باید از نو خوانده شود؛ پس از خوانش اول است که خواندن خلاقانه آغاز میشود.» نقل از (ص 62)؛
خوانشگر این کتاب، برای فهمیدنش نیازمند دوباره و دوباره خواندن آنست؛ هیچ نویسنده ی دیگری، همچون «باشلار»، تا این اندازه دقیق و استادانه، به مفهوم فضای خانگی نپرداخته است...؛ باریکه های نور، از «چارچوب خا��ه»، «کلون در»، «قفسه»، «اتاق زیر شیروانی»، «دخمه های قدیمی»، و «کلبه های روستایی»، در این کتاب؛ هماره سوسو میزنند...؛ «باشلار» خود را، «اسیر تاریخ معماری»، و «جزئیات ساختن یک بنا»، نمیکنند، و به خانه، نه با چشمان بیننده ای معمولی، که با نگاه اندیشمندی بزرگوار، و انسانی کیهانمدار مینگرند «خانه ای که زمانی در آن زیسته ایم، جعبه ای بی خاصیت نیست؛ فضای مسکون، فضای هندسی را تعالی میبخشد»؛ موضوع بحث این است که خانه، آشیان رویاپردازی، و پناه خیال است؛ و او...؛
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 12/06/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
February 7, 2015
A bestowed mind, when undertaking the poetic journey of imagination, is elated at discovering sudden corners, pathways and bridges which lead to those places where the being surges to acquire intimacy with that notion which transpires oneness with life. Sometimes these places have always been there around waiting to be discovered. Sometimes the discovery is not sudden but gradual, brought about by a continuing familiarity with the places. The wooden door, whose smell begets a sense of warmth or security and also a promise of coming life, the book shelf which inhabits a life, the caress of whose surface makes one experience oneself in entirety; an entirety which is an accumulation of different lives lived through reading and rendered in that instance. The window which opens to a sea of faces at dusk, an assurance that life moves on irrespective of lingering darkness. The old stone stairs, erected steeply without a support to ascend, the steps of which unites the self with the child within. Places creating the spaces of reverie, oneiric experiences through which a self attains harmony; the house in which you live and which lives within you, those drawers and chests which are abode to memories to which you return again and again, the corner which stands as a retreat for solitude.
In the words of William Wordsworth, “We are less forlorn in a world which we meet with our imagination”.
The reveries of mind cumulate into creating those images which bring harmony in the existence. Harmony brings joy within the being. Camus’ invincible summer, in presence of Algerian Sun and Sea, spring forth due to the reveries his mind is captivated with. Reveries of the places of his childhood – the house he lived in. For him, this summer is the harmony between his existence and an indifferent Universe.This harmony is his revolt.
Gaston says:
"Tranquil foliage that really is lived in, a tranquil gaze discovered in the humblest of eyes, are the artisans of immensity. These images make the world grow, and the summer too. At certain hours poetry gives out waves of
calm. From being imagined, calm becomes an emergence of being. It is like a value that dominates, in spite of minor states of being, in spite of a disturbed world."
Through this work, he presents before us a phenomenology of imagination. How the creative consciousness associates with a poetic image to give a specific reality which is a reverberation creating harmony within a being. How such poetic image originates. Gaston here investigates simple images of felicitous space and name the investigation as topophilia. He does so by picking up spaces and citing various authors and poets referring to such spaces/ images along with presenting to us his own exploration of them. True to the name, the language of this work in itself is poetic and flows lucidly through the reader’s creative conscious, hence, succeeding in bringing those reverberations which author aims at.
In the words of William Wordsworth, “We are less forlorn in a world which we meet with our imagination”.
The reveries of mind cumulate into creating those images which bring harmony in the existence. Harmony brings joy within the being. Camus’ invincible summer, in presence of Algerian Sun and Sea, spring forth due to the reveries his mind is captivated with. Reveries of the places of his childhood – the house he lived in. For him, this summer is the harmony between his existence and an indifferent Universe.This harmony is his revolt.
Gaston says:
"Tranquil foliage that really is lived in, a tranquil gaze discovered in the humblest of eyes, are the artisans of immensity. These images make the world grow, and the summer too. At certain hours poetry gives out waves of
calm. From being imagined, calm becomes an emergence of being. It is like a value that dominates, in spite of minor states of being, in spite of a disturbed world."
Through this work, he presents before us a phenomenology of imagination. How the creative consciousness associates with a poetic image to give a specific reality which is a reverberation creating harmony within a being. How such poetic image originates. Gaston here investigates simple images of felicitous space and name the investigation as topophilia. He does so by picking up spaces and citing various authors and poets referring to such spaces/ images along with presenting to us his own exploration of them. True to the name, the language of this work in itself is poetic and flows lucidly through the reader’s creative conscious, hence, succeeding in bringing those reverberations which author aims at.
September 28, 2010
“We build within ourselves stone
on stone a vast haunted castle.”
-Vincent Monteiro, Vers sur verre
”Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.”
-Bachelard
“A house that stands in my heart
My cathedral of silence
Every morning recaptured in dream
Every evening abandoned
A house covered with dawn
Open to the winds of my youth.”
-Jean LaRoche, Memoires d'ete
”...the unlimited solitude that makes a lifetime of each day, toward a communion with the universe, in a word, space, the invisible space that man can live in nevertheless, and which surrounds him with countless presences.”
-Rilke, Lettres
It is my inclination to compose this entire piece on Bachelard with citations from his book and the fragments of poems he collects; little needs to be said or can be said on the subject of intimate, poetic, personalized space that is not touched upon in his phenomenological study of the oneiric life, The Poetics of Space, and it is certainly beyond my capabilities to improve on such distilled, pure imaginative discourse. As other reviewers have noted, it is almost difficult to speak about where reading Bachelard leaves you once you have raised your eyes from the page and attempted again to view the world through the lens of your own perceptions after they have been filtered through his prism: when you walk away from this book you are not the person you were when you came to it.
It is not through shocks to the intellect or fireworks of mind-bending paradox that Bachelard affects you, but through encouraging you to look again and again, quietly, at the simplest interactions with the simplest of objects and places of your life, your past, and to see them afresh, to see how they have entered into your being and expanded their quiddity to impress themselves on all aspects of your psyche. Bachelard focuses on the intimate places of memories, habitations, our childhoods, and investigates how the images we retain from our most essential dwellings have played upon our daydreams and contributed to our sense of happiness and well-being. The Poetics of Space is essentially a study of happiness. In this way, it is akin to Proust, as it descends into dream-space, memory-space, and imaginative space-time to locate the unities that bring about a totality to our lives; in fact this was the ideal book to follow a reading of In Search of Lost Time, as both books find their center in the belief in the supremacy of the creative imagination, in the power of the image to retain and affirm all of existence, and the ceaseless pursuit of happiness in the raw material of our lived experiences.
Bachelard’s introduction elucidates his conception of the poetic image (“a sudden salience on the surface of the psyche”), and the importance of the novelty of the image, that it is something essentially without causality, without a personal historic precedent, yet which can be transferred from mind to mind and still reverberate. The idea of reverberation is of utmost importance to Bachelard, this idea that a unique image can bring new vitality to the intellect and the imagination, that a wholly original concept can react within a psyche like “a new property of the universe”. Here is the launching point of his entire thesis, that there is an ontology of the imagination that works outside the realms of psychology and psychoanalysis, that the poetic image is not given potency and validation through a referential history, that “the poet does not confer the past of his image upon me, and yet his image immediately takes root in me”. This enigmatic moment of joy, this shiver of recognition that sets atremble our entire being in the presence of the sublimely poetic, even if as yet not fully comprehended (that nameless feeling which is so familiar to lovers of literature and the arts) is the focal point of Bachelard’s exploration of space, the initiator and signifier of a personal resonance.
These initiators and signifiers are universally ordinary. Houses, doors, walls, windows, roofs, cellars, chests, drawers, locks, and in our more primitive, pre-memorial past, nests, shells, trees, forests... the objects we manipulate and interact with almost unconsciously, these are our intimates, our coevals in space-time, the symbolic extensions of our language and dreams. We exist in a corner of the world, within a house within a neighborhood, a construct of dimension and verticality and depth, of portals and walls, passages of ingress and egress, of windows that let in or deny light and air and space, walls that contract and expand with the impetus of our daydreams. We find ourselves inside or outside of our dwellings, we inhabit gardens or streets or rooms daily, and the almost imperceptible way in which we place our receptive selves, leave pieces of ourselves in these places, how they communicate and reverberate in response to our mental and physical presence and us reverberating and responding within them, these are the places in which the mythology of our lives is developed, here is where Bachelard hunts down the essence of our poetic existence. For what is more intimate than our thinking/dreaming being at rest in our own house or remembering the house we grew up in? What is more like probing one’s eternity than probing one’s childhood (thank you Mr. Nabokov)? When are we more expansive than when we are traversing our reveries safely in the nest of our room or stilling ourselves from the motion of our lives on a favorite patch of earth?
”As soon as we become motionless, we are elsewhere; we are dreaming in a world that is immense. Indeed, immensity is the movement of the motionless man.”
-pg. 184
So Bachelard maintains his points of reference in the world of literature, poetry and imaginative prose, products of contemplation and reflection, and seeks no external justification in the practicality of his arguments. If something exists in the realm of the imagination, it exists with no further need of validation. There is a reality beyond the positive, material world, that contains just as much vitality and energy as physical objects, just as much prescience of an actuality as an idea turned into a material thing. Words create solidity, images evoke a concreteness, there is a realness to every written thing, no matter how abstract, and the mind reaches toward comprehension of each potent image; it is in these realms that the work of art reigns, expressing our humanity in dynamic, personalized terms. The Poetics of Space is mainly concerned with the dialectic between these regions of the imagination and the places in which they are nurtured and developed.
”By means of poetic language, waves of newness flow over the surface of being. And language bears within itself the dialectics of open and closed. Through meaning it encloses, while through poetic expression, it opens up.”
-pg. 222
Among the many poets who Bachelard calls upon to compose his analysis, two of his favorite touchstones are Rilke and Baudelaire. Rilke he sees as embodying the poet of inhabited space, Baudelaire as the ultimate poet of “correspondences” between disparate things. A lengthy passage from The Poetics of Space dissects Baudelaire’s use of the word “vast”, and makes the claim that to Baudelaire “vast” is never an objective word, it is an all encompassing vocable of breath, forced into audible pronunciation in the lines of the poem, uncontainable, a signifier of “intimate immensity”.
”For Baudelaire, man’s poetic fate is to be the mirror of immensity; or even more exactly, immensity becomes conscious of itself, through man. Man for Baudelaire is a vast being”.
-pg. 196
“All important words, all the words marked for grandeur by a poet, are keys to the universe, to the dual universe of the Cosmos and the depths of the human spirit.”
-pg. 198
It is in the expressions of humanity that Bachelard seeks his resonances with the physical world. Language is the beginning of all things human, the starting point where truths emerge from silence, therefore anything expressed contains a kernel of truth, and a kernel of humanity. It is in response to silence that words, and therefore humanity, takes form. Silence is far more abundant than language, but even small amounts of language contain more than silence. This type of interchange between man and world is pursued by Bachelard through countless aspects of inhabiting the world, expanded and expounded into regions as diverse as hermetic huts, corners, the composition of shells and bird’s nests in the animal world, the “miniaturization” of fairy tales, the dialogue between inside and outside beings, immensity and diminution, the “warm” properties of curves and the “cold” properties of sharp angles, the “roundness of being”.
”The round cry of round being makes the sky round like a cupola”
-pg. 238
”To benefit by all the lessons of modern psychology and all that has been learned about man’s being through psychoanalysis, metaphysics should therefore be resolutely discursive. It should beware of the privileges of evidence that are the property of geometrical intuition. Sight says too many things at one time. Being does not see itself. Perhaps it listens to itself. It does not stand out, it is not bordered by nothingness: one is never sure of finding it, or of finding it solid, when one approaches a center of being. And if we want to determine man’s being, we are never sure of being closer to ourselves if we “withdraw” into ourselves, if we move toward the center of the spiral; for often it is in the heart of being that being is in errancy. Sometimes, it is in being outside itself that being tests consistencies. Sometimes, too, it is closed in, as it were, on the outside.”
-pg. 214-215
It is silence, rather, that obliges the poet to listen, and gives the dream greater intimacy. We hardly know where to situate this silence, whether in the vast world or in the immense past. But we do know that it comes from beyond a wind that dies down or a rain that grows gentle.”
-pg. 179
”Man himself is mute, and it is the image that speaks. For it is obvious that the image alone can keep pace with nature.”
-Boris Pasternak, quoted in Bachelard pg. 104
”In the realm of absolute imagination, we remain young very late in life. But we must lose our earthly Paradise in order to actually live in it, to experience it in the reality of its images, in the absolute sublimation that transcends all passion.”
-pg. 33
”When we are at an age to imagine, we cannot say how or why we imagine. Then, when we could say how we imagine, we cease to imagine. We should therefore dematurize ourselves.”
-pg. 236
What is taken away from a reading of The Poetics of Space is a heightened awareness of the dialogue one’s psyche maintains with its environment, how a being fluctuates when one is contained in familiar surroundings or when one is on an open plane, the vastness of the world spreading out around, the necessity (if happiness is a goal) to never let the values on which you construct your life deaden, to always keep them vulnerable to change and analysis, to keep them open to play, to re-imagining and restructuring. The human consciousness is if anything mutable, it changes willingy and unwillingly, it persistently interacts with the images it has hoarded over the years, it converses with its present surroundings and is in communication with the places it has inhabited in other times. We never leave the places we have dwelled. Memory and the unconscious assure that we deposit fragments of ourselves behind that intermittently send reports out from the oblivion of time; there is always something lingering of our past worlds that speaks to and helps us to construct our current one.
on stone a vast haunted castle.”
-Vincent Monteiro, Vers sur verre
”Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor. It has been lived in, not in its positivity, but with all the partiality of the imagination.”
-Bachelard
“A house that stands in my heart
My cathedral of silence
Every morning recaptured in dream
Every evening abandoned
A house covered with dawn
Open to the winds of my youth.”
-Jean LaRoche, Memoires d'ete
”...the unlimited solitude that makes a lifetime of each day, toward a communion with the universe, in a word, space, the invisible space that man can live in nevertheless, and which surrounds him with countless presences.”
-Rilke, Lettres
It is my inclination to compose this entire piece on Bachelard with citations from his book and the fragments of poems he collects; little needs to be said or can be said on the subject of intimate, poetic, personalized space that is not touched upon in his phenomenological study of the oneiric life, The Poetics of Space, and it is certainly beyond my capabilities to improve on such distilled, pure imaginative discourse. As other reviewers have noted, it is almost difficult to speak about where reading Bachelard leaves you once you have raised your eyes from the page and attempted again to view the world through the lens of your own perceptions after they have been filtered through his prism: when you walk away from this book you are not the person you were when you came to it.
It is not through shocks to the intellect or fireworks of mind-bending paradox that Bachelard affects you, but through encouraging you to look again and again, quietly, at the simplest interactions with the simplest of objects and places of your life, your past, and to see them afresh, to see how they have entered into your being and expanded their quiddity to impress themselves on all aspects of your psyche. Bachelard focuses on the intimate places of memories, habitations, our childhoods, and investigates how the images we retain from our most essential dwellings have played upon our daydreams and contributed to our sense of happiness and well-being. The Poetics of Space is essentially a study of happiness. In this way, it is akin to Proust, as it descends into dream-space, memory-space, and imaginative space-time to locate the unities that bring about a totality to our lives; in fact this was the ideal book to follow a reading of In Search of Lost Time, as both books find their center in the belief in the supremacy of the creative imagination, in the power of the image to retain and affirm all of existence, and the ceaseless pursuit of happiness in the raw material of our lived experiences.
Bachelard’s introduction elucidates his conception of the poetic image (“a sudden salience on the surface of the psyche”), and the importance of the novelty of the image, that it is something essentially without causality, without a personal historic precedent, yet which can be transferred from mind to mind and still reverberate. The idea of reverberation is of utmost importance to Bachelard, this idea that a unique image can bring new vitality to the intellect and the imagination, that a wholly original concept can react within a psyche like “a new property of the universe”. Here is the launching point of his entire thesis, that there is an ontology of the imagination that works outside the realms of psychology and psychoanalysis, that the poetic image is not given potency and validation through a referential history, that “the poet does not confer the past of his image upon me, and yet his image immediately takes root in me”. This enigmatic moment of joy, this shiver of recognition that sets atremble our entire being in the presence of the sublimely poetic, even if as yet not fully comprehended (that nameless feeling which is so familiar to lovers of literature and the arts) is the focal point of Bachelard’s exploration of space, the initiator and signifier of a personal resonance.
These initiators and signifiers are universally ordinary. Houses, doors, walls, windows, roofs, cellars, chests, drawers, locks, and in our more primitive, pre-memorial past, nests, shells, trees, forests... the objects we manipulate and interact with almost unconsciously, these are our intimates, our coevals in space-time, the symbolic extensions of our language and dreams. We exist in a corner of the world, within a house within a neighborhood, a construct of dimension and verticality and depth, of portals and walls, passages of ingress and egress, of windows that let in or deny light and air and space, walls that contract and expand with the impetus of our daydreams. We find ourselves inside or outside of our dwellings, we inhabit gardens or streets or rooms daily, and the almost imperceptible way in which we place our receptive selves, leave pieces of ourselves in these places, how they communicate and reverberate in response to our mental and physical presence and us reverberating and responding within them, these are the places in which the mythology of our lives is developed, here is where Bachelard hunts down the essence of our poetic existence. For what is more intimate than our thinking/dreaming being at rest in our own house or remembering the house we grew up in? What is more like probing one’s eternity than probing one’s childhood (thank you Mr. Nabokov)? When are we more expansive than when we are traversing our reveries safely in the nest of our room or stilling ourselves from the motion of our lives on a favorite patch of earth?
”As soon as we become motionless, we are elsewhere; we are dreaming in a world that is immense. Indeed, immensity is the movement of the motionless man.”
-pg. 184
So Bachelard maintains his points of reference in the world of literature, poetry and imaginative prose, products of contemplation and reflection, and seeks no external justification in the practicality of his arguments. If something exists in the realm of the imagination, it exists with no further need of validation. There is a reality beyond the positive, material world, that contains just as much vitality and energy as physical objects, just as much prescience of an actuality as an idea turned into a material thing. Words create solidity, images evoke a concreteness, there is a realness to every written thing, no matter how abstract, and the mind reaches toward comprehension of each potent image; it is in these realms that the work of art reigns, expressing our humanity in dynamic, personalized terms. The Poetics of Space is mainly concerned with the dialectic between these regions of the imagination and the places in which they are nurtured and developed.
”By means of poetic language, waves of newness flow over the surface of being. And language bears within itself the dialectics of open and closed. Through meaning it encloses, while through poetic expression, it opens up.”
-pg. 222
Among the many poets who Bachelard calls upon to compose his analysis, two of his favorite touchstones are Rilke and Baudelaire. Rilke he sees as embodying the poet of inhabited space, Baudelaire as the ultimate poet of “correspondences” between disparate things. A lengthy passage from The Poetics of Space dissects Baudelaire’s use of the word “vast”, and makes the claim that to Baudelaire “vast” is never an objective word, it is an all encompassing vocable of breath, forced into audible pronunciation in the lines of the poem, uncontainable, a signifier of “intimate immensity”.
”For Baudelaire, man’s poetic fate is to be the mirror of immensity; or even more exactly, immensity becomes conscious of itself, through man. Man for Baudelaire is a vast being”.
-pg. 196
“All important words, all the words marked for grandeur by a poet, are keys to the universe, to the dual universe of the Cosmos and the depths of the human spirit.”
-pg. 198
It is in the expressions of humanity that Bachelard seeks his resonances with the physical world. Language is the beginning of all things human, the starting point where truths emerge from silence, therefore anything expressed contains a kernel of truth, and a kernel of humanity. It is in response to silence that words, and therefore humanity, takes form. Silence is far more abundant than language, but even small amounts of language contain more than silence. This type of interchange between man and world is pursued by Bachelard through countless aspects of inhabiting the world, expanded and expounded into regions as diverse as hermetic huts, corners, the composition of shells and bird’s nests in the animal world, the “miniaturization” of fairy tales, the dialogue between inside and outside beings, immensity and diminution, the “warm” properties of curves and the “cold” properties of sharp angles, the “roundness of being”.
”The round cry of round being makes the sky round like a cupola”
-pg. 238
”To benefit by all the lessons of modern psychology and all that has been learned about man’s being through psychoanalysis, metaphysics should therefore be resolutely discursive. It should beware of the privileges of evidence that are the property of geometrical intuition. Sight says too many things at one time. Being does not see itself. Perhaps it listens to itself. It does not stand out, it is not bordered by nothingness: one is never sure of finding it, or of finding it solid, when one approaches a center of being. And if we want to determine man’s being, we are never sure of being closer to ourselves if we “withdraw” into ourselves, if we move toward the center of the spiral; for often it is in the heart of being that being is in errancy. Sometimes, it is in being outside itself that being tests consistencies. Sometimes, too, it is closed in, as it were, on the outside.”
-pg. 214-215
It is silence, rather, that obliges the poet to listen, and gives the dream greater intimacy. We hardly know where to situate this silence, whether in the vast world or in the immense past. But we do know that it comes from beyond a wind that dies down or a rain that grows gentle.”
-pg. 179
”Man himself is mute, and it is the image that speaks. For it is obvious that the image alone can keep pace with nature.”
-Boris Pasternak, quoted in Bachelard pg. 104
”In the realm of absolute imagination, we remain young very late in life. But we must lose our earthly Paradise in order to actually live in it, to experience it in the reality of its images, in the absolute sublimation that transcends all passion.”
-pg. 33
”When we are at an age to imagine, we cannot say how or why we imagine. Then, when we could say how we imagine, we cease to imagine. We should therefore dematurize ourselves.”
-pg. 236
What is taken away from a reading of The Poetics of Space is a heightened awareness of the dialogue one’s psyche maintains with its environment, how a being fluctuates when one is contained in familiar surroundings or when one is on an open plane, the vastness of the world spreading out around, the necessity (if happiness is a goal) to never let the values on which you construct your life deaden, to always keep them vulnerable to change and analysis, to keep them open to play, to re-imagining and restructuring. The human consciousness is if anything mutable, it changes willingy and unwillingly, it persistently interacts with the images it has hoarded over the years, it converses with its present surroundings and is in communication with the places it has inhabited in other times. We never leave the places we have dwelled. Memory and the unconscious assure that we deposit fragments of ourselves behind that intermittently send reports out from the oblivion of time; there is always something lingering of our past worlds that speaks to and helps us to construct our current one.
November 18, 2013
Bachelard offers nothing, and I mean nothing, new in terms of philosophical insight or logical exposition, in ‘Poetics’. Decidedly unoriginal in its portrayal of concepts, associations and representation, this book brings no new angle, no new vista on the dynamics of the house in all its possible permutations: nest, shell ,miniature (doll’s house), accessories included (wardrobe, chests, drawers, locked pendants, etc). Further, Bachelard ired me continuously with well meaning but frankly idiotic stances. I’m willing to forgive him the patronising attitudes towards the housewife and her pleasure in giving life to objects through polishing (pg 68). Yes, I rise above that. But when he attacks my beloved metaphor and relegates it to the compost heap because the only truth is ‘image’ whereas a metaphor is some sort of corrosive influence: I blanche. When he states that values alter facts I know this whole phenomenology business has gone not just straight to his head, but over it, and good. His cult idolisation of Bergson probably helps him along in this respect.
Clearly this is my personal phenomenological (heh heh) interpretation of this book, and others who have not come across the concept of a house/dwelling/physical space acquiring anthropomorphic features and functioning as an extension of, or a repository of, stream of consciousness, memory and image memes, might be tickled pink into this beginners bible on the subject.
But whilst Bachelard fails to blind with science, he sucks you in in other ways. The man is so genuine, full of joy de vivre, enthusiastic and unassuming on, lets face it, a topic : home, which in turns provokes a feel good factor, that one is arrested and stops to contemplate. Bachelard may not be saying anything new, but its how he says it that’s mesmerising: interweaving bits of poetry, art and showing a zest for living which is nonpareil, he breaks down my cynicism. Undertaking Proustian journeys down memory lane he evokes images of fairy tale cottages and feelings of security and happiness. Each line he writes is filled with the wonder of a man who stops to smell the flowers and rediscovers the meaning in life in that infinitely small gesture. How can I not be seduced?
Clearly this is my personal phenomenological (heh heh) interpretation of this book, and others who have not come across the concept of a house/dwelling/physical space acquiring anthropomorphic features and functioning as an extension of, or a repository of, stream of consciousness, memory and image memes, might be tickled pink into this beginners bible on the subject.
But whilst Bachelard fails to blind with science, he sucks you in in other ways. The man is so genuine, full of joy de vivre, enthusiastic and unassuming on, lets face it, a topic : home, which in turns provokes a feel good factor, that one is arrested and stops to contemplate. Bachelard may not be saying anything new, but its how he says it that’s mesmerising: interweaving bits of poetry, art and showing a zest for living which is nonpareil, he breaks down my cynicism. Undertaking Proustian journeys down memory lane he evokes images of fairy tale cottages and feelings of security and happiness. Each line he writes is filled with the wonder of a man who stops to smell the flowers and rediscovers the meaning in life in that infinitely small gesture. How can I not be seduced?
July 24, 2023
This book is a good choice for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the spaces we occupy. Bachelard effortlessly weaves together philosophy, literature, and psychology to unveil the profound impact that spaces have on the human psyche.
One of the most resonating passages from the book discusses the concept of the house as a repository of memories: "Memory aids the individual in the dense texture of dreams. It is an abundance of history that the soul loves and by which it is enriched.", Something I couldn't agree more.
What stood out to me was Bachelard's profound appreciation for the poetry found in small details, like doors: "A door that communicates freedom is a door that has been opened by a hand." This simple yet evocative insight brilliantly captures the essence of his exploration.
This is a book that demands contemplation and introspection. Bachelard's ability to reveal the hidden significance of our surroundings compels readers to reexamine their own lived experiences within their homes, gardens, and cherished places.
One of the most resonating passages from the book discusses the concept of the house as a repository of memories: "Memory aids the individual in the dense texture of dreams. It is an abundance of history that the soul loves and by which it is enriched.", Something I couldn't agree more.
What stood out to me was Bachelard's profound appreciation for the poetry found in small details, like doors: "A door that communicates freedom is a door that has been opened by a hand." This simple yet evocative insight brilliantly captures the essence of his exploration.
This is a book that demands contemplation and introspection. Bachelard's ability to reveal the hidden significance of our surroundings compels readers to reexamine their own lived experiences within their homes, gardens, and cherished places.
October 13, 2020
هرگز کتابی نخوانده بودم که بتواند تا این حد لذتهای درونیام را که بیهیچ نشانهی بیرونی، روحام را آرام میکنند، توضیح دهد و وصف کند. احساس میکنم تمام نقاط روحام از طریق متن باشلار درک شده و چیزی را خواندهام که همواره درونم اتفاق میافتاد اما نمیتوانستهام با این جزئیات در جریان کل آن فرایند قرار بگیرم. البته که هدف باشلار فقط شرح فرایند خیالپردازانهای نیست که بر تن خانه مینشیند. او با بررسی پدیدارشناسانهی تخیل در شعر شاعران و ارتباطش با نقاط مختلف خانه، میخواهد فضایی که در آن زندگی میکنیم را در مقابلمان واکاوی کند. دلم نمیخواست کتاب را تمام کنم. میخواستم این فضای همیشه آشنایی که باشلار به آن دعوتم کرده را تا ابد کش بدهم و چقدر شاعرانگی این فیلسوف مبهوتم کرد.
دیگر کشش غریبم به خانه و دلتنگیام وقتی که ازش دورم، برایم عجیب نیست. چون رابطهای بین تخیل کردن و خانه هست و آنطور که باشلار میگوید: «خانه پناهگاه رؤیاپردازی است. خانه پشتیبان رؤیاپرداز است». و بعد وارد خانه که میشوی به اتاقت پناه میبری چون؛ «اتاق خوشامدی به خیال است و خیال تعالی تمام احساسهاست».
دیگر کشش غریبم به خانه و دلتنگیام وقتی که ازش دورم، برایم عجیب نیست. چون رابطهای بین تخیل کردن و خانه هست و آنطور که باشلار میگوید: «خانه پناهگاه رؤیاپردازی است. خانه پشتیبان رؤیاپرداز است». و بعد وارد خانه که میشوی به اتاقت پناه میبری چون؛ «اتاق خوشامدی به خیال است و خیال تعالی تمام احساسهاست».
June 21, 2014
[W]e are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost.
This is not what I expected. The Poetics of Space is not some rigorous discussion of the concept of home or the distinction between inside and outside. This is a meditation. Bachelard prefers "daydream". As one reads, one takes shorthand from the philosopher's imagination. The text is steeped in whimsy and speculation. The citations refer to the poetic, not the philosophical. Heidegger is not mentioned. I suspect that is political.
Borrowing Bachelard's seminal point of contact, his Poetics remains half-open. The idea of the house and dwelling is only explored on the hoof; broader issues of the miniature and the vast are extended the lengthier chew. I loved the sections on nests and wardrobes, each dizzying with references to Rimbaud and insularity. I simply felt the wider thrust of the book abandoned the thesis of the Home.
This then is my ancestral forest. And all the rest is fiction.
This is not what I expected. The Poetics of Space is not some rigorous discussion of the concept of home or the distinction between inside and outside. This is a meditation. Bachelard prefers "daydream". As one reads, one takes shorthand from the philosopher's imagination. The text is steeped in whimsy and speculation. The citations refer to the poetic, not the philosophical. Heidegger is not mentioned. I suspect that is political.
Borrowing Bachelard's seminal point of contact, his Poetics remains half-open. The idea of the house and dwelling is only explored on the hoof; broader issues of the miniature and the vast are extended the lengthier chew. I loved the sections on nests and wardrobes, each dizzying with references to Rimbaud and insularity. I simply felt the wider thrust of the book abandoned the thesis of the Home.
This then is my ancestral forest. And all the rest is fiction.
September 27, 2020
گاستون باشلار، استاد دانشگاه سوربن فرانسه در این کتاب، همچنان که از نام آن پیداست، با استفاده از معیاری همهپذیر، یعنی خانه، سعی در ترسیم حدود و ابعاد تخیل دارد. البته تنها به عامل تخیل اکتفا نمیشود و او آثار مختلفی را از نویسندگان مختلف با این معیار بررسی میکند. سبک خاص نویسنده، باعث تفهیم هر چه بهتر مطالب میشود. به عنوان مثال، گلن سوالاتی را مطرح میسازد که در عین سادگی و ابداعی بودن، یافتن پاسخ برای آنها دشوار، و به همان اندازه نیز ضروری و کاربردی خواهد بود، او میپرسد چگونه یک نفر میتواند به فضای شعری که خارج از اتاق اوست، نظامی وسیعتر ببخشد؟
نویسنده در بررسی روانکاوانه خود و محیط و هنر و نقد در زمانی و همزمانی نیز به این سوالات و تعبیرات دست مییازد.
«وقتی که بیخوابی که یکی از ناخوشیهای فیلسوف است، با بیحوصلگی ناشی از شلوغی شهر توام میشود یا شلوغی اتومبیلها و کامیونهای دیروقت آشوب برپا میکند، من از شهرنشینی متنفر میشوم و آرامشم را با زنده کردن استعارههای اقیانوس باز مییابم.» (69)
نویسندۀ این کتاب، در حال نشان دادن احساسیست خودخانهانگارانه، نوعی ماتریالیسمی که با خود انسان در دیالکتیک شرکت میکند. یا به زبان خودمان، تشبیه مُضمری که در ژرفساخت خود، خانهایاست هندسی. این دیگراندیشی و خوددیگرپنداری در حیطه اشیا، منجر به کشف تفکر و حالات خاصی در احساس و ذهن میشود. به عنوان نمونه، باشلار این شعر از «رنه گازل» را مثال میزند:
خانهای که در قلب من جای گرفته،
نمازخانهای خاموش
هر سپیدهدم در رویا تبخیر میشود،
هر شامگاه باز پس مینشیند.
خانه با سحرگاه پوشیده میشود،
گشوده، بر وزش نسیمهای جوانی من (95)
این بهترین مثالیست که میتوان در توضیح استحالۀ فضا و رابطۀ انسان با فضا مطرح نمود.
در این اخت شدن با فضا و فضاسازی، مهمترین عنصری که پا به عرصه وجود میگذارد، «تخیل» است. شاعر وقتی از واقعیتها عبور میکند، به مرزهای شعر نزدیک میشود. ابتدا باید او در اتهام قرار بگیرد تا بتواند زمینهای مناسب برای تخیل خود فراهم کند. «شاعران اغلب ما را به جهان آواهای ناممکن فرا میخوانند، آنقدر ناممکن که در حقیقت نویسنده آنها ممکن است متهم به آفرینش خیالی شود که علاقهای برنمیانگیزد. آدمی میخندد و به راه خویش میرود. اما باز شاعر بیشتر وقتها شعر خویش را سبک نمیشمارد و سستی و حساسیتی خاص بر این خیالها حکومت میکند.» (225)
**
رضا براهنی در کتاب کیمیا و خاک اشاره ای به این کتاب داشته و گفته که یدالله رویایی در خلق جریان شعر حجم به این کتاب نظر داشته است. به احتمال بسیار زیاد نیز اینگونه بوده است و میتوان این کتاب را هدیهای خوب و بهوقت برای ادبیات ایران دانست.
99/07/07
نویسنده در بررسی روانکاوانه خود و محیط و هنر و نقد در زمانی و همزمانی نیز به این سوالات و تعبیرات دست مییازد.
«وقتی که بیخوابی که یکی از ناخوشیهای فیلسوف است، با بیحوصلگی ناشی از شلوغی شهر توام میشود یا شلوغی اتومبیلها و کامیونهای دیروقت آشوب برپا میکند، من از شهرنشینی متنفر میشوم و آرامشم را با زنده کردن استعارههای اقیانوس باز مییابم.» (69)
نویسندۀ این کتاب، در حال نشان دادن احساسیست خودخانهانگارانه، نوعی ماتریالیسمی که با خود انسان در دیالکتیک شرکت میکند. یا به زبان خودمان، تشبیه مُضمری که در ژرفساخت خود، خانهایاست هندسی. این دیگراندیشی و خوددیگرپنداری در حیطه اشیا، منجر به کشف تفکر و حالات خاصی در احساس و ذهن میشود. به عنوان نمونه، باشلار این شعر از «رنه گازل» را مثال میزند:
خانهای که در قلب من جای گرفته،
نمازخانهای خاموش
هر سپیدهدم در رویا تبخیر میشود،
هر شامگاه باز پس مینشیند.
خانه با سحرگاه پوشیده میشود،
گشوده، بر وزش نسیمهای جوانی من (95)
این بهترین مثالیست که میتوان در توضیح استحالۀ فضا و رابطۀ انسان با فضا مطرح نمود.
در این اخت شدن با فضا و فضاسازی، مهمترین عنصری که پا به عرصه وجود میگذارد، «تخیل» است. شاعر وقتی از واقعیتها عبور میکند، به مرزهای شعر نزدیک میشود. ابتدا باید او در اتهام قرار بگیرد تا بتواند زمینهای مناسب برای تخیل خود فراهم کند. «شاعران اغلب ما را به جهان آواهای ناممکن فرا میخوانند، آنقدر ناممکن که در حقیقت نویسنده آنها ممکن است متهم به آفرینش خیالی شود که علاقهای برنمیانگیزد. آدمی میخندد و به راه خویش میرود. اما باز شاعر بیشتر وقتها شعر خویش را سبک نمیشمارد و سستی و حساسیتی خاص بر این خیالها حکومت میکند.» (225)
**
رضا براهنی در کتاب کیمیا و خاک اشاره ای به این کتاب داشته و گفته که یدالله رویایی در خلق جریان شعر حجم به این کتاب نظر داشته است. به احتمال بسیار زیاد نیز اینگونه بوده است و میتوان این کتاب را هدیهای خوب و بهوقت برای ادبیات ایران دانست.
99/07/07
October 18, 2009
هل صحيحٌ ما أوردته الفلسفات الميتافيزيقية ، أن الإنسان ( مقذوفٌ في العالم ) ، مخذول ، متروك للتساؤل في عالمٍ صريح في عدائيته ؟ أم أن ما نسمّيه ( الوجود – هناك ) ليس كابوسياً كما يُصوّر لنا بقدر ما هو مشروع لانفتاح الداخل على الخارج ، لاحتواء العالم عوضاً عن التشظي فيه ؟
إن غاستون باشلار ، كما يتبدى جلياً من خلال الاقتباس السابق يعارض بقوّة ما تضخه الفلسفات الوجودية حول عدائية المكان ، و حتى انفصالية المكان ، حيثُ ” أنا المكان الذي أوجد فيه ” ( نويل آرنو ) ، و حيثُ ” المكان في لا مكان ، إنه في الداخل ، مثل العسل في الخلية ” ( جو بوسكوي ) .. و حيثُ نصوص شعرية كثيرة اعتمدها كوثائق لدراسته عبر اتباعه للمنهج الظاهراتي في كتابه ( جماليات المكان ) .
” إن الفلسفة التي تنطلق من لحظة ” إلقاء الإنسان في العالم ” هي فلسفة ثانوية ، إنها تقفز فوق الأوليات ، و تلك ، حين كان الوجود هنيئاً ، حين كان الإنسان منخرطاً في الهناءة ، و حين كانت الهناءة ترتبط بالوجود “
إنه كتابٌ جاء ليعيد صياغة العلاقة بين ما سماه فلاسفة الوعي ( الأنا و ما ليس الأنا ) حيث ينفي عدائية العالم من حقيقة بسيطة ومهمشة بمبالغة : أن الإنسان في بداية قدومه إلى العالم يكون محفوفاً ببيت ما ، بيت يرادف ما سماه ” الهناءة ” و من ثم ” الوجود ” حيث ” البيت هو ركننا في العالم، إنه كوننا الأول ” إذ يتفتح العالمُ بألفةٍ وتستحيل العلاقة بين الشخصي والكوني إلى شيءٍ حميم ، أو لنقل بأن جدلية الداخل والخارج ( الوجود والعدم ) تتبدى عبر سلسلة من الترددات ، التفاعلات ، التي تسيرُ جنباً إلى جنب نحو إزالة الفواصل العدائية بين الاثنين ، لأن الخارج والداخل كلاهما ألفة ، و ” العتبة شيءٌ مقدّس ” ( بورفيرس ) ، و كل شيءٌ ينطلق نحو نقيضه ، إنها ديناميكية الحبّ المقدّسة.
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January 20, 2024Odd bedfellows, I suppose, but in The Poetics of Space Gaston Bachelard marries philosophy to poetry, quoting all manner of poetic lines in support of his arguments. For the most part, the poetry he cites is not that great, but in his defense he could not just scan the poetry world for great lines, he had to scan it for pieces that support his philosophical feints in the following chaptered categories:
1. The House from Cellar to Garret (The Significance of the Hut)
2. House and Universe
3. Drawers, Chests, and Wardrobes
4. Shells
5. Corners
6. Miniature
7. Intimate Immensity
8. The Dialectics of Outside and Inside
9. The Phenomenology of Roundness
See what I mean? Space. Starting with the one we all go back to our daydreams -- our childhood homes. For lucky ones like me, it's a refuge of happiness, a place I go not only in DAYdreams but many nighttime ones as well. For others, who perhaps had unpleasant childhoods, the house of their dreams undergo reconstruction, post and beam, until the daydream is as they like it (or as it should have been).
Some quotes work out nicely. Rilke is often cited. Here's one I kind of liked:
"Oh night without objects. Oh window muffled on the outside, oh, doors carefully closed; customs that have come down from times long past, transmitted, verified, never entirely understood. Oh silence in the stairwell, silence in the adjoining rooms, silence up there, on the ceiling. Oh mother, oh one and only you, who faced all this silence, when I was a child."
Make your way through all the "oh's" and you see there's something to this, especially with the introduction of the mother who, only now, the speaker realizes saw the gentle childhood home in different ways.
Thoughtful, deep, slow trekking, but worthwhile. I'd stop for weird things and say, "Hmn. That's true," like when he talked about bird nests and how a tree with a nest was set apart because of it in our minds -- not just any tree, but a tree more special than all the others in our yard because it had been selected (blessed) by birds who constantly returned to it just like we return to childhood homes in our daydreams.
1. The House from Cellar to Garret (The Significance of the Hut)
2. House and Universe
3. Drawers, Chests, and Wardrobes
4. Shells
5. Corners
6. Miniature
7. Intimate Immensity
8. The Dialectics of Outside and Inside
9. The Phenomenology of Roundness
See what I mean? Space. Starting with the one we all go back to our daydreams -- our childhood homes. For lucky ones like me, it's a refuge of happiness, a place I go not only in DAYdreams but many nighttime ones as well. For others, who perhaps had unpleasant childhoods, the house of their dreams undergo reconstruction, post and beam, until the daydream is as they like it (or as it should have been).
Some quotes work out nicely. Rilke is often cited. Here's one I kind of liked:
"Oh night without objects. Oh window muffled on the outside, oh, doors carefully closed; customs that have come down from times long past, transmitted, verified, never entirely understood. Oh silence in the stairwell, silence in the adjoining rooms, silence up there, on the ceiling. Oh mother, oh one and only you, who faced all this silence, when I was a child."
Make your way through all the "oh's" and you see there's something to this, especially with the introduction of the mother who, only now, the speaker realizes saw the gentle childhood home in different ways.
Thoughtful, deep, slow trekking, but worthwhile. I'd stop for weird things and say, "Hmn. That's true," like when he talked about bird nests and how a tree with a nest was set apart because of it in our minds -- not just any tree, but a tree more special than all the others in our yard because it had been selected (blessed) by birds who constantly returned to it just like we return to childhood homes in our daydreams.
December 31, 2012
It's one of those great books with the rare ability to put into words everything I've always known. *
* Wittgenstein says "About what one can not speak, one must remain silent." Of course, as a philosopher, he was right. But what is unspeakable is also exactly where poets must venture forth a primitive utterance. Not to fill it up brashly with idle talk, but to consecrate it with voices which will increase the silence. This is why phenomenology as practiced by Bachelard, though a branch of philosophy, is more akin to poetry. He whispers to you everything you've always known, intimate knowledge that we all share wordlessly, yet he increases its mystery by speaking about it in a hush of clarity that does not defile the subject matter as psychologists, philosophers, or psychoanalysts do. It makes sense then
that he uses poets and writers as the basis for his study of intimate spaces. More specifically, the poet's image, which arises purely, in a realm before thought or language, springing forth without history or context or reason. The image is Bachelard's tool for studying the essence of safe places in which (and for which) daydreaming takes place, like the house, the drawer, and the shell. The phenomenologist, like the poet, is interested entirely in the essence of a thing, which often has only weak ties to the actual physical reality of a thing. Since I also live almost entirely in the imagination,
this book had the odd effect of feeling at once familiar and new. For once, someone does not miss the whole point! Bachelard does not analyze. What he does instead is set the tongues of these various images to ringing at harmonic frequencies, then invite you in to hear the resonances. It's like going to church. There is awe here, and play, and love that comes only after intense immersion. Many of my own poems are rooted in this same seeing/hearing, especially my In the Sea, There Are a Million Things in There poems and my chapbook A Reduction (yes, shameless self promotion!), both of which start with the inextricably linked worlds of large and small as a realm for daydreaming.
* Wittgenstein says "About what one can not speak, one must remain silent." Of course, as a philosopher, he was right. But what is unspeakable is also exactly where poets must venture forth a primitive utterance. Not to fill it up brashly with idle talk, but to consecrate it with voices which will increase the silence. This is why phenomenology as practiced by Bachelard, though a branch of philosophy, is more akin to poetry. He whispers to you everything you've always known, intimate knowledge that we all share wordlessly, yet he increases its mystery by speaking about it in a hush of clarity that does not defile the subject matter as psychologists, philosophers, or psychoanalysts do. It makes sense then
that he uses poets and writers as the basis for his study of intimate spaces. More specifically, the poet's image, which arises purely, in a realm before thought or language, springing forth without history or context or reason. The image is Bachelard's tool for studying the essence of safe places in which (and for which) daydreaming takes place, like the house, the drawer, and the shell. The phenomenologist, like the poet, is interested entirely in the essence of a thing, which often has only weak ties to the actual physical reality of a thing. Since I also live almost entirely in the imagination,
this book had the odd effect of feeling at once familiar and new. For once, someone does not miss the whole point! Bachelard does not analyze. What he does instead is set the tongues of these various images to ringing at harmonic frequencies, then invite you in to hear the resonances. It's like going to church. There is awe here, and play, and love that comes only after intense immersion. Many of my own poems are rooted in this same seeing/hearing, especially my In the Sea, There Are a Million Things in There poems and my chapbook A Reduction (yes, shameless self promotion!), both of which start with the inextricably linked worlds of large and small as a realm for daydreaming.
September 14, 2008
My hopes for an intelligent reading of intimate and public spaces were squashed by Bachelard's constant quoting of Rilke and endless pages about snails in their shells. The constant comparisons between psychology, psychoanalysis and phenomenology became tedious as soon as I realized phenomenology would always win. I know this is a classic, but it read like a drunk man monopolizing conversation at dinner.
December 24, 2013
" جماليات المكان "
للفيلسوف الفرنسي / غاستون باشلار
ترجمة / غالب هلسا
عندما يخرج رجل فلسفة العلوم من جلده ليوقظ عالم تغلب عليه سباته و نسي أن كل المادية التي يتعاطى معها ( بحكم اعتياده عليها ) لازالت تحمل بُعد فني غامض يحتاج لفلسفة مُلحّة تبرز فنيته و التي تُغني ماديته بدورها ، هذا البُعد - المادي - موجود -فينا- لكن توقف نموه بعد الدهشة الأولى التي لازمتنا حين التعرف عليه والاحتكاك به أول مرة، باشلار بعينه الناقدة و ثنائية التفقه الشعري و نزعة التفسير الفلسفية المحايدة يدلنا على سبب تغيير توجهه الفلسفي العلمي نحو الخيالي عبر كتابه " دراسة التحليل النفسي للنار " الذي انطلق به نحو أتون الخيال .. فلك أن تتخيل الآن كم من البسالة يحتاج باشلار هنا للخروج نحو الخيال المحض من الواقع البحت دون سحب بساط الأهمية من تحته .. إي رؤية إستثنائية و بصيرة وإدراك ( حسي و حدسي )كان يملكه هذا الفيلسوف .
" أن الميزة الوحيدة اللازمة لتصبح فيلسوفاً هي أن تندهش." جوستاين غاردر ، عالم صوفي
" ولكن قبل ان يصبح الطفل قادراً على التكلم بشكل صحيح – وقبل أن يتعلم التفكير بطريقة فلسفية – يكون الكون أصبح عادة." جوستاين غاردر ، عالم صوفي
قد تكون دهشة من اخترع الهاتف / واحدة / و لكن دهشتي ودهشتك ودهشة آلاف البشر حين نجري أول مكالمة تصلنا بعالم لا مرئيته لا تنفي واقعيته التي نتجاوزها لننطلق في عالم خيالي يقوم على واقع المادة ، تلك الدهشات تستحق التوقف ، وهي بادئ ذي بدء المركب من ( الخوف والدهشة ) لخوض غمار أي تجربة جديدة .
لا الب��ث الفلسفي العلمي القائم على أساس ومبدأ فلسفي متعارف عليه ولا التأمل الفلسفي سيسعفنا للتوصل لفلسفة الشعر و الفن ففلسفتهم الانطولوجية في جوهرها كالقصيدة و الصورة الشعرية لتنشق من فضاء القصيدة و تفرز هويتها الخاصة المستخلصة من طزاجتها التي لا تخضع لسببية تحتاج فضاء منكوفسكي تطفو فيه و يتسيد/ زمكانه و فعلنا / قوام الصورة الشعرية الجديدة ، صورتنا الشعرية ليست رنين قصيدة ما بقدر ماهي ترجيع ذاتها وتردد إبداع لاوعيها الخاص .
" الشعراء يتحدثون على عتبة الوجود" باشلار
يقصد باشلار أنهم هم الذين يستشعرون قدسية الوجود ويحترمون مجرد التوغل للوجود ويشعلونه ليحصلوا على ذاتهم الخاصة إن صح التعبير .
" الشاعر لا يمنحني ماضي صورته ولكن هذه الصورة تتجذر في داخلي "باشلار
" الشعر هو ظاهراتية الروح أكثر من كونه ظاهراتية العقل " باشلار
" الشعراء والرسامون ظاهراتيون بالفطرة " فان دن بيرغ
باشلار يقودنا بتشجيعه لفعل القراءة لكل الشعرية في الموجودات و جماليتها ويعرفنا على مختلف أنواع القراء ويحدد سبب اختلافهم و افضليتهم ، فهناك علماء النفس و محللون نفسيون و ناقد وقارئ عادي وقارئ ظاهراتي .
و يحدثنا عن اختلاف تمحور الظاهراتية حول كل من الفن والشعر ، فالفن من الفنون التي تموه لنا إكتفائها الذاتي وتنطلق في فضاء جمالي أرحب تخالف فيه توقعنا وهو فضاء ظاهراتي هين للفهم مقارنة بالشعر الذي يحكمه نسيان المعرفة بقدر متساوٍ مع المعرفة ( النسيان في الشعر حالة أصلية ) قليلة هي الصور الشعرية التي تتحرر من لاوعينا فور بزوغها فأكثره ننساه قبل أن نترجمه ورقياً .
فلسفة الفن التي تبناها الظاهراتي باشلار تعتمد على إبراز قيمة المكانية الجمالية لإن من يفتقد المكانية يفتقد خصوصيته و أصالته ف مكانية إي نص شعري أو عمل فني هي قوميته ومن منا لا يرغب أن يحافظ على قوميته ؟
ظاهراتية باشلار هذه تطوير لظاهراتية " الفيلسوف إدموند هوسرل " التقليدية التي تكتفي بالموضوع كخيال شكلي منحصر في الهندسة الخارجية لفكرة الموضوع ( الوعي ) و يختلف بهذا عن ظاهرية باشلار ، فظاهراتية باشلار تتجاوز الفكرة لتعايش خيالها المادي البدائي الوجود لتكوين تجربة وعي خلاق التي يتغافلها إي وعي ساذج ، بدائية الخيال المادي يتحكم بها الخوف ( القوقعة مثلاً شكلها الهندسي يحكمها خارجيًا فهو متقن صنعته الطبيعة بشكل ( رغم تنوعه لا يقبل الجدل في هندسته / تحرّياً للدقة ) و هنا قد يكتفي بهندسة القوقعة المشاهد و في هذا المثال تتجلى فلسفة هوسرل .. فالخارج هذا ككل المخرجات لا يزال يتجادل مع الداخل .. فلو فكرنا أن الرخويات داخل القوقعة هي التي تفرز قوقعتها بهناءة و حماية المأوى ك( فلسفة أولية ) ستكون مرارة الخوف الذي يكتنفها من الخارج الكوني ( فلسفة ثانوية ) باشلار هنا يركز على الفلسفة الوجودية الأولية ب ( إيجابية مأوى المخلوق الحميمية ) معترضًا على فكرة الوجودية المتشائمة التي تقول بإننا / نلقى في الوجود منفيين ، في عالم معادٍ .. والمعاد هنا مشتق من العدائية و معاد كمفهوم مستهلك لا يجدر بنا استهلال وجودنا به .. ظاهراتية باشلار تجعل الإنسان ميدان تحليل المادة وليس العكس ف القيم الجمالية التي بمقدور الإنسان تزويد الحياة بها ترقى على كل المواد بخيالها فهو نمط تراتبي تخضع لها قيمة المواد متغاضية عن إثبات و نفي وجودها لتصل لماهيتها متجاوزة المواد لتكون مستقلة بذاتها ك ( قيم جمالية ) فلسفية للفنون .
الإنسان بشاعرية مجساته الفكرية يتجاوز ( موقف الموضوع ) بكامل وعيه ليتعايش مع الخيال الذي تستدرجه له قيمة الموضوع / هنا هو يسحق حدود الأنا و اللا أنا / ف الخيال الذي يهدف له باشلار ك حلم اليقظة ليس لا وعي ! بل هو إجتماع و مزاوجة الوعي واللا وعي << كمثال تقريبي أتمنى أن يوصل استنتاجي بدقة << يخلق الله عزّ و جل الأرواح في حالة لا وعي و يسترجعها حين ختام أجلها من حالة اللاوعي أيضًا ك روح ، هنا انحصر الجسد ك ( تطبيق وحيد) لحالة الوعي ( وجود الوعي هنا كروح وجسد هو وعي ساذج في أبسط حالاته ) الكون حولنا مملؤ بالمواد " رفيقات ريلكه في الوجود " حين نكتفي بالقراءة التقليدية لهندسة المواد الخارجية كظاهرة تستحق التأمل فنحن ظاهراتيين تقليدين بينما تجاوز القراءة و التعمق فيها ( مرحلة تعليق القراءة الذي هو بمثابة نفق الخيال المتداخل مع إي قراءة ) يجعل وعينا الساذج وعي حالم و خلّاق يقظ ومنتبه للقيم الجمالية على حسب قوة مخيلتنا التي لا يقوى الوعي على قمعها وتحديد أطرها ، في مرحلة وعينا بمساعدة المرور بحالة تعليق القراءة فقط نحن نزاوج بين وعينا ولا وعينا ( فاصل إلهامي ) وذلك ما ليس بمقدور الجميع عمله إلا القلة ممن نسميهم بالشعراءهم العمال دون أزاميلهم المادية و مهمتهم الشعرية معايشة الصور الشعرية وتجديدها لبناء صورة شعرية منعزلة شخصية تحمل جيناتنا فنحن نملكها ولربما نتفوق على القصيدة نفسها التي انبثقت منها الصورة الشعرية / السؤال هو هل حالة الإلهام اللاوعي المستحدثة هذه مستقلة بذاتها عن اللاوعي الروحي القديم الذي سبق اندماجنا مع الجسد ..كما هي منفصلة نسبياً عن وعي الجسد ؟ هل يعقل أن الشاعربإلهامه و بالتسامي على وعيه الآني يكون مقتبسًا من لاوعيه كروح تائهة كانت تنتظر جسدًا << ذلك يقودني للتحري و التفكير عن المعنى المنطقي للإلهام وهل يندرج الإلهام تحت طائفة التلقين و هل الإنسان في القدر الذي رسمه الله له لا يعدو كونه فاصل إلهامي رباني يقوم بفواصل إلهامية صغرى؟ بعيدًا عن سطحية قضية الخالد والفان فهناك قضية أكثر عمقا وتمركزها صلب الموضوع بالنسبة لي وهي قضية البصيرة بسرياليتها ، قد يكون ضوء البصيرة الداخلية لا يقلد ولا يحاكي و لايتماهي مع ما حوله كما يشير باشلار ولكن تساميه يشق عصا الطاعة على المألوف.. تساميه في حد ذاته لغز كوني ! ( لم أجد جواب شافٍ في الكتاب الذي خلقت عبثيته داخلي الكثير من الأسئلة .
شوبنهاور " العالم هو خيالي أنا "
" البيت هو ركننا في هذا العالم ، هو كوننا الأول " ركن البيت المأهول هو الداخل الأمومي الحميم و مهد الألفة له ألوانه و أصواته المحايدة و هو يحكمنا باستدارته حولنا و هو يقبع بكُليته بمقابل كون فسيح أبوي مستدير حول البيت المستدير حولنا .. فكيف لنا أن نتهم مثل هذا الكون بالعدائية !
هناك مقاومة غامضة بين الداخل والخارج البيت الحقيقي والكون و إتهامنا للكون بالتشبع بالعداء ماهو إلا ناتج جهلنا به كالكابوس دومًا عدائيته متوقعة ومؤجلة ، نحن فقط حين ندرك ذات الشيء و حقيقته باسترخاء بمقدورنا التلفت حولنا لملاحظة الكون بطريقة حيواننا البدائي الكامن خلف كل تطورنا و بردود أفعاله نخاف ونجفل ونتأقلم ونتأمل .
الهناءة في الركن من البيت كمفهوم هي هناءة تفصل الوجود عن العدم فهي في أصلها كائن وهمي و هي تأتي من كونها الحصن و الحماية والسلام فيه نجد متعة وجودنا و تنضج انفعالاتنا ولا يشترط علينا أن نمارس - السعادة - في هدوء هذا الركن فهي مجرد إجابة تبسيطية لمفهوم الهناءة !
فنحن ربما نمارس عبادتنا أو تأملنا أو حتى التباكي على فشلنا أو ضجرنا- فحسب - كما كان دوما يفعل وحين تسأله والدته : مالذي يبكي دوما ؟ يجيبها من ركنه : دوما يبكي لأن لدوما دموعًا.
الصورة الشعرية في بدائيتها هي ككل الصور
ساكنة و لكنها بالمقابل يجب أن تدفع الأفعال فينا إلى الحركة و إلا كنا عبيد سكونها ، فنحن ندفعها بقراءة متناغمة منا للحركة والتضخيم فنمنحها مسميات تأكيدًا على خصوصيتها لتغدو كائنًا طليق ينتابه المرح الكوني يقتنص صوره المرتجلة الخاصة دون الاستعانة بكم المعرفة السابقة التي ستجرجر نفسها في أذياله بل بإلحاحية دهشتها المباغتة و المتوثبة بعيداً عن أي تطور ثقافي ، إذا فالواقع يتضخم في الخيال فكون الغابة الفسيح لا يمكن تخيل إيجابيته دون سلبيته فهو متضارب في الخيال خصب و مرعب ، واقع الغابة ناطق مستقل في / فيلم ما / ومتناهي الكبر لايمكن أن يعطنا انطباع الغابة خلفية المزورة في الاستديو مثلاً ، هذا يفسد حدة الذهنية و يقتل المخيلة !
لويناردو دافنشي حين ينصح الرسامين الذين فقدوا الإلهام بتأمل شق في جدار هو يدرك أن قوة المخيلة تغالط المتناهي في الصغر و المتناهي في الكبر عن حدودهما الفيزيائية وتداخلهما الواقعي و الأثيري هي تطالب بهناءة الانخراط في كونهما ليس إلا .
أحلام اليقظة التي تعبر نحو وجودها من خلال وجودنا تبقى حتى وإن تلاشينا وهي لا تحتاج لشروحات أكاديمية و نمط منطقي وقد تكون مخيفة لمن يحاول التفسير و التعاطي مع إستثنائيتها فتحيلهم مشقة تحليلهم النفسي للتراجع لشخص الحالم والتغاضي عن الحلم ذاته ، هؤلاءيسميهم باشلار بمن " يفسرون الزهرة بالسماد " قد يساء تفسير أحلام الكثير من الشعراء و المفكرين و غيرهم ، يجب تجاوز الموقف ومعايشة مواقف الموقف .
"الكتابة مثل الشعوذة : لايكفي إخراج أرنب من القبعة ، بل يجب عمل ذلك بأناقة تامة و طريقة ممتعة " إيزابيل الليندي
غالب هلسا الأديب والمترجم أضاف الكثير لثنايا هذا الكتاب فهو كباشلار يؤمن أن المكانية قومية ويأمل أن تستقل المكانية العربية في فضاء الأعمال الأدبية بذاتها وتحدد قوميتها من خلال التركيز على جمالية المكانية العربية التي تندثر من خيالنا حالما تبعد عن الواقع كجمالية الجامع والمئذنة .
عشرة فصول مثيرة وصعبة التلقي قادرة على تشكيك بقدرتك الحكمية و قطع أي مدد للوعي ستحاول الاستغاثة بها ، فحين تكون في بحر فلسفة باشلار و أمواجه العاتية تتلاطم بك يجدر بك الاستغاثة ف / فُلكك / مثقوب وهالك لا محالة .
الفصول:
١- البيت من القبو للعلية ( دلالة الكوخ )
٢- البيت والكون
٣- الأدراج و الصناديق و خزائن لملابس
٤- الإعشاش
٥- القواقع
٦- الأركان
٧- المتناهي في الصغر
٨- ألفة المتناهي في الكبر
٩- جدل الداخل والخارج
١٠ - ظاهراتية الإستدارة
كتاب وددت قرائته مسبقاً ..!..
"الإنسان وجود نصف مفتوح "
باشلار
September 14, 2022
Review, Second Read (September 2022)
Even dreamier the second time around! I feel grateful for the strange beauty of this book. Bachelard has changed how I think about my home, how I care for it and transform it.
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Review, First Read (September 2014)
I have been waiting for years to read this little book. Finally, after acknowledging that my public library was probably never going to stock it, I bought a battered old copy online. In this charming and surprisingly readable text, the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard talks about the intersection between poetry, imagination, and buildings — and does it in such a way that makes you want to constantly scope your surroundings for hidden meaning. He draws inspiration from nature, dreams, Rilke, Baudelaire, a great deal of less well-known French literature, smatterings of Thoreau, and his own experience. (As an aside, I wonder if Wes Anderson has read this book; I think he would find it very meaningful, with his clear love for portraying space, color, and form, the dollhouse-like glimpses into buildings, etc. Bachelard’s chapter on miniatures especially made me think of him and his films.)
I am often intimidated by philosophy, but here Bachelard fashions it into a welcoming arena. Nothing is too minor or mundane for him. As he says, “I am moreover convinced that the human psyche contains nothing that is insignificant.” Images, after all, are simple; we experience them every second and no weighty scholarship can improve their reception. Bachelard is concerned with this topic, how the imagination processes space and transfers it to memory, to art, to awareness.
It’s a beautiful book, and upon finishing it, I wish I had read it more slowly.
Even dreamier the second time around! I feel grateful for the strange beauty of this book. Bachelard has changed how I think about my home, how I care for it and transform it.
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Review, First Read (September 2014)
“It is on the plane of the daydream and not on that of facts that childhood remains alive and poetically useful within us. Throughout this permanent childhood, we maintain the poetry of the past. To inhabit oneirically the house we were born in means more than to inhabit it in memory; it means living in this house that is gone, the way we used to dream in it.”
I have been waiting for years to read this little book. Finally, after acknowledging that my public library was probably never going to stock it, I bought a battered old copy online. In this charming and surprisingly readable text, the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard talks about the intersection between poetry, imagination, and buildings — and does it in such a way that makes you want to constantly scope your surroundings for hidden meaning. He draws inspiration from nature, dreams, Rilke, Baudelaire, a great deal of less well-known French literature, smatterings of Thoreau, and his own experience. (As an aside, I wonder if Wes Anderson has read this book; I think he would find it very meaningful, with his clear love for portraying space, color, and form, the dollhouse-like glimpses into buildings, etc. Bachelard’s chapter on miniatures especially made me think of him and his films.)
I am often intimidated by philosophy, but here Bachelard fashions it into a welcoming arena. Nothing is too minor or mundane for him. As he says, “I am moreover convinced that the human psyche contains nothing that is insignificant.” Images, after all, are simple; we experience them every second and no weighty scholarship can improve their reception. Bachelard is concerned with this topic, how the imagination processes space and transfers it to memory, to art, to awareness.
It’s a beautiful book, and upon finishing it, I wish I had read it more slowly.
“All memory has to be reimagined. For we have in our memories micro-films that can only be read if they are lighted by the bright light of the imagination.”
March 30, 2012
It just goes to show that the transitive property of literary taste isn't very reliable. Michael Pollan liked this book; I like Michael Pollan's books; ergo, I'd like this book. Nope.
It wasn't Bachelard's preoccupation with psychoanalysis, although that hasn't aged very well -- the nattering on about psychoanalytical approaches to phenomenology sounded silly and smelled moldy, and was about as engaging as reading about phrenological approaches (actually, that might have been more interesting). Every book reflects the intellectual fashions of the time, so I was willing to give him a pass on that.
It wasn't even the tossed words salads he threw together on every page. There were enough bits of carrot and chunks of tomato among all the lettuce and parsley to keep me going, albeit in fits and jerks. I liked his discussion of the experience of being drawn into a book or poem, of making it your own; it gave me hope for more.
No, what finally turned me off was the way he blithely extrapolated from his experience growing up in early twentieth-century provincial France to discover profound truths about universal, essential human nature. Almost none of his arguments, none of his conclusions, had any weight with me, since they were all built on assumptions about how we experience space as children that had nothing to do with my own experience, nor the experience of anyone else I knew. After about four chapters, I could no longer see any point continuing on -- I had winnowed out everything there was for me to get from the book, and it wasn't much.
He does have a style that I supposed could be appreciated on purely aesthetic grounds, but serious engagement with psychoanalytical theory takes the joy out of that kind of reading. Mark Leyner did that sort of thing better.
It wasn't Bachelard's preoccupation with psychoanalysis, although that hasn't aged very well -- the nattering on about psychoanalytical approaches to phenomenology sounded silly and smelled moldy, and was about as engaging as reading about phrenological approaches (actually, that might have been more interesting). Every book reflects the intellectual fashions of the time, so I was willing to give him a pass on that.
It wasn't even the tossed words salads he threw together on every page. There were enough bits of carrot and chunks of tomato among all the lettuce and parsley to keep me going, albeit in fits and jerks. I liked his discussion of the experience of being drawn into a book or poem, of making it your own; it gave me hope for more.
No, what finally turned me off was the way he blithely extrapolated from his experience growing up in early twentieth-century provincial France to discover profound truths about universal, essential human nature. Almost none of his arguments, none of his conclusions, had any weight with me, since they were all built on assumptions about how we experience space as children that had nothing to do with my own experience, nor the experience of anyone else I knew. After about four chapters, I could no longer see any point continuing on -- I had winnowed out everything there was for me to get from the book, and it wasn't much.
He does have a style that I supposed could be appreciated on purely aesthetic grounds, but serious engagement with psychoanalytical theory takes the joy out of that kind of reading. Mark Leyner did that sort of thing better.
November 24, 2007
I can understand why so many people consider The Poetics of Space to be such an important book, but I found it rather uneven. The most interesting section, far and away, is the introduction. Bachelard begins the book by laying out his theory of the poetic image. Unlike metaphor, which is merely an intellectual comparison, the true poetic image causes a deep resonance in the reader. Upon glancing a poetic image for the home, for example, all of the homes of the reader's past well up in his imagination. The poetic image makes reading active - experiencing poetry is the mapping of your own memories onto the poet's text. As such, Bachelard's favorite word in the book is "daydreaming" - the course that your mind is set on after reading a particularly resonant image.
His analysis of the poetic image is unique and, I think, quite beautiful. The rest of the book is an application of this theory to various poetic images - mostly relating, in some way, to the home. While some of his analyses are compelling, his philosophy is heavily grounded in psychoanalysis. As such, he implicitly argues for the universality of image responses - that these poetic images have certain universal resonances. Given the diversity of human experience, particularly in the 20th and 21st century, I just don't buy it. His evidence is various extracts from poetry in which his images seem to be functioning in the same way - but it strikes me that diligent research could probably turn up any number of counter-examples. I'll accept that what he explores is what the images could be, but I won't go any farther than that.
The vast majority of the book is spent in this image analysis, and is pretty hit and miss. The introduction is more than worth reading, but only those who obsessively think about the space of the home should read any further.
His analysis of the poetic image is unique and, I think, quite beautiful. The rest of the book is an application of this theory to various poetic images - mostly relating, in some way, to the home. While some of his analyses are compelling, his philosophy is heavily grounded in psychoanalysis. As such, he implicitly argues for the universality of image responses - that these poetic images have certain universal resonances. Given the diversity of human experience, particularly in the 20th and 21st century, I just don't buy it. His evidence is various extracts from poetry in which his images seem to be functioning in the same way - but it strikes me that diligent research could probably turn up any number of counter-examples. I'll accept that what he explores is what the images could be, but I won't go any farther than that.
The vast majority of the book is spent in this image analysis, and is pretty hit and miss. The introduction is more than worth reading, but only those who obsessively think about the space of the home should read any further.
June 3, 2018
باشلار خانه را استعاره ای میخواند از «خود» با تمامی زوایا وحاشیه¬هایش. خانه گریزگاه رویاپرداز است و به او اجازه میدهد در آرامش به تخیلات خود شکل دهد. او در تجزیه و تحلیل پدیدارشناسی فضا با اشاره به خصوصیات فیزیکی ِ بنا میکوشد اجزای یک خانه از زیرزمین تا اتاق زیرشیروانی را منطبق بر الگوی ضمیر انسان تفسیر کند. بدین ترتیب خانه هم پرورده و هم زادگاه خیالات اوست. به قول بارت معماری هم رویاست هم عملکرد هم بیان یک آرمان و هم وسیله ی راحتی. خانه در تعبیر رویا نماد «خود» است. خودی زمانمند برآمده از گذشته و پیش رونده به آینده.
پیکره ی اصلی مطالعات باشلار شعر است زیرا باشلار ناب ترین تصاویر را در اشعار اصیل شاعران و در نظام کلامی جستجو میکند و نسبت به دیگر هنرها آشنایی کمتری دارد. باشلار بیش از اینکه بر هر هنری تاکید کند بر خودِ تخیل تاکید میکند و دستاورد پژوهشهای خود را به دیگرهنرها قابل تعمیم میداند زیرا همه ی اینها داری سرشتی واحدند البته باشلار نسبت به نقاشی بی توجه نبوده است. مثلا در فصل پایانی که میخواهد به پدیدارشناسی ِ گردی بپردازد در کنار یاسپرس ِ فیلسوف و لافونتن ِ شاعر ونگوگ نقاش را هم قرار می¬دهد.
پدیدار شناسی تخیل موضوع اصلی مطالعات پدیدارشناسانه ی باشلار محسوب میشود. این موضوع مورد توجه کسان دیگر مثل سارتر هم بوده. اما نگارش باشلار به گونه ای دیگر است. پدیدارشناسی برای باشلار بیش از هر چیز یک روش تحقیقاتی است که این امکان را برای باشلار فراهم می آورد تا بتواند از پیشداوریهایی که صدها سال بر فلسفه و فرهنگ غربی سیطره داشته و موجب حذف تخیل ازصحنه ی زندگی شدند رهایی یابد
پیکره ی اصلی مطالعات باشلار شعر است زیرا باشلار ناب ترین تصاویر را در اشعار اصیل شاعران و در نظام کلامی جستجو میکند و نسبت به دیگر هنرها آشنایی کمتری دارد. باشلار بیش از اینکه بر هر هنری تاکید کند بر خودِ تخیل تاکید میکند و دستاورد پژوهشهای خود را به دیگرهنرها قابل تعمیم میداند زیرا همه ی اینها داری سرشتی واحدند البته باشلار نسبت به نقاشی بی توجه نبوده است. مثلا در فصل پایانی که میخواهد به پدیدارشناسی ِ گردی بپردازد در کنار یاسپرس ِ فیلسوف و لافونتن ِ شاعر ونگوگ نقاش را هم قرار می¬دهد.
پدیدار شناسی تخیل موضوع اصلی مطالعات پدیدارشناسانه ی باشلار محسوب میشود. این موضوع مورد توجه کسان دیگر مثل سارتر هم بوده. اما نگارش باشلار به گونه ای دیگر است. پدیدارشناسی برای باشلار بیش از هر چیز یک روش تحقیقاتی است که این امکان را برای باشلار فراهم می آورد تا بتواند از پیشداوریهایی که صدها سال بر فلسفه و فرهنگ غربی سیطره داشته و موجب حذف تخیل ازصحنه ی زندگی شدند رهایی یابد
January 30, 2013
إن كنت سأتحدّث عن هذا الكتاب، عليّ أولاً: أن أقوم بعدَّ المرّات التي انتشيت فيها. عليّ هذا، قسرًا. كان أوّل كتاب مع باشلار. إذ إني لم أكنّ أعرف عنه مسبقًا إلاّ بضع اقتباسات، والتي كنتُ استحسنها في موضعها ولم أبادر ولو لمرّة، بالتعرّف إليه، إلاّ عندما ذكره أحد الرفاق "أقول هذا: بامتنان بالغ".
كانت البداية مبهمة، لأنّه يحتاج إلى قليلاً من الجهد حتّى تستطيع استيعاب ما يحاول قوله، لكن هذا في البداية فقط، مع الفصول يتماهى هذا الشعور! ويبدأ الاستمتاع عندما يتخلل بفلسفته إلى كلّ رواية، قصيدة، رسالة ويوميّات. قلت مرّة: بأن قراءتي لن تكون مثل ما كانت عليه بعد أن قرأت " جماليات المكان " وحدث هذا فعلاً. باشلار بجانب كلّ الفلسفة التي يرمي بها إليّك يهبك نظرة أخرى اتجاه الأشياء، وكما يقولها ريلكه: رفيقاتنا في الوجود، ويهب الحياة حياة!
كانت البداية مبهمة، لأنّه يحتاج إلى قليلاً من الجهد حتّى تستطيع استيعاب ما يحاول قوله، لكن هذا في البداية فقط، مع الفصول يتماهى هذا الشعور! ويبدأ الاستمتاع عندما يتخلل بفلسفته إلى كلّ رواية، قصيدة، رسالة ويوميّات. قلت مرّة: بأن قراءتي لن تكون مثل ما كانت عليه بعد أن قرأت " جماليات المكان " وحدث هذا فعلاً. باشلار بجانب كلّ الفلسفة التي يرمي بها إليّك يهبك نظرة أخرى اتجاه الأشياء، وكما يقولها ريلكه: رفيقاتنا في الوجود، ويهب الحياة حياة!
December 18, 2013
مع أول كتاب أقرأه لباشلار، أجد نفسي في عالم قرائي فلسفي فكريّ جديد، أتعرف عليه للمرة الأولى ويجذبني إليه، وإن استعصى عليّ إدراك كل أركانه ومحتوياته...وأبحث عن مزيد من كتبه ومقولاته وأفكاره وآرائه...وأقرأ أكثر عن الظاهراتيّة ومفهومها عند باشلار، وكيف أسقطها على ما يحيط به، وعلى المكان تحديدا في هذا الكتاب
يعد باشلار واحداً من أهم الفلاسفة الفرنسيين ، وهناك من يقول أنه أعظم فيلسوف ظاهراتي ، فقد مثلت أفكاره إضافات مهمة للمنجز الفلسفي الظاهراتي، ولاسيما في حدود انشغاله بالمكان وتكشفاته القيمية والجمالية. لقد استوقفت باشلار تجليات المكان، ليكشف لنا لا عن وجوده الواقعي، بل عن بعده العاطفي الذي اندس في موجوداتنا الشعورية والجمالية.
نصيحة لمن هم مثلي...وأقصد المبتدئين في قراءة الكتب الفلسفية...لا تجعل المقدمة الطويلة للكتاب توقفك...فما بعدها الأجمل...اطلق لخيالك وروحك الشعريّة العنان واستمتع بكل الإضاءات الجديدة التي ينيرها لك باشلار...وابن علاقة مختلفة مع الأماكن من حولك
البيت جسد وروح، وهو عالَم الإنسان الأول. قبل أن "يُقذَف الإنسان في العالَم" كما يدَّعي بعض الفلاسفة الميتافيزيقيين، فإنه يجد مكانه في مهد البيت. وأيَّة ميتافيزيقا دقيقة لا تستطيع إهمال هذه الحقيقة البسيطة لأنها قيمة هامة، نعود إليها دائمًا في أحلام يقظتنا. الوجود أصبح الآن قيمة. الحياة تبدأ فسيحة، محمية، دافئة في صدر البيت"
جولة باشلار تبدأ من: البيت..من القبو إلى العليّة
"البيت هو ركننا في العالَم، إنه، كما قيل مرارًا، كوننا الأول، كون حقيقي بكل ما في الكلمة من معنى"
"حين نحلم بالبيت الذي وُلِدنا فيه، وبينما نحن في أعماق الاسترخاء القصوى، ننخرط في ذلك الدفء الأصلي، في تلك المادة لفردوسنا المادي. هذا هو المناخ الذي يعيش الإنسان المحمي في داخله. سوف نعود إلى الملامح الأمومية للبيت. وأود هنا، عابرًا، أن أؤكد امتلاء وجود البيت بأحلام يقظة تقودنا إليه. يعرف الشاعر جيدًا أن البيت يحمل الطفولة "بين ذراعيه"، يقول ريلكه:
البيت، قطعة المرج، يا ضوء المساء
فجأة تكتسب وجهًا يكاد يكون إنسانيًا
أنت قريب منا للغاية، تعانقنا ونعانقك"
"إن البيت العتيق، بالنسبة لأولئك الذين يحسنون الإصغاء، هو كيان هندسي مصنوع من الأصداء. حيث تبدو أصوات الماضي مختلفة في الحجرة الكبيرة، عنها في حجرة النوم الصغيرة، كما أن صوت النداء من فوق السلم مختلفة عن كليهما، وأصعب الذكريات، المتجاوزة لأية هندسة يمكن رسمها، هو محاولتنا أن نستعيد نوعية الضوء، ثم يلي ذلك الروائح التي تتلبث في الحجرات الفارغة واضعة ختمًا أثيريًا على كل حجرة من حجرات بيت الذاكرة. ونستطيع أن نستعيد ليس مجرد جرس الصوت "تلك الدرجات المتغيرة للأصوات الحبيبة التي أصبحت صامتة الآن" بل تردداته في كل حجرة"
ثم ينتقل إلى الأدراج والصناديق وخزائن الملابس
"إن الخزائن برفوفها، والمكاتب بأدراجها، والصناديق بقواعدها المزينة هي أدوات حقيقية لحياتنا النفسية الخفية. دون هذه الأشياء ومثيلاتها فإن الحياة تفقد نماذج الألفة. وهذه الأشياء تمتلك صفة الألفة مثلنا، وعبرنا، ولأجلنا."
"في الخزانة توجد نقطة النظام المركزية التي تحمي البيت بكامله من الفوضى التي لا ضابط لها. هنا يسود النظام، أو على الأصح، هنا حكم النظام. والنظام ليس مجرد علاقات هندسية بل هو أيضًا الذاكرة التي تحفظ تاريخ العائلة. تجيء الذكريات متزاحمة حين نرى على رف الخزانة أشرطة الدانتيلا، وقطع الحرير الطبيعي،... موضوعة فوق الأثاث الثقيل. كتب ميلوز: "الخزانة ملأى بضجيج الذكريات الأخرس"
"ولكن الخزانة الحقيقية ليست مجرد قطعة عادية من الأثاث. فهي لا تفتح في كل يوم، وهي كالقلب الذي لا يبوح بأسراره لأي إنسان، فمفتاحها لا يوجد في بابها دائمًا"
وعن "الأعشاش" يقول
ليست وظيفة الظاهراتية وصف الأعشاش كما هي في الطبيعة، فتلك مهمة علم الطيور. إن بداية الظاهراتية الفلسفية للأعشاش تكون في قدرتنا على توضيح الاهتمام الذي نطالع به ألبومًا يحتوي على صور الأعشاش، أو بشكل أكثر وضوحًا، قدرتنا على استعادة الدهشة الساذجة التي كنا نشعر بها حين نجد عشًا. يعود هذا بنا إلى طفولتنا، أو إلى الطفولة التي كان يجب أن تكون لنا.
"الشجرة التي نالت شرف استضافة العش انخرطت في سره. فبالنسبة للطائر أصبحت الشجرة ملجأ."
"وهكذا فإننا حين نعايش عشًا نضع أنفسنا في المنبع الذي تنبثق منه الثقة بالعالم، نتلقى بداية الثقة ودافعًا نحو الثقة الكونية. إن بيتنا المدرك عبر إمكاناته الحلمية يصبح عشًا في العالَم. إن تجربة عدائية العالَم – وبالتالي أحلامنا الدفاعية والعدوانية – تأتي في وقت متأخر. فالحياة كلها في بذرتها الأولى هناءة. الوجود يبدأ بهناءة الوجود"
القواقع
كتب شاربونيه لاسيه:
كانت المحارة بقوقعتها الصلبة والحيوان الطري الذي في داخلها هي رمز القدماء إلى الإنسان جسدًا وروحًا. لقد استعمل القدماء القوقعة كرمز للجسد الإنساني الذي يحيط الروح بغلاف خارجي، بينما الروح التي تنشط الجسد كله تتمثل بالرخوية. ولهذا قالوا إن الجسد يموت عندما تغادره الروح مثل القوقعة التي تتوقف عن الحركة عندما يغادرها الحيوان الذي يعيش في داخلها.
ونحن نعلم أن معنى سكنى القوقعة هو أن نعيش الوحدة. إن معايشة هذه الصورة تعني قبولنا بالوحدة.
أحيانًا تكون الصورة سلبية، لا تكاد تظهر، ولكنها على الرغم من ذلك مؤثرة، إنها تعبر عن عزلة الإنسان المنطوي على نفسه.
وفي أحيان أخرى تكتسب الصورة قوتها من تماثل كل أمكنة الراحة، فيصبح كل فراغ أليف قوقعة هادئة.
الأركان
"إن كل ركن في البيت، وكل زاوية في الحجرة، وكل بوصة في المكان المنعزل الذي تعودنا الاختباء فيه، أو الانطواء فيه على أنفسنا، هو رمز للعزلة بالنسبة للخيال أي أنه بذرة الحجرة والبيت."
المتناهي في الصغر
"إن الأشياء الصغيرة التي نتخيلها ببساطة تقودنا إلى أيام الطفولة، إلى الألفة مع الدمى، إلى حقيقة الدمى."
"هذه التفاحة كون صغير بذاتها، وبذرتها التي هي أكثر حرارة من أجزائها الأخرى تشع الحرارة التي تحافظ على الكون، وهذه البذرة في رأيي هي الشمس الصغيرة لذلك العالم الصغير، التي تدفئ وتغذي الروح النباتية في هذه الكتلة الصغيرة."
المتناهي في الكبر
"كثيرًا ما يكون الاتساع الداخلي هو الذي يمنح معنى حقيقيًا لبعض التعبيرات المتعلقة بالعالَم المرئي."
"الغابة سابقة علي، سابقة علينا، بينما بالنسبة للحقول والمروج فهي تتواكب في أحلامي وذكرياتي مع مختلف مراحل الحرث والحصاد، حين يصبح جدل الأنا وما ليس – أنا أكثر مرونة، أشعر بأن الحقول والمروج معي، في معيتي، ومعنا. أما الغابات فإنها تسيطر على الماضي."
"المكان المتسع هو صديق الوجود."
ظاهراتية الاستدارة
"إن صور (الاستدارة الكاملة) تساعدنا على التماسك، وتسمح لنا أن نضفي مزاجًا مبدئيًا على ذواتنا، وأن نؤكد وجودنا بحميمية في الداخل لأن الوجود حين تعاش تجربته من الداخل، ويصبح خاليًا من كل الملامح الخارجية يكون مدورًا."
"وبالنسبة للحالم بالكلمات، أية طمأنينة توجد في كلمة مستديرة. كم فيها من السلام الذي يلمس الفم والشفتين، فيصبح وجود التنفس مدورًا"
كتاب جميل...أحسبه إضافة لكتبي هذا العام...
قرأته مع صالون الجمعة...
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
لمن يرغب بالمزيد...هناك ستجد العديد من الاقتباسات والنقاشات
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October 23, 2021کتابی در خصوص خانه و خیال
[اگر خانه برایتان نه صرفا یک سرپناه، که پناهگاه خاطرات و رویاها نیز هست، پیشنهاد میکنم مطالعه کنید.]
خب، خود جناب باشلار میگوید این کتاب، با یکبار خواندن فهمیدنی نیست. پس من نوشتن ریویوم را موکول میکنم به زمانی که کتاب ��ا برای بار دوم، بعد از خوانشی خلاقانه، تمام کردهباشم.
وحالا، به آوردن چند نقل قول از کتاب، و یک یادداشت کوتاه از خودم، که در خصوص خانهایست که در آن بزرگ شدم، اکتفا میکنم:
2
...در اینصورت اگر از من فایدهی خانه را بپرسند، خواهم گفت:« خانه پناهگاه رویاپردازی است. خانه پشتیبان رویاپردازی است. خانه به آدمی امکان میدهد که در آسودگی رویا بپردازد. اندیشه و تجربه تنها ارزشهای آدمی را نمیسازند بلکه ارزشهای منوط به رویاپردازی نشان عمق انسانیت است. رویاپردازی حتا شاخص شجاعت است؛ خوشنود به خویشتن خویش. بنابراین مکانهایی که ما در آن رویا یافتن را تجربه کردهایم، در رویایی تازه گردهم میآیند و بدین خاطر خاطرات ما، از ماواهای گذشته از طریق رویاپردازی دوباره زنده میشوند و این ماواهای گذشته در ما جاودانه میشوند.»
3
تمام فضای سپریشده در تنهایی برای ما رنگی از جاودانگی میگیرد، فضایی که در آن از تنهایی رنجیدهایم، لذت بردهایم، آرزو کرده و یا خلوت خود را ساختهایم.
4
... گفتهاند خانهای دلپذیر، زمستان را شاعرانهتر و زمستان فضای شاعرانهی خانه را دوچندان میکند. کلبهای سپید بر کرانهی درهای کوچک، در پناه کوهها نشستهاست، گویی کوهها آن را در برگرفتهاند.
1
ما مدیون خانهایم، بسیاری از خاطرات ما در خانه سکونت مییابند و اگر خانه اندکی استادانه بنا شود، اگر زیرزمینی داشته باشد و اتاق زیرشیروانی، کنجی و راهرویی، خاطرات ما پناهی مییابند که روشنتر به تصویر درآیند و همواره، در تمامی طول زندگی، با رویا بدان باز میگردیم.
0
(:خاطره نامهی من و خانهای که در آن بزرگ شدم)
خانهای که من در آن بزرگ شدم وبا من بزرگ شد، هیچ خاطرهای در ذهن من ندارد. هربار که بعد از مدتها با او دیدار میکنم، هیچ لحظهی برجستهای رقم نمیخورد، که خانه هیچ برجستگیای، هیچ گوشه و کناری برای ذخیرهی یادها ندارد و برای من، بیش از هرچیز یادآور فراموشی است.
و از این بابت، باید از معماری سست و بیپشتوانه و بیایدهی کشوری که از سنت گذشته و به مدرنیته نرسیده، سپاسگزار بود.
[اگر خانه برایتان نه صرفا یک سرپناه، که پناهگاه خاطرات و رویاها نیز هست، پیشنهاد میکنم مطالعه کنید.]
خب، خود جناب باشلار میگوید این کتاب، با یکبار خواندن فهمیدنی نیست. پس من نوشتن ریویوم را موکول میکنم به زمانی که کتاب ��ا برای بار دوم، بعد از خوانشی خلاقانه، تمام کردهباشم.
وحالا، به آوردن چند نقل قول از کتاب، و یک یادداشت کوتاه از خودم، که در خصوص خانهایست که در آن بزرگ شدم، اکتفا میکنم:
2
...در اینصورت اگر از من فایدهی خانه را بپرسند، خواهم گفت:« خانه پناهگاه رویاپردازی است. خانه پشتیبان رویاپردازی است. خانه به آدمی امکان میدهد که در آسودگی رویا بپردازد. اندیشه و تجربه تنها ارزشهای آدمی را نمیسازند بلکه ارزشهای منوط به رویاپردازی نشان عمق انسانیت است. رویاپردازی حتا شاخص شجاعت است؛ خوشنود به خویشتن خویش. بنابراین مکانهایی که ما در آن رویا یافتن را تجربه کردهایم، در رویایی تازه گردهم میآیند و بدین خاطر خاطرات ما، از ماواهای گذشته از طریق رویاپردازی دوباره زنده میشوند و این ماواهای گذشته در ما جاودانه میشوند.»
3
تمام فضای سپریشده در تنهایی برای ما رنگی از جاودانگی میگیرد، فضایی که در آن از تنهایی رنجیدهایم، لذت بردهایم، آرزو کرده و یا خلوت خود را ساختهایم.
4
... گفتهاند خانهای دلپذیر، زمستان را شاعرانهتر و زمستان فضای شاعرانهی خانه را دوچندان میکند. کلبهای سپید بر کرانهی درهای کوچک، در پناه کوهها نشستهاست، گویی کوهها آن را در برگرفتهاند.
1
ما مدیون خانهایم، بسیاری از خاطرات ما در خانه سکونت مییابند و اگر خانه اندکی استادانه بنا شود، اگر زیرزمینی داشته باشد و اتاق زیرشیروانی، کنجی و راهرویی، خاطرات ما پناهی مییابند که روشنتر به تصویر درآیند و همواره، در تمامی طول زندگی، با رویا بدان باز میگردیم.
0
(:خاطره نامهی من و خانهای که در آن بزرگ شدم)
خانهای که من در آن بزرگ شدم وبا من بزرگ شد، هیچ خاطرهای در ذهن من ندارد. هربار که بعد از مدتها با او دیدار میکنم، هیچ لحظهی برجستهای رقم نمیخورد، که خانه هیچ برجستگیای، هیچ گوشه و کناری برای ذخیرهی یادها ندارد و برای من، بیش از هرچیز یادآور فراموشی است.
و از این بابت، باید از معماری سست و بیپشتوانه و بیایدهی کشوری که از سنت گذشته و به مدرنیته نرسیده، سپاسگزار بود.
September 25, 2008
I was thinking of how to explain why I love reading Bachelard so much, and the best I can come up with for now is my love for his unusually deep way of thinking. This book, like others I have read of his, delves into the poetry of experience. In this book he approached space, as in the places that surround us and that we occupy. In the table of contents: The House: from cellar to garret; House & Universe; Drawers, Chests and Wardrobes; Nests; Shells; Corners; Miniature; Intimate Immensity; Dialectics of Outside and Inside; Phenomenology of Roundness. These are not esoteric overly metaphysical spaces.
I read this book while en route to Las Vegas for a family gathering. Las Vegas is a space I hate with unspeakable disgust- yet, I remember reading the Poetic of Space in this environment and it made the whole incident even more surreal- I copied many passages from the book into my notebook. It is that kind of book, where fragments capture a thought you could never get right into words.
I happened to open the book just now to the chapter about inside & outside and the whole first paragraph gives forth a thread about inside and outside, yes and no, positive and negative, being and nonbeing and so forth. Bachelard brings together philosophers and writers and whole host of dreamers to unfold complicated concepts into an elegant reading moment. “…great dreamers possess intimacy with the world.”- Bachelard
I read this book while en route to Las Vegas for a family gathering. Las Vegas is a space I hate with unspeakable disgust- yet, I remember reading the Poetic of Space in this environment and it made the whole incident even more surreal- I copied many passages from the book into my notebook. It is that kind of book, where fragments capture a thought you could never get right into words.
I happened to open the book just now to the chapter about inside & outside and the whole first paragraph gives forth a thread about inside and outside, yes and no, positive and negative, being and nonbeing and so forth. Bachelard brings together philosophers and writers and whole host of dreamers to unfold complicated concepts into an elegant reading moment. “…great dreamers possess intimacy with the world.”- Bachelard
January 20, 2023
The really worthwhile intellectual work, I think, is in the introduction and the first two chapters, which establish the critical instruments of topoanalysis and the warrants for various claims Bachelard is making about poetic images, metaphor, phenomenology, etc. Close-reading specific spaces later, he draws so heavily on the intuitive and metaphorically built-in—that the cottage is cosy and nestlike, that drawers and chests are embodiments of secrecy, that the dialectics of outside and inside are, well, a dialectical interplay of outside and inside etc.—that the later chapters can seem much more like mere lists of demonstrative examples from (mostly French) literary texts, and all the dreamlike prose and layered density can feel a bit frustrating when the result often seems like it takes these spatial metaphors not much further than our intuitions about them do.
September 19, 2008
I definitely feel that I got stronger as a writer as a result of the time I put into reading this book. Bachelard claims to, and in most cases succeeds in, examining the "dialectical shadings" of all manner of things associated with home: cabinets, shelves, nooks, crannies, dressers and more. I appreciated the fluent mixing of psychoanalysis and lyrical criticism. My main beef with the book lies in what Bachelard seems to neglect: what about experiences of place that are marked by trauma? Not all of our associations with small spaces need be pleasant and nurturing in their "wombiness." I'm glad Bachelard had a nice childhood, but I wonder how those who have experienced abuse or violence in the home would psychologically experience a box or enclosed image differently.
May 28, 2008
I've never really decided how I really feel about this text. Part of me knows it's total bullshit but another part of me wants to believe in it and enjoy the ridiculous, quasi-academic frenchitude. Maybe they're not mutually exclusive ;)
March 22, 2019
A fascinating foray into the spatial quality of the human imagination. Renowned French philosopher abandons strictly critical thought in order to pursue a phenomenology of the intimate spaces we live in. This is accomplished mainly through examples from poetry, the corpus consisting primarily of French poets I have never read before. A sense of joy exudes from the text, as Bachelard examines cellars and attics (ch 1–2), drawers, chests and wardrobes (ch 3), nests (ch 4), shells (ch 5), corners (ch 6) and so on.
Being a study of intimate spaces, Bachelard clearly focuses on the positive aspects of inhabiting interior spaces. He briefly touches upon the ways that humans shield themselves against the dangerous outside (e.g. storms) but ultimately this is a rather anthropocentric account and would benefit from an update. I’m a few hundred pages into Peter Sloterdijk’s massive 2500-page trilogy Spheres (reading the first part Bubbles: Spheres I very slowly) and I think he dives into this subject from a more modern perspective. Moreover, Bachelard comes across a little outdated in some of his remarks regarding domestic space (e.g. housekeeping), traditionally considered to be a woman’s place. But it’s still a great read, and I’m lucky I can spend my research time reading something as literary as this, not only academic theory and criticism.
Being a study of intimate spaces, Bachelard clearly focuses on the positive aspects of inhabiting interior spaces. He briefly touches upon the ways that humans shield themselves against the dangerous outside (e.g. storms) but ultimately this is a rather anthropocentric account and would benefit from an update. I’m a few hundred pages into Peter Sloterdijk’s massive 2500-page trilogy Spheres (reading the first part Bubbles: Spheres I very slowly) and I think he dives into this subject from a more modern perspective. Moreover, Bachelard comes across a little outdated in some of his remarks regarding domestic space (e.g. housekeeping), traditionally considered to be a woman’s place. But it’s still a great read, and I’m lucky I can spend my research time reading something as literary as this, not only academic theory and criticism.
May 26, 2022
We find ourselves experiencing in words, on the inside of words, secret movements of our own. Like friendship, words sometimes swell, at the dreamer’s will, in the loop of a syllable. While in other words, everything is calm, tight . . . Words—I often imagine this—are little houses, each with its cellar and garret . . . To go upstairs in the word house is to withdraw, step by step; while to go down to the cellar is to dream, it is losing oneself in the distant corridors of an obscure etymology, looking for treasures that cannot be found in words.
Here French architect and design theorist Gaston Bachelard elucidated something about architectural design by phenomenologically incorporating our lived experience rather than the objective geometrical space. Bachelard transformed his architectural understanding into a poetic phenomena by mapping out the space hidden in our very lived experience. He thinks that no actual space can satisfy the poetic imagination, and rather, motivates his readers to design as well as they can to accommodate people while acknowledging that their task is never over. He also observes that contemporary architects, of our modern era, tend towards originalist thinking; that is, the idea of using classical forms, such as the pillar and arc, to derive further and more evolved abstractions for use as the building blocks for architectural sites. Bachelard accuses this school of thought of eschewing lived experience in lieu of abstraction.He points to examples of bleak, modernist “boxes” that alienate people from the beauty of aesthetic form and therefore their own houses, distracting them with sophisticated symbolism.
He argues that—a house that is lived is never an inert box. He rather wanted us to go back to the primordial understanding of space and shelters. If we question nowadays—What is a house? People will answer easily that it is somewhere we live for protection. But is it only that? If we press them for further exploration, it would seem like an idiotic act from our part.
But Bachelard wanted this very behaviour of them regarding house to leave in side for a moment, and imagine, yes, imagine the beauty of its(house) form,imagine how could such an architectural design of house could come into being? For him every places, even the nook and crannies of our home holds something intimate and poetic relationship with us. It is not all just artificial thing. It has something human in its very core.
At the end,Bachelard thus motivates his readers of phenomenological thinkers and architectural designers to reject the thoughtless forging ahead of classical forms for the sake of sophistication and instead examine the lived space as a critically important artifact of, and instrument for, the future of human thought.
February 20, 2020
Duygusal bir zamanda okursanız ağlayabilirsiniz, o derece şiirsel bir kitap. Yüksek lisans tezi için okumak çok büyük bir şans oldu gerçekten. Yalnız İthaki baskısı olmasına üzüldüm, bence İthaki kurgu dışını işin ehli yayınevlerine bıraksın. En basiti, alıntı olan metinlerin dipnotta sadece orjinalleri verilmiş, sürekli kontrol etmem gerekti acaba Türkçesi var mı diye. Çeviriden de memnun kaldım diyemem.
Sonuç olarak mekan felsefesi okuması yapayım derken estetik ve melankolik şiire doydum çok mutluyum. ^^
Sonuç olarak mekan felsefesi okuması yapayım derken estetik ve melankolik şiire doydum çok mutluyum. ^^
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