The Poetics Of Space II

RESPONDING TO GASTON BACHELARD: POETICS OF SPACE (PP. 183-241)

According to Bachelard the roots of desire for oneric space run deep in our species. Unfortunately this desire is only amplified and deepened by living in a modernized global world where our basic need for meaningful space too often goes unfulfilled.  Building on these concepts in the latter chapters of the Poetics of Space, Bachelard moves into a discussion of complex ideas exploring the relationship between both the intimate and immense as well as the dialectic between inside and outside.

For Bachelard the role of the poet is to remind us of the immensity of intimate spaces that are too often taken for granted. He offers the example of a tree and a writing by Rilke that speaks not only to the immensity of the tree and its boundless connections, but of the implications of those connections on the observer. There is a deep and profound link between the immensity of the cosmos and the intimacy of our own inner beings.

Perhaps this is rooted in the fact that the chemicals that compose our bodies are literally the bonded heavy elements that can only be fused together in the violence of intergalactic explosions. We (and the world around us) are literally star dust and energy existing in particular forms and in particular temporal locations. These forms and locations are subject to change via certain fundamental laws (like the laws of thermodynamics) that outline how energy move. Such thoughts of galactic immensity fusing in such a way to create the particular moments we are living in seems to scratch at the surface of this deep idea of intimate immensity that Bachelard is interested in. It is an idea so large and profound that wrapping words around it is bound to fail (though our attempts can bring feelings of solitude, such as his example of the use of the word vast). Unable to access this deepness objectively Bachelard advocates that we instead turn to the study of phenomenology and its ability to move us past constructed realities and into this deeper world of intimate immensity.

Bachelard's project here is a phenomenological exploration of the ways in which we receive the immensities of the world and transform them into the intimate intensity of our own intimate beings. Exposure to the grandeur and immensities of the world deepen the intimate immensity within us. In this way our intimate worldview expands and deeply complex similarities and differences manifest themselves. The expression of these spaces and their characteristics can be traced through an attention to the literary topographies that are found in the products of cultural construction. Cultural texts and poetry point at a powerful dialectic at work. We experience places and bring them into being in some central way (often through the power of our daydreams), but their immensity works powerfully and changes us as well.

The last point I will mention is Bachelard's discussion of the power of our eye and gaze. This is worth paying attention to because it is here that that observer/subject relationship is forged. It is a place where intimate immensity can be traced and measured. It is a place where the immensity of the cosmos is manifest and found in the intimate interior of ourselves. A central question becomes whether the phenomenological approach outlined by Bachelard has the power to move us beyond merely understanding our world on a social constructionist level and into the realm of something deeper. To move us into the realm that poetry hints at. A place where the immensity of the cosmos moves freely through our intimate interiors.