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Metaphysics in Gaston Bachelard's "Reverie"Author(s): Caroline Joan ("Kay") S. PicartSource: Human Studies, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Jan., 1997), pp. 59-73Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20011137Accessed: 17/07/2010 07:26
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Human Studies 20: 59-73, 1997. 59
? 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
Metaphysics in Gaston Bachelard's "Reverie"
CAROLINE JOAN ("KAY") S. PICART Division of Arts and Humanities, College of Liberal Arts, Florida Atlantic University, Davie,
FL 33314, USA.
Abstract. This paper aims to trace the evolution of Bachelard's thought as he gropes toward a concrete formulation of a philosophy of the imagination. Reverie, the creative daydream, occupies the central position in Bachelard's emerging metaphysic, which becomes increasingly "phenomenological" in a manner reminiscent of Husserl. This means that although Bachelard
does not use Husserlian terms, he appropriates the following features of (Husserlian) phenom?
enology: 1. a desire to "embracket" the initial (rationalistic) impulse; and 2. an aspiration to
apprehend in its entirety, the creative epiphany of an image. Ultimately, this paper aims to show
that there is a sense in which Bachelard's metaphysical concerns in his poetics are an out?
growth of (rather than radical break from) his earlier scientific and epistemological concerns. What results in reverie is an aesthetic intentionality providing a metaphysic of the imagination:
the aesthetic object, such as fire or water, is an object only insofar as it enables/calls forth a
subject to enter into a receptive, self-aware and cosmic state of being; subject-ness and object ness are intimately and archetypally intertwined. Bachelard's "new poetics" results from his
transplantation/cross-fertilization of the general epistemology of the "new scientific spirit" on
to/across his aesthetics.
1. Introduction
The academic career of Gaston Bachelard (1882?1962), one of France's fore?
most 20th-century philosophers, was devoted to epistemology and the history and philosophy of science. A militant rationalist and materialist concerning
science, Bachelard also indulged his fertile imagination in a series of studies
on imagination, from The Psychoanalysis of Fire (1938) to The Poetics of Reverie (1960).
Bachelard's general method may be briefly characterized as an epiphanic movement ? a perpetual play of consciousness that alternately teases out, wrestles with, and recedes from the emergence of an image. To Bachelard, the
image is that which provokes and inspires two complementary yet opposing
dynamisms of the human mind: science and aesthetics.1
In this paper, I initially attempt to trace the evolution of Bachelard's thought as he gropes toward a concrete formulation of a philosophy of the imagination; Bachelard's attraction towards a phenomenology of the imagination eventu?
ally draws him towards a new metaphysic and with it, an implicit method of
doing literary criticism.
60 C.J.S. PICART
The new metaphysic is one of dialectical tension: a creative polarity between
the mind and the soul, the "formal" and the "material" imagination, the human
will to be imagined.
Reverie, the creative daydream, occupies the central position in Bachelard's
emerging metaphysic, which becomes increasingly "phenomenological" in
a manner reminiscent of Husserl.2 Bachelard's "reverie" may be ultimately described as a phenomenology of the imagination insofar as he views the
imagination as intrinsically rooted in the world, and the world as imaginable
only via the archetypes of the imagination. Subject and object become so inti?
mately intertwined in reverie (which bears similar features to the Husserlian
notions of epoch, phenomenological reduction and eidetic reduction) that in
reverie, the subject that gazes upon the object is as rich and diverse as the
object, and the object is intimately bound up with the subject in the genera? tion of meaning. Though Bachelard does not use Husserl's terminology, he
appropriates, in the most general way, the following features of (Husserlian)
phenomenology: 1. A desire to "embracket" the initial (rationalistic) impulse; and 2. an aspiration to apprehend in its entirety, the creative epiphany of an
image. As I follow Bachelard's reveries on the elements of fire and water to his
meditations on the image of space and finally, his reveries on poetic reverie
itself, I shall show how such an ambivalence towards the image contours his
preliminary archaeology of the imagination. Eventually, Bachelard seeks to
resolve this ambiguity through a treatment of the image on its own terms ? a
result that has profound consequences for literary criticism. It is these impli? cations that I focus on in the second half of the paper. Yet, as I shall attempt to show, Bachelard's aesthetic philosophy is the complementary counterpoint to his scientific philosophy rather than its antithesis.
2. Fire, Water and the Material Imagination
The Psychoanalysis of Fire (1987) reflects Bachelard's shift from scientific to aesthetic concerns. From the start, Bachelard characterizes science as break?
ing away from the initial contact with the immediate object. As such, reason
requires not only that sensations and common-sense associations with matter
be critically assessed, but also that words themselves be subject to the scrutiny of objective thought, "for words, which are made for singing and enchant?
ing, rarely make contact with thought" (Bachelard, 1987, p. 1). The poetry
inspired by matter is dangerously seductive. Requiring caution, but awaken?
ing sensibilities, it draws forth an ambivalent reaction from Bachelard the
epistemologist. Like fire, poetry allures and destroys, fascinates and distorts,
calms and ravages.
METAPHYSICS IN GASTON BACHELARD'S "REVERIE" 61
Initially, Bachelard's objective in the Psychoanalysis of Fire appears to be
a direct offshoot of his earlier epistemological concerns. He is concerned
with transcending another obstacle to the rationally constructed knowledge of contemporary science: the attitude of awe and wonderment caused by an uncritical contact with an everyday reality like fire. Consequently, he
emphasizes the need for malign vigilance against the temptations of "first
impressions, sympathetic attractions and careless reveries" (Bachelard, 1987,
p. 3). Objective knowledge must be freed from such subjective responses
through "psychoanalysis." In keeping with its Freudian model, the implicit hope of Bachelard's psy?
choanalysis is that once the subconscious, image-producing processes are
allowed to rise to consciousness, the rational mind will be freed from their
repressive influences. However, Bachelard borrows only the main outlines of
the Freudian schema. Hence, he attributes the persistence of a "secret idolatry of fire" (Bachelard, 1987, p. 5) not to the depths of a repressed subconscious
but to a less primordial layer of commonly held semiconscious attitudes or
images. Hence, Bachelard attributes the image-generating center to be the
state of reverie rather than that of dreams. He distinguishes the two in the
following way:
. . . reverie is entirely different from the dream by the very fact that it is
always more or less centered upon one object. The dream proceeds on
its own way in a linear fashion, forgetting its original path as it hastens
along. The reverie works in a star pattern. It returns to its center to shoot out new beams. (Bachelard, 1987, p. 14).
To explore the nature of reverie even further, Bachelard differentiates the
prescientific consciousness from the scientific mind. For Bachelard, the pre scientific mind, akin to the child's consciousness, tends to personify inanimate
objects. Hence, to him/her, since the fire appears to resist consistently being
controlled,3 then fire must be an entity with a will (Bachelard, 1987, p. 16). On
the other hand, the scientific mind, while noticing the quickness and tenacity of fire, has reduced these "secondary" attributes to the reasoned categories of scientific knowledge. The prescientific mind is animistic; the scientific
mind operates on the principle of abstraction. Hence, "for the primitive man,
thought is centralized reverie; for the educated modern man, reverie is a loose
form of thought. The dynamic meaning is completely opposite in the two
cases" (Bachelard, 1987, p. 22).
62 CJ.S. PICART
3. Moving Towards a Theory of the Literary Imagination
The sixth chapter of The Psychoanalysis of Fire appears to be the point at which Bachelard "crosses over" from science to aesthetics. It is here that
he discusses the "Hoffman complex."4 Bachelard's concerns shift from a
psychoanalysis of objective knowledge to an examination of the proposition that "alcohol is a creator of language" (Bachelard, 1987, p. 87).
Bachelard lapses into reminiscing. He recalls the experience of watching his parents prepare a burnt-brandy or br?lot. From these memories, he intuits
a sense of the material base of the imagination. He discovers in his own
reveries of fire a common insight echoed by Hoffman: a close association of
subject and object. This prompts him to enunciate his now famous four-part classification of the imagination:
The precise and concrete bases must not be forgotten, if we wish to
understand the psychological meaning of literary constructions_If our
present work serves any useful purpose, it should suggest a classification
of objective themes which would prepare the way for a classification of
poetic temperaments. We have not yet been able to perfect an overall
doctrine of the four physical elements and the doctrine of the four tem?
peraments. In any case, the four categories of souls in whose dreams fire,
water, air, or earth predominate^ show themselves to be markedly differ?
ent. Fire and water, particularly, remain enemies even in reverie, and the
person who listens to the sound of the stream can scarcely comprehend the person who hears the song of the flames: they do not speak the same
language: (Bachelard, 1987, p. 89).
It is important to note that Bachelard is proposing a theory of correspon? dence
- between poetic "temperaments" and the aesthetic "elements" of the
imagination. The position he suggests is that reveries of certain writers grav? itate toward images of one of the four elements, and that such tendencies can
be detected in language they adopt. What is at stake here is the relationship between the imagination and language rather than a specific, naive realism. In
taking this step, Bachelard acknowledges the fundamentally subjective nature
of naive realism; nevertheless, he concludes that although it may be a threat
to scientific objectivity, it is also a source of poetry.
Bachelard, at this point, is attempting a difficult balancing act: that of
respecting the rigours of scientific rationalism and of enjoying the spontane?
ity of poetic imagination "legitimately." He proposes to accomplish this not by
liberating unconsciously repressed activity, in the manner of classical psycho?
analysis, but by consciously repressing it, so that "the error is recognized as
METAPHYSICS IN GASTON BACHELARD'S "REVERIE" 63
such, but it remains as an object of good-natured polemic" (Bachelard, 1987,
p. 100). He evidently hopes that a process of "dialectical sublimation"15 will
allow the image to exist as well as enable him to study it objectively. Fundamental to this approach to reverie is Bachelard's undeniable ambiva?
lence toward the poetic imagination. Like the burnt-brandy or like fire itself,
imagination is something to be enjoyed, but also something that must be con?
trolled. Chastened by his earlier training as an epistemologist, he views this
new psychological reality as something to be known within the constraints
of rationally organized knowledge. Hence, he refers to the taxonomy of the
material imagination as a "Physics or Chemistry of reverie" (Bachelard, 1987,
p. 90). Even when, toward the end of the book, he moves from an examina?
tion or reveries, which can be known psychoanalytically, to the poetic images themselves, he states that "it would be interesting to match the psychologi? cal study of reverie with the objective study of the images that entrance us"
(Bachelard, 1987, p. 107).
Hence, having initially set out to free fire-reveries from their animistic irra
tionalism, Bachelard stumbles across the discovery of the poetic expression of these reveries - the particular verbal images produced by the imagination of fire. This discovery prompts him to formulate a new project: an "objective
literary criticism" (Bachelard, 1987, p. 109) that integrates "the hesitations, the ambiguities" (Bachelard, 1987, p. 110) that precede the poem itself and are constitutive of the creative process. This direction is clearly followed in
another of his pieces of poetics: Water and Dreams.
4. Water Images
In a passage from Water and Dreams (1983), Bachelard returns to his pro? fessed goal of being a rationalist while acknowledging his failure to do so
when encountering images of water.
Although Bachelard undeniably reduced the role of psychoanalysis in his
examination of water images, this does not mean that the method he resorts
to is un-reasoned. Instead of attempting to exorcise these images as he did
with the fire-images, he focuses on the transformations of the sources of these
images as these images become verbally manifest. He pays attention to the
circumstances surrounding the literary expression of images in an attempt to
"provide a contribution to the psychology of literary creation" (Bachelard,
1983, p. 216). The distinction between psychology and psychoanalysis is
significant - it marks a shift in method, and with it, the slowly congealing
outlines of a new metaphysic.
64 C.J.S. PICART
5. The Material Imagination: The Link between the Pre-scientific and
Aesthetic Consciousnesses
Bachelard distinguishes between two axes of the imagination: the formal and the material (Bachelard, 1983, p. 1). The formal axis draws its impetus from the novel, the varied, and the unexpected; the material axis roots itself in the
primitive and eternal. From these two axes, two types of imagination emerge: a formal imagination and a material imagination.
Although Bachelard recognizes that these two types of imagination are
essentially intertwined, he nevertheless believes in the primacy of the material
imagination over the formal imagination. This is because to him, the formal
imagination conceptualizes the immediate, intimate contact with images one
gains through the material imagination. In the realm of the imagination, it is not so much the object as the element
that generates images. Matter, which Bachelard calls "the unconsciousness of
form" (Bachelard, 1983, p. 70), is the unseen impulse that imbues a particular
image with its poetic power. The perceived object is literally superficial - it
exists only as a surface and is secondary to matter. Thus, the taxonomy of
the imagination Bachelard outlined in his earlier book becomes a tetravalent
classification of the material imagination. It is interesting to note that many of the reveries of the material imagination
are the very epistemological obstacles Bachelard sought to transcend in his
earlier works. Hence, both the prescientific consciousness and the contem?
porary aesthetic mind build from the primacy of matter over form. That is,
they both draw from a fundamental tenet of naive realism: that the qualities of objects (e.g., color or shape) are simply reflections of an underlying sub?
stance. What then differentiates the prescientific mind from the contemporary
poetic consciousness?
For Bachelard, the alchemists and other prescientific thinkers produced a
pseudoscience because their descriptions sprang from a more primordial and
subjective reverie. On the other hand, their contemporary heirs, the poets,
produce authentic literature, precisely because they have access to these same
reveries in rational form.
However, whereas the rationalism science necessitates is that of militant
vigilance, the rationalism poetry enables is that of spontaneous surrender. It
is the naturalness of lapsing into the creative daydream, reverie, that links the
poetic mind to the prescientific mind. We do not labor to give in to daydreams; we allow them to overcome us. Although today's reveries may be about new
objects and new forms, the elemental substratum remains unchanged. It is this nexus point between prescientific realism and contemporary reverie
that prompts Bachelard to distinguish between a metaphor and an image. "The
prescientific mind conceives concretely of images that we take as simple
METAPHYSICS IN GASTON BACHELARD'S "REVERIE' 65
metaphors. It really thinks the earth drinks water . . ." (Bachelard, 1983,
p. 168). The metaphor, to Bachelard, is imitative; the image is creative.
The metaphor is a visual, conceptualized figure that may even be used to
illustrate scientific concepts. In contrast, the image precedes concepts; it is
not exhausted by rational knowledge. Germinal to Bachelard's developing ontology is the paradoxical dialectic
between reality and anti-reality. It shows how Bachelard comes to terms with
the notion that the reality of life, which is both objective and subjective, simply transcends determinable logical patterns. The literary imagination verbally enfleshes reverie-that inventive, unpredictable aspect of "real" life.
It gives human life the same non-deterministic reality that rationalism imbues
contemporary science with.
Therefore, reverie serves an ontological function by transmuting the spon? taneous contact with an immediate object into human terms. As such, it is
to real life what reason is to the physical world - an escape for solipsism. Reason does so by following a patch of carefully constructed, objective real?
ity, which is intimately linked with its method of knowing; reverie moves in the direction of a subjective reality, which is inseparable from its means of
expression.
Hence, in Water and Dream, Bachelard begins his search for a "superhu? man" faculty?that which will enable the human being to create a surrealism.
His concerns shift from a primary concern with how reality is known to a
fascination with how human inventiveness and openness translates material
reality into a particularly human reality.
6. Towards a Phenomenology of the Imagination
In the Poetics of Space (1969b), Bachelard returns to an archaeology of the
symbolic ontology of the imagination. There is no doubt that this time, he
intends to treat the imagination on its own terms, giving it the philosophy it
deserves. He recognizes that the frameworks of psychoanalysis and psychol?
ogy ultimately prove to be unsatisfactory approaches to the literary image.
Hence, he adopts the phenomenological approach. In the manner of phenomenologists, Bachelard attempts to "bracket" pre
experiential attitudes ? i.e., objective references to concrete reality as well as
attempts to ascertain the role of an image in relation to the overall composition of the literary piece. It is not that such tasks are useless to Bachelard; they are
simply secondary to the immediate apprehension of the image. For Bachelard, the fundamental reality of the literary imagination is the literary image itself.
Hence, to him, phenomenology is opposed to the empirical reduction of an
image to something external to it. Instead, the phenomenological method, he
66 CJ.S. PICART
posits, consists of "designating the image as an excess of the imagination"
(Bachelard, 1969b, p. 112). Such a method is necessarily hyperbolic - it
recognizes an essential exaggeration of the image and proposes that the best
method for the reader to enter into the image is to "prolong the exaggeration . . . [in order to escape from] the habits of reduction" (Bachelard, 1969b,
p. 118). The exaggeration in Bachelard's phenomenological method differs
radically from the reductive techniques of psychoanalysis, whose role, in his
later works, visibly diminishes.
Bachelard focuses on a specific image?space - in its variant manifestations :
in the "oneiric house," drawers, trunks, nests, and seashells. All these images are interrelated in their common evocation of a relationship of intimacy and
refiige. After three chapters on the dialectical spatial relationships represented in
the tension between the large and the small, inside and outside, or open and closed, Bachelard concludes with a chapter on "The Phenomenology of
Roundness." This chapter may be viewed as an attempt to sketch the paradox of entry into an image: an experience that dissolves oppositions
? such that
the "large" and the "small," the "inside" and the "outside," and the "open" and the "closed" spaces are simply manifestations of an eternal being. It also
serves to justify the method Bachelard now embraces - a phenomenology that
is self-sufficient and non-referential.
6.1. A Phenomenology of Poetic Reverie
The Poetics of Reverie (1969a) represents Bachelard's attempt to give pro? cedural coherence to his phenomenological methods without falling into the
trap of reductionism. He envisages poetry to be the source of coherence of
his new method. To Bachelard, when the image is & poetic image rather than
a fragment of a freely-floating reverie, it acquires a positive value because of
its controlled use in the poem. Hence, it is poetic reverie rather than simply reverie that interests Bachelard in this piece.
Having established his distance from the reductive methods of psycho?
analysis and psychology in The Poetics of Space, Bachelard allows himself to
reconfront?in the light of a perspective that attempts to respect the reality of
the image ?
questions on the psychology of the imagination. Accordingly, he
discards the Freudian framework in favor of a Jungian one. Hence, he adopts a method of active imagination rather than psychoanalysis; i.e., he draws
from the lessons of depth psychology, being careful not to reduce images to a
hidden reality. He stresses the need for an "absolute sublimation" (Bachelard,
1969a, p. 58), an idealized transformation of imagined reality into the words
of the poem. This procedure leads him to adopt another of Jung's insights:
METAPHYSICS IN GASTON BACHELARD'S "REVERIE' 67
the androgynous basis of the human psyche, particularly in relation to its
idealizing principle ? the anima.
6.2. Anima and Animus
Briefly, Bachelard's use of the Jungian terms ofanima and animus builds from
the deep-seated duality in the psyche of men and women. This androgeneity is
at the source of the human disposition to organize and execute projects (ani?
mus), and the equally human propensity for imagination and daydreaming
(anima). In The Poetics of Reverie, Bachelard, like Jung, stresses the primacy of the feminine over the masculine element precisely because it is the ani?
ma rather than the animus that is especially suited to a phenomenological
approach and, more particularly, to an exploration of reverie.
This is because reverie, or the creative daydream, akin to the anima princi?
ple, reflects the feminine side of the human psyche in both men and women.
Bachelard opposes reverie with the nocturnal daydream, which is solitary and
unconscious. He enhances this opposition by stressing the difference in gram? matical gendering between the dream and the reverie. In French, the dream
(le rev?) or (le singe) is masculine; the daydream (la reverie) is feminine. To Bachelard, a reverie is not a derivative of a dream; it is a necessary and
distinct element of a well-balanced human psyche. The difference seems to
root itself in two main characteristics of reverie: 1. it is communicated and
lived through writing; and, 2. it allows consciousness to intervene. The dream, in contrast, is self-contained and swallows up the being of the dreamer.
Nevertheless, in pursuing his goal of examining reverie rather than the
dream, Bachelard insists on a methodology that will not lose sight of both the
masculine and the feminine aspects of the human psyche. Bachelard's ultimate
project is that of studying "a reverie which places a dreamed communion of
anima and animus, the two principles of the integral being, in the soul of a
dreamer of human values" (Bachelard, 1969a, p. 91). As such, only a reverie
on reverie, a non-conceptual, phenomenological approach is suitable to the
examination of images. "The image can only be studied through the image,
by dreaming images as they gather in reverie. It is nonsense to claim to study
imagination objectively since one really receives the image only if he admires
it" (Bachelard, 1969a, p. 53). The resulting tension between image and concept, in Bachelard's later
works on poetics, is a natural offshoot of the opposition between reverie and
the dream, anima and animus, and ultimately, of science and aesthetics. This
direction is inevitable, if one is to respect the perspectives of both activities. In
the same way the image cannot lead to the concept without distorting thought, the image cannot be examined by the concept without being distorted.
68 C.J.S. PICART
7. The Metaphysics of Reverie
Bachelard outlines three attributes of reverie that make possible such a phe?
nomenological reading. The first is a Proustian recall of the "nucleus of
childhood" (Bachelard, 1969a, p. 100) that poetry spontaneously reawakens.
In keeping with the Romantic tradition, such a past is admired rather than
perceived; adored and loved rather than dissected and treated with suspicion. The recreation of the past through reverie renews the childhood sense of won?
der that is essential to an in-anima reading. Such an m-anima reading, with
its stress on receptiveness and openness, is very much in keeping with the
Husserlian phenomenological emphasis on "bracketing" or keeping at bay Husserls' "scientific attitude," which corresponds to Bachelard's "common
sense" or the "epistemological obstacle."
Bachelard also outlines a second trait of reverie - its self-consciousness.
Again, after stressing the radical difference between reverie and dream,6 Bachelard borrows the Cartesian ontological formula, cogito ergo sum, to
draw out the metaphysical consequences of a phenomenological reverie. His
use of the term cogito (Bachelard, 1969a, p. 150) implies his emphasis on a
consciousness that is aware of his/her thinking activity, which, in turn, springs from an awareness of his/her existence as a separate subject. Again, such an
approach is "phenomenological" insofar as its structure implicitly renders
"intentionality" a foundational principle. Intentionality refers to the interpen
etration/symbiotic relationship binding subject and object. "Subjectness" and
"objectness" are meaningless save in relation to each other. A subject is a
subject only insofar as there is an object that he/she gives meaning to. An
object is an object only insofar as a subject exists for whom it is meaningful. Bachelard distinguishes between the traditional "strong" ontology (1969a,
p. 166) and his "differential" ontology (1969a, p. 167). Whereas the former
begins from a framework of opposition between the subject and object, the
latter recognizes the interp?n?tration between subject and object made pos?
sible through reverie. The daydreamer, whether he/she is the poet or reader, remains conscious of his/her own subjective being and of the subjectively viewed world; consequently, in reverie the relationship between subjective
being and world becomes one of enhancement and confirmation. Reverie
enables confirmation through the mutual necessity of/for subject and object. It
also enhances the relationship between subject and object through its injunc? tion to the hyperbolization and prolongation of the "aesthetic object." An
"aesthetic object," exemplified in the primordial or cosmic image of fire,
water, air or earth, for instance, must be intensified by the imagination in
order for these objects to become truly universal, enabling a mind as large as the universe intends, and a universe as manifold as the subjectivity that
intends it.
METAPHYSICS IN GASTON BACHELARD'S "REVERIE" 69
Applied to reverie, Descartes' cogito is transformed into a new formula:
"I dream the world, therefore the world exists as I dream it" (Bachelard,
1969a, p. 158). In reverie, the traditional chasm separating subject and object need not exist. Where objectivity demands that the subject accommodate
himself/herself to a rationally organized physical reality, producing the frag? mentation of subject and object, self-aware reverie accommodates the world
to a subjective reality, thus escaping from the subject-object opposition with?
out dissolving the unique identity of the subject. It is through the "irreality function" that such a synthesis is possible.
Bachelard, at this point, again sounds like a Husserlian phenomenologist in
his castigation of the "scientific attitude." For both Husserl and Bachelard, the
"scientific attitude" necessitates the epistemological stance of the vivisection
ist before whom life, borrowing from T.S. Eliot, lies like a patient etherized
upon a table. In contrast, the "phenomenon" of the new scientific spirit is
neither a thing in itself nor simply an intentional object of consciousness.7
In its "first approximation," this phenomenon is produced by physicists and
chemists, for example, in their scientific activities. It is produced materially,
through experimentation and by means of techniques, but also mentally in
that it is articulated by means of scientific concepts.
Similarly, an account of the "aesthetic phenomena" (such as images of fire,
water, air, earth and space, for example) Bachelard speaks of may be set up. Bachelard's aesthetic phenomena (i.e., "imaginative substances") ricochet in
between three senses. This is because it appears that to Bachelard, the objects of the "material imagination" (such as alchemical images) are elements in the
pre-Socratic sense: they are both inner and outer. Hence, to take a concrete
example, the poetic/aesthetic (as opposed to scientific) phenomenon of water
plays across three levels: 1. actual ponds, streams and rivers; 2. literary and
visually portrayed bodies of water; 3. archetypal aqueous images. In line with this stress of the "archetypal" nature of these imaginative "ele?
ments," the third major attribute Bachelard ascribes to reverie is its cosmicity. Reverie, in giving a voice to the world, creates a "cosmic image" (Bachelard,
1969a, p. 175). This transcendental image sculptures the world and the dream?
ing object into a stable, unified universal being - a primal archetype. "Reverie
unifies cosmos and substance" (Bachelard, 1969a, p. 176). For Bachelard,
ultimately, reverie enables the state of being-in-relation that characterizes
the Husserlian "eidetic/transcendental reduction," the entry into the realm
of "essences," not in the classical Platonic sense, but in a more properly hermeneutic sense, commanding a complete interp?n?tration of subject and
object in a poetic synthesis. To Bachelard, reverie, which culminates in the poetic word, is both ideal?
izing and free. It transcends the surface categories of immediate common
70 C.J.S. PICART
sense experience. It simultaneously co-creates both the dreamed world and
the dreaming subject. It is in this sense that we can describe Bachelard's later
thoughts as a form of subjective idealism. This is because Bachelard even?
tually takes the view that subjectivity is essential to the idealist or symbolic
ontology of the emerging image - a process he describes as "the realization
of an effective idealization in animus and in anima" (Bachelard, 1969a, p.
92).
8. Conclusions
In conclusion, it is evident that Bachelard, in his exploration of the rela?
tionship between the human psyche and the emergence of the image, leads
him to follow an increasingly subjective method. Hence, he begins with a
psychoanalysis, moves on to a psychology, then to a phenomenology and
hermeneutic of images. His epistemological interests are gradually displaced
by a metaphysical attraction. The imperative to malign vigilance against
lapsing into daydreams is replaced by an appeal to a joyous and admiring
absorption in poetic reverie. From such an observation, it is easy to conclude
that Bachelard's aesthetic concerns constitute a radical break away from his
earlier interests in science.
However, to take this position would be to oversimplify the positive dialectic
that characterizes the Bachelardian style of reasoning. At this point, I am
not proposing to collapse the distinctions between science and aesthetics.
Indeed, Bachelard's consistency in insisting on the difference between the
two shows his profound grasp of the special nature of these endeavors. What
I am suggesting is that Bachelard's metaphysical concerns in his pieces on
poetics is an outgrowth (even if only partially) of his earlier epistemological interests.
Both reason and reverie, the principal faculties of the mind (in the new
science) and the soul (in the new poetics), essentially constitute an escape from
solipsism. Hence, reverie's idealization beyond common sense is reminiscent
of the transcendence of a science of "second approximation" (i.e., a science
that gets beyond the naive view enmired in the "thing-ism" or "common
sense-icality" of objects and adheres to the values/orientations associated
with the "phenomenotechnique" that "realizes the rationality" of the new
science) (Bachelard, 1984, p. 3). The hypothesis that I am setting forth is that Bachelard's work in the epistemology of science made him wary of a priori,
universal and rigid logical categories. This endowed him with the flexibility to respond to the inventive images of surrealism sensitively.
The peculiar epistemology of this "new" science (as opposed to the tradi?
tional "scientific attitude"/"common sense" that presents an "epistemological
METAPHYSICS IN GASTON BACHELARD'S "REVERIE' 71
obstacle" to the "rise of rationality") necessitates building from the sociolog? ical and historical character of science. For Bachelard, the epistemology of
the "new scientific spirit" demands a continual revolution, a perpetual ascent
into the realm of reason cast in the elegant language of mathematics. Hence, a key feature of his philosophy of science is his concept of the "epistemo?
logical break." He employs this notion in two contexts. First, to describe
the way in which scientific knowledge splits off from and even contradicts
common-sense experiences and belief. An example he cites is a remark from
a chemistry text that states that glass is similar to zinc sulfite, which is not
based on any overt resemblance of the two substances but on the fact they both possess analogous crystalline structures.
Second, even more radically than simply filling in the gaps where the every?
day experience tapers off, Bachelard uses "epistemological break" to describe
how novel scientific concepts are required to give an adequate account of even
familiar facts. An example Bachelard gives to illustrate this is how Lamarck's
perspicacious yet futile attempts to explain the nature of combustion are
overcome by Lavoisier's more successful attempt. Based on his observations, Lamarck interpreted combustion to be a process through which the "vio?
lence" of fire unmasks the fundamental, underlying color of paper - black
- by stripping away successive chromatic colors. For Bachelard, what was
principally wrong with Lamarck's approach was that he remained rooted
within the realms of the common-sensical, and of direct, natural observation; in contrast, the "new scientific spirit," necessitates the movement towards
artificial production and the experimental investigation of phenomena under
laboratory conditions.
As such, Bachelard essentially transplants the chief insights of his philoso?
phy of science ? which may be summarized as the need for an open, flexible
philosophy, adaptable to the continuous revolutions of science ? on to his
exploration of the aesthetic revolution in contemporary literature, without
collapsing these two disciplines into an amorphous mass. Both science and
literature require not only their own "differential ontologies," but their own
epistemologies as well.
Hence, Bachelard's "phenomenological" and "hermeneutic" approach to
the image is his epistemological response to literature. It is the means he
adopts to know the literary image, in a manner that is least disruptive to
the image's active mode of being, in the same way that his epistemology of
science sprang from an unmediated study of the unique features of contempo?
rary scientific activity. Such a phenomenology uncovers obstacles to the full
expression of the creative imagination in the same way his epistemology is
one of "rupture" and release from various "epistemological obstacles." Both
Bachelard's phenomenology of the imagination and epistemology of science
72 C.J.S. PICART
remain aware of the delicate tension between how we know and what we
know. It is this twofold interplay between epistemology and metaphysics that
allows Bachelard to effect a "cross-fertilization" between his scientific and
aesthetic interests, while recognizing them as disparate yet related realities:
in a similar way to how the legs of a compass are conjoined and yet move in
directions different from each other.
Notes
1. A certain amount of controversy surrounds the way Bachelard perceives a relation between
science and aesthetics. Some commentators conclude that Bachelard's obvious duality is
just what it seems and is essentially irreconcilable. On the other hand, others perceive hidden strands of unity within a tapestry that depicts the bifurcation between science and
poetry. For examples of the spectrum of positions on the matter, refer to the following: Poulet (1965, pp. 1-26), Gagey (1970), Margolin (1974), Smith (1982).
2. Refer to Husserl (1982, pp. 53-55, 59, 94-95, 108, 110-111, 115, 142, 160, 187, 204, 278, 302).
3. For example, in some instances, fire is hard to light; in others, it is difficult to put out.
4. The allusion is to the German Romantic, Ernst Theodor Hoffman, whose fantasy stories
were inspired by intuitions of alcohol or "fire-water" (1987, pp. 90-91). 5. This is reminiscent of the method of dialectical transcendence he expresses in his works
on science.
6. To Bachelard, "while the dreamer of the nocturnal dream is a shadow who has lost his
self, the dreamer of reverie . . . can formulate a cogito at the center of his dreaming self
... reverie is an oneiric activity in which a glimmer of consciousness subsists" (1965b, p.
150). 7. For a similar approach, refer to Glieder (1989, pp. 27-53).
References
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Bachelard, G. (1964/1969b). The Poetics of Space. Trans. M. Jolas. Boston: Beacon Press.
Bachelard, G. (1964/1987). The Psychoanalysis of Fire. Trans. A.C.M. Ross. Boston: Beacon
Press.
Bachelard, G. (1982/1983). Water and Dreams. Trans. E.R. Farrell. Dallas: Dallas Institute
Publications.
Bachelard, G. (1984). The New Scientific Spirit. Trans. A. Goldhammer. Boston: Beacon Press.
Gagey, J. (1970). Gaston Bachelard on la conversion a Vimaginare; Ses Fondements, ses
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Glieder, A. (1989). Gaston Bachelard: Phenomenologist of Modem Science. In M. McAllester
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Margolin, J.C. (1974). Bachelard. Paris: Seuil.
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