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

Bachelard, G. (1969a). The Poetics of Reverie. Trans. D. Russell. New York: The Orion Press.

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

techniques, sa portee: Du nouvel esprit scientifique a un nouvel esprit litt?raire. Paris:

Klincksieck.

Glieder, A. (1989). Gaston Bachelard: Phenomenologist of Modem Science. In M. McAllester

(Ed.), The Philosophy and Poetics of Gaston Bachelard. Washington, D.C.: Center for

Advanced Research in Phenomenology and University Press of America.

Husserl, E. (1982). Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological

Philosophy. First Book. Trans. F. Kersten. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic

Publishers.

Margolin, J.C. (1974). Bachelard. Paris: Seuil.

METAPHYSICS IN GASTON BACHELARD'S "REVERIE" 73

Poulet, G. (1965). Bachelard et la conscience et la conscience de soi. Revue de M?taphysique et de Morale 70 (1): 1-26.

Smith, R.C. (1982). Gaston Bachelard. Boston: G.K. Hall and Company.