There are reveries so deep, reveries which help us descend so deeply within ourselves that they rid us of our history. They liberate us from our name. These solitudes of today return us to the original solitudes. Gaston Bachelard More Quotes by Gaston Bachelard More Quotes From Gaston Bachelard I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. Then words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young. And the words wander away, looking in the nooks and crannies of vocabulary for new company, bad company. Gaston Bachelard reading dream moving To go upstairs in the word house is to withdraw step by step; while to go down to the cellar is to dream. Gaston Bachelard dream house steps Air is the very substance of our freedom, the substance of superhuman joy.... aerial joy is freedom. Gaston Bachelard substance air joy The poetic image is a sudden salience on the surface of the psyche Gaston Bachelard poetic surface The philosophy of poetry must acknowledge that the poetic act has no past, at least no recent past, in which its preparation and appearance could be followed. Gaston Bachelard preparation philosophy past The psychology of the alchemist is that of reveries trying to constitute themselves in experiments on the exterior world. A double vocabulary must be established between reverie and experiment. The exaltation of the names of substances is the preamble to experiments on the "exalted" substances. Gaston Bachelard psychology vocabulary names The poetic image exists apart from causality. Gaston Bachelard causality poetic All the senses awaken and fall into harmony in poetic reverie. Poetic reverie listens to this polyphony of the senses, and the poetic consciousness must record it. Gaston Bachelard records poetry fall By following "the path of reverie"-a constantly downhill path-consciousness relaxes and wanders-and consequently becomes clouded. So it is never the right time, when one is dreaming, to "do phenomenology." Gaston Bachelard phenomenology relax dream Written language must be considered as a particular psychic reality. The book is permanent; it is an object in your field of vision. It speaks to you with a monotonous authority which even its author would not have. You are fairly obliged to read what is written. Gaston Bachelard psychics book reality It is a poor reverie which invites a nap. One must even wonder whether, in this "failing asleep", the subconscious itself does not undergo a decline in being. Gaston Bachelard naps doe sleep Of course, any simplification runs the risk of mutilating reality; but it helps us establish perspectives. Gaston Bachelard perspective running reality In writing, you discover interior sonorities in words. Dipthongs sound differently beneath the pen. One hears them with their sounds divorced. Gaston Bachelard divorced sound writing The words of the world want to make sentences. Gaston Bachelard want writing world Two half philosophers will probably never a whole metaphysician make. Gaston Bachelard half philosophy two In our life as a civilized person in the industrial age, we are invaded by objects; how could an object have a "force" when it no longer has individuality? Gaston Bachelard force individuality age The metaphor is~ an origin, the origin of an image which acts directly, immediately. Gaston Bachelard metaphor The demands of our reality function require that we adapt to reality, that we constitute ourselves as a reality and that we manufacture works which are realities. But doesn't reverie, by its very essence, liberate us from the reality function? From the moment it is considered in all its simplicity, it is perfectly evident that reverie bears witness to a normal useful irreality function which keeps the human psyche on the fringe of all the brutality of a hostile and foreign non-self. Gaston Bachelard essence self reality Baudelaire writes: In certain almost supernatural inner states, the depth of life is entirely revealed in the spectacle, however ordinary, that we have before our eyes, and which becomes the symbol of it." Here we have a passage that designates the phenomenological direction I myself pursue. The exterior spectacle helps intimate grandeur unfold. Gaston Bachelard depth eye writing The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest. Gaston Bachelard soul insomnia sleep
