Language bears within itself the dialectics of open and closed

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.

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Beacon Press, 1969) p. 222

Forests reign in the past

Who knows the temporal dimensions of the forest? History is not enough. We should have to know how the forest experiences its great age; why, in the reign of the imagination, there are no young forests. [...] In the vast world of the non-I, the non-I of fields is not the same as the non-I of forests. The forest is a before-me, before-us, whereas for fields and meadows, my dreams and recollections accompany all the different phases of tilling and harvesting. When the dialectics of the I and the non-I grow more flexible, I feel that fields and meadows are with me, in the with-me, with-us. But forests reign in the past.

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Beacon Press, 1969) p. 188

The sign of return marks an infinite number of daydreams

A nest-house is never young. Indeed, speaking as a pedant, we might say that it is the natural habitat of the function of inhabiting. For not only do we come back to it, but we dream of coming back to it, the way a bird comes back to its nest, or a lamb to the fold. This sign of return marks an infinite number of daydreams, for the reason that human returning takes place in the great rhythm of human life, a rhythm that reaches back across the years and, through the dream, combats all absence. An intimate component of faithful loyalty reacts upon the related images of nest and house.

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Beacon Press, 1969) p. 99

Inhabited space transcends geometrical space

Come what may the house helps us to say: I will be an inhabitant of the world, in spite of the world. The problem is not only one of being, it is also a problem of energy and, consequently, of counter-energy.

In this dynamic rivalry between house and universe, we are far removed from any reference to simple geometrical forms. A house that has been experienced is not an inert box. Inhabited space transcends geometrical space.

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Beacon Press, 1969) pp. 46-47

Through permanent childhood we maintain the poetry of the past

The house we were born in has engraved within us the hierarchy of the various functions of inhabiting.

[...]

The house we were born in is more than an embodiment of home, it is also an embodiment of dreams.

[...]

It is on the plane of the daydream and not on that of facts that childhood remains alive and poetically useful within us. Through 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.

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Beacon Press, 1969) pp. 15-16

In its countless alveoli space contains compressed time

At times we think we know ourselves in time, when all we know is a sequence of fixations in the spaces of the being's stability – a being who does not want to melt away, and who, even in the past, when he sets out in search of things past, wants time to "suspend" its flight. In its countless alveoli space contains compressed time. That is what space is for.

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Beacon Press, 1969) p.8

The house shelters daydreaming

If I were asked to name the main benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace. Thought and experience are not the only things that sanction human values. The values that belong to daydreaming mark humanity in its depths. Daydreaming even has a privilege of autovalorization. It derives direct pleasure from its own being. Therefore the places in which we have experienced daydreaming reconstitute themselves in a new daydream, and it is because our memories of former dwelling-places are relived as daydreams that these dwelling-places of the past remain in us for all time.

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Beacon Press, 1969) p.6

An entire past comes to dwell in a new house

An entire past comes to dwell in a new house.

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Beacon Press, 1969) p.5

Only those who have learned to curl up can inhabit with intensity

After having followed teh day-dreams of inhabiting these uninhabitable places, I returned to images that, in order for us to live them, require us to become very small, as in nests and shells. Indeed in our houses we have nooks and corners in which we like to curl up comfortably. To curl up belongs to the phenomenology of the verb to inhabit, and only those who have learned to do so can inhabit with intensity.

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Beacon Press, 1969) p. xxxiv

Poetry appears as a phenomenon of freedom

The poetic image is an emergence from language, it is always a little above the language of signification. By living the poems we read, we have then the salutary experience of emerging. This, no doubt, is emerging at short range. But these acts of emergence are repeated; poetry puts language in a state of emergence, in which life becomes manifest through its vivacity. These linguistic impulses, which stand out from the ordinary rank of pragmatic language, are miniatures of the vital impulse. A micro-Bergsonism that abandoned the thesis of language-as-instrument in favor of the thesis of language-as-reality would find in poetry numerous documents on the intense life of language.

Thus, along with considerations on the life of words, as it appears in the evolution of language across the centuries, the poetic image, assa a mathematician would say, presents us with a sort of differential of this evolution. A great verse can have a great influence on the soul of a language. It awakens images that had been effaced, at the same time that it confirms the unforeseeable nature of speec. And if we render speech unforeseeable, is this not an apprenticeship of freedom? What delight the poetic imagination takes in making game of censors! Time was when the poetic arts codified the licenses to be permitted. Contemporary poetry, however, has introduced fredom in the very body of the language. As a result, poetry appears as a phenomenon of freedom.

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Beacon Press, 1969) p. xxiii