Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelardwas a French philosopher. He made contributions in the fields of poetics and the philosophy of science. To the latter he introduced the concepts of epistemological obstacle and epistemological break. He influenced many subsequent French philosophers, among them Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Dominique Lecourt and Jacques Derrida, as well as the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth27 June 1884
CountryFrance
distance heart self
Here is Menard's own intimate forest: 'Now I am traversed by bridle paths, under the seal of sun and shade...I live in great density...Shelter lures me. I slump down into the thick foliage...In the forest, I am my entire self. Everything is possible in my heart just as it is in the hiding places in ravines. Thickly wooded distance separates me from moral codes and cities.
life tired heart
Sometimes, when I am tired of so many oscillations, I look for refuge in a word which I begin to love for itself. Resting in the heart of words, seeing clearly into the cell of a word, feeling that the word is the seed of a life, a growing dawn... The poet Vandercammen says all that in a line: "A word can be a dawn and even a sure shelter."
destinies future opens poetic poetry
Poetry is one of the destinies of speech. . . . One would say that the poetic image, in its newness, opens a future to language.
real imagination perception
Why should the actions of the imagination not be as real as those of perception?
childhood germs excess
An excess of childhood is the germ of a poem.
life wells ifs
To live life well is to express life poorly; if one expresses life too well, one is living it no longer.
real book proof
The best proof of the specificity of the book is that it is at once a reality of the virtual and a virtuality of the real.
quality term expressive
Any comparison diminishes the expressive qualities of the terms of the comparison.
description subjects objects
Empirical description involves enslavement to the object by decreeing passivity on the part of the subject.
teach cease
He who ceases to learn cannot adequately teach.
fire fields rich
At all times and in all fields the explanation by fire is a rich explanation.
dream owning-a-home house
The house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace
dream house steps
To go upstairs in the word house is to withdraw step by step; while to go down to the cellar is to dream
dream drama writing
In order to dream so far, is it enough to read? Isn't it necessary to write? Write as in our schoolboy past, in those days when, as Bonnoure says, the letters wrote themselves one by one, either in their gibbosity or else in their pretentious elegance? In those days, spelling was a drama, our drama of culture at work in the interior of a word.