[EN] Gaston Bachelard - The Poetics of Space (1958)
* I wrote this reading journal in Korean myself and translated it using ChatGPT.
The first feeling I had while reading The Poetics of Space was a strange sense of calm.
When I read philosophy, I usually feel tense. Most philosophical works deal with themes that press heavily on human life—anxiety, the burden of freedom, conflicts with others, the absurdity of the world. But this book approaches the human being from a different direction. Bachelard does not begin by seeing humans as beings who must struggle against the world, but as beings who are sheltered, who dwell, and who dream. That perspective gave me a deep sense of relief.
What struck me most was the way he takes seriously small spaces—houses, rooms, drawers, corners, seashells, bird nests. I began to understand why I have always been drawn to such images. What might easily be overlooked as trivial or insignificant spaces are, in fact, deeply connected to the human interior. I still find myself thinking about these images.
We must confront the paradox of the shell: how can something so rough on the outside be so soft, so luminous, so pearlescent within? How could such polish arise from the friction of a mollusk’s being? The finger that dreams while tracing the inner nacre of a shell seems to move beyond something merely human—beyond what is “too human.” Even the simplest objects can be psychologically complex
If we truly remain at the origin of our dreams, we do not yet know the hostility of the world. For human beings, life begins in sleep, in being well-held; all the eggs in their nests are carefully incubated. The experience of the world’s hostility—and with it, dreams of defense and attack—comes much later. At its embryonic stage, all life is comfort; being begins in well-being. In contemplating the nest, the philosopher continues to meditate on existence within a peaceful world and finds calm. Thus, expressing the absolute simplicity of reverie in the language of metaphysics, the dreamer might say: the world is a human nest. The world is a nest. An infinite force shelters all beings within it. As Herder writes in Hebrew Poetry, “The air is like a dove, holding itself in its home and warming its young.”
I tend to feel more at ease not in vast, monumental places, but in small, warm spaces where I can hide my body. Bachelard treats this kind of sensibility with seriousness and explains, in a poetic way, why human beings need shelter.
When I was younger, I was drawn to existentialist philosophers. I longed for freedom, and themes like choice, responsibility, and resistance to established orders resonated deeply with me. The idea that one must carve out one’s own life was undeniably powerful. But as time passed and I began to experience the weight of life more directly, a different kind of philosophy began to speak to me more deeply. I came to feel that just as important as moving forward is having a place to stay, a sense of stability that allows one to endure, and a quiet space in which to recover oneself.
I began to think that “comfort” itself could be a serious philosophical subject. Until now, values like strength, freedom, achievement, and competition seemed more important. But Bachelard suggests that human beings also need moments of rest, spaces to retreat inward, and places for quiet imagination. As I turned each page, I felt increasingly understood.
This is not simply a book about space. It is a book about how the human mind and body, at their most fundamental level, are beings that require comfort and care. While reading it, I felt a sense of warmth and intimacy.
From the perspective of a phenomenology that lives at the origin of images, any metaphysics that begins with the idea that being is “thrown into the world” is only secondary. It overlooks a prior stage in which being is already a state of well-being—an original condition in which human existence is joined with comfort. To concretely grasp the metaphysics of consciousness, one must wait for the experience of being cast outside—expelled beyond the door, beyond the house—where human hostility and the hostility of the world accumulate. But a complete metaphysics, encompassing both consciousness and the unconscious, must grant privilege to interiority. Within being, within the interior of being, warmth receives and envelops existence. Immersed in the coziness of suitable matter, being seems to dwell in a kind of material paradise, nourished and fulfilled by what is essential.
Along with lavender, the wardrobe contains the history of the seasons. Lavender alone gives a Bergsonian sense of duration to the temporal layering of folded sheets. To use them, must we not wait until they have been fully “lavendered,” as people once said? When we recall a land of peaceful life, how many dreams are stored there. When, in memory, we see again the shelves of a wardrobe where lace, linen, and muslin are layered over coarser fabrics, countless memories come rushing back.
Beautiful words correspond to beautiful things. Words that resonate with gravity correspond to deep being. Any poet of furniture—even one who lives in an empty attic room—instinctively knows that the space inside an old wardrobe is deep. It is a space of intimacy, a space not open to everyone.
Bernard Palissy’s reverie expresses the function of dwelling through touch. The shell offers a dream of bodily intimacy. Dominant images tend to converge. His fourth meditation chamber is a synthesis of house, shell, and cave: a space that appears as though carved from the inside of a great rock, with protrusions and hollowed curves, irregular and uneven, bearing no trace of human craftsmanship. It is a spiraling, shell-like cave—a place that, through immense human effort, seeks to become a natural dwelling.
In a box are unforgettable objects—not only unforgettable to us, but also to those to whom we might one day pass them on. Within it, past, present, and future are condensed. The box becomes a memory beyond memory.
In his memoirs, he describes himself as a child so bored that he would cry. When his mother found him in tears, she would ask, “Why is our little Dumas crying?”
“Because I have tears,” the six-year-old would reply.
This anecdote may seem trivial, but it reveals a profound kind of boredom—one not dependent on the absence of playmates. It is the boredom of a child who withdraws to a corner of a storage room and sits alone.
“O attic of my boredom,” he writes, “how often I have longed for you when the complexities of life stripped me of all freedom.”
Thus, the house in which we were born holds not only practical, protective values but also the enduring values of dreams—values that do not disappear even when the house itself no longer exists. Centers of boredom, solitude, and reverie gather together to form a dream-house more lasting than scattered memories. To fully understand these dream-values—to speak of the depth of the ground in which memories take root—would require a long phenomenological study.
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