solitude as a philosophical stance in the later bachelard

8132019 Solitude as a Philosophical Stance in the Later Bachelard

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullsolitude-as-a-philosophical-stance-in-the-later-bachelard 115

187

SOLIUDE AS A PHILOSOPHICAL S ANCE IN HE L AER B ACHELARD

Anton Vydra

Le jour nrsquoa pas besoin de lampes La lampe a besoin de la nuit

(Te day doesnrsquot need lamps Te lamp needs the night)

Henri Bosco Un oubli moins profond p 319

Introduction

What is solitude What does it mean to be alone for philosophers Tere are twodifferent positions to be in solitude and to create oneself as an icon of a solitaryphilosopher In the 1047297rst chapter of her book Cristina Chimisso mentions this and writes about Bachelardrsquos solitary image or better in her words about ldquotwo Ba-chelardsrdquo (ldquothe Bachelard of his followers and Bachelardrsquos Bachelardrdquo)1 o bealone authentically alone sometimes means not to communicate with the worldto withdraw absolutely from the world But Bachelard is not absolutely alone

because there exists a candle a paper a penmdashhe shares his thoughts with otherpeople with all possible readers of his books Terefore does solitude meancompletely breaking off all relationships with other people

We will see that it would be incorrect to answer positively Bachelard is tryingto tell us that the presence of another is necessary for our solitude ldquoI becomealone profoundly alone [with] the solitude of anotherrdquo Bachelard says in La

1047298amme drsquoune chandelle 2 Of course he is alonemdashhe sits at his table in his small working room in the chiaroscuro of his solitary spacemdashbut he is always readingor writing a book Bachelard isnrsquot alone in the absolute sense

However let us explicate the nature of Bachelardian solitude Firstly we willdiscuss the question of Bachelardrsquos 1047297lled space more precisely of space 1047297lled withfamiliar things We would like to show the source of the in1047298uence for these delib-

1 Cristina Chimisso Gaston Bachelard Critic of Science and the Imagination (London and New York Routledge 2001) p 38

2 Gaston Bachelard La 1047298amme d rsquoune chandelle (Paris QuadrigePUF 2011) p 54 Englishtranslation Te Flame of a Candle trans J Caldwell (Dallas Te Dallas Institute Publica-

tions 1988) p 36





189

devices instruments5 Tings arenrsquot only tools they live in the childrsquos world Somethings have a special place in Boscorsquos infant world especially a lamp and a pen-dulum clock which are characterized by him as not-passive things 6 Boscorsquos accountof the lamp quoted below is also quoted by Bachelard in La 1047298amme drsquoune chan-

delle Similarly in other writings by Bosco we may 1047297nd many examples of theseaspects of things If we opened Malicroix or Hyacinthe we would 1047297nd variousparagraphs about vivid objects which create the only society of narrators In Moncompagnon de songes we can read a poetical description of a lamp in a window

For there we saw a lamp a lamp for which I had searched fruitlessly up tillnow and which 1047297nally I had just come to have discovered A lamp no longerimagined by me like all the other lamps of the neighborhood that were burning

unseen behind shutters closed fast but a lamp in plain sight a lamp placedbefore a window opened widehellip A lamp whose unexpected presence raised inme a confused stirring of pleasure and fear one of those lamps that thoughmodest we nevertheless dream of without knowing whyhellip7

Bachelard opens La 1047298amme drsquoune chandelle with an introduction in which he quotesa note by George Sand from her novel Consuelo where she offers a description ofthe room depicted in Rembrandtrsquos painting Meditating Philosopher George Sandnot only describes the main characteristics of the painting but also pays attention

to various things distributed around the room such as vases cups etc Rembrandtrsquospainting depicts the following situation a man (philosopher) is sitting by the window and he is submerged in thought On the opposite side of the paintingthere is a woman tending the 1047297replace All around there are small almost invisiblethings almost lost in the darkness of the painterrsquos chiaroscuro But these thingsdo exist Tey exist as silent components of the painting George Sand reads themshe sees them and she is attentive to them

Tese things are living Tey are animated by the act of Sandrsquos reading or inother words by her reveries We showed Boscorsquos and Rembrandtrsquos animated things And there are various similar things in Bachelardrsquos working room At least thereis the book his lamp his table (ldquomy table of existence rdquo as he calls it)8 Bachelard

5 Ibid p 3146 Ibid p 3167 Henri Bosco Mon compagnon de songes (Paris Gallimard 1967) p 618

Bachelard La 1047298amme drsquoune chandelle p 111 (Te Flame of a Candle p 77)



190

dreams about all of these things in his lived space9 about the candle its wax its1047298ame about the table a sheet of blank paper the book Tey are companions tohis philosophical solitude All of them have their own solitude but all together(with Bachelard as well) create a company of solitaries a poetical withdrawn

village so much different from the city the scienti1047297c city about which he wrote inhis books concerning the philosophy of science10

Te differentiation between a village and a city is close to Henri Bosco as wellHe also writes about the impossibility of dreaming in the city Only the villagethe country the peripheries are true places for reveries It isnrsquot necessary that the village exist in reality it suffi ces to imagine one We can read an admirable passagein Bachelardrsquos La poeacutetique de lrsquoespace which is the philosopherrsquos own confession

When insomnia which is the philosopherrsquos ailment is increased through ir-

ritation caused by city noises or when late at night the hum of automobilesand trucks rumbling through the Place Maubert causes me to curse my city-dwellerrsquos fate I can recover my calm by living the metaphors of the ocean Weall know that the big city is a clamorous sea and it has been said countlesstimes that in the heart of night in Paris one hears the ceaseless murmur of1047298ood and tide So I make a sincere image out of these hackneyed ones animage that is as much my own as though I myself had invented it in line withmy gentle mania for always believing that I am the subject of what I am think-ing If the hum of cars becomes more painful I do my best to discover in it the

roll of thunder of a thunder that speaks to me and scolds me And I feel sorryfor myself So there you are unhappy philosopher caught up again by thestorm by the storms of life I dream an abstract-concrete daydream My bedis a small boat lost at sea that sudden whistling is the sound of furious klax-oning I talk to myself to give myself cheer there now your skiff is holding itsown you are safe in your stone boat Sleep in spite of the storm Sleep in the

9 In connection with the lived space of living things we would like to refer to a remarkablebook by Miles Kennedy where the author writes ldquoTe space Bachelard examines is notconceptual space (the space of geometry or physics) nor is it concrete space (the space of abuilding) but lived space the space of imagination and memory the space we engage ourconsciousness with the house the homerdquo Miles Kennedy Home A Bachelardian Concrete Metaphysics (Oxford Peter Lang 2011) p 38

10 See for example Gaston Bachelard La formation de l rsquoesprit scienti1047297que (Paris Vrin 1977)p 20 see also Gaston Bachelard Le rationalisme appliqueacute (Paris QuadrigePUF 1986) p133



191

storm Sleep in your own courage happy to be a man who is assailed by windand wave11

In the room of the drowsy philosopher things take up new signi1047297cations Te bed

is the boat now for example But the bed is objectively still the same bed Every-dayness tells us that it is not a boat It is an object used for sleeping not for sailing wo contrary axes of thinking are momentarily clear Everydayness the commonlife is the horizontal axis of thinking Te vertical axis is the line of reveries But why is the philosopher talking to us about verticality why does he want to substi-tute himself for the poet why does he seek to switch roles Te language of Ba-chelard is poetizing language his utterances have poetical nature He does notexpress a detached objective attitude to the language of poetry He participatesin it But there the same question always sounds Why

Tat is why this becomes for him his own sort of philosophy the philosophyof later Bachelard Of course there are his rigorous requirements upon the philos-ophy of science We are familiar with his desire to think within a bifurcatedconsciousness (divided into a nocturnal part and a diurnal part) In the later yearsof his life Bachelard changed his vocabulary We can feel the presence of nostal-gia for the project of the philosophy of science Te project (formerly establishedby Leacuteon Brunschvicg at the Sorbonne) collapsed when new philosophers in Franceturned to a philosophy very distinct from that of Bachelard Brunschvicg Reyand Canguilhem Te sixties in Parisian intellectual life were 1047297lled with many

new waves of philosophical thinking Te French philosophy of science was re-placed by movements focusing on literature language or 1047297lm Te philosophy ofscience had to 1047297nd a new homeland and it found it in the USA

Bachelard recognized these changes and he knew that for his readers somethingelse was interesting now And perhaps it was very interesting for him too It wouldnrsquot be true to say that Bachelard changed his thinking only for the sake ofpopularity Te poetical dimension was always present in his writings Te rela-tion between scienti1047297c writings and poetical writings constitutes a complemen-tary unit even if in former years he plainly restrained his passion for poeticalthinking in his works concerning science After 1960 he spoke about poetry in a very personal way and as a matter of participation He simply liked it A relatedquestion he posed to his critics was Why must philosophy be subordinated only to the rigorous language of science o be a philosopher means to work within afreethinking profession Tat was the reason for his poetical language

11 Gaston Bachelard Te Poetics of Space trans M Jolas (Boston Beacon Press 1994) p

28



192

Let us return to things Tings are not objects in the scienti1047297c sense Tey arenot objects of observation at which we look with a positivist point of view Bache-lard is very sensitive to the living existence of things He refuses the utilitariannature of things criticizing the hybrid barbaric word ustensiliteacute 12 Originally Heideg-

gerian the word (Zeughaftigkeit )13

sounds to Bachelard as a catastrophe in philo-sophical language although he often uses neologisms in his own work For exam-ple in the context of our topic Bachelard created an untranslatable French termmdashthe ldquochosierrdquo A ldquochosierrdquo some kind of a storehouse ldquothe whatnot shelf rdquo or ldquothat tinymuseum of beloved thingsrdquo14 presents an album of familiar domestic objects

It isnrsquot important if those things are or are not alive are or are not animatedin reality For Bachelard the importance lies in imagination Of course our per-ception tells us something different than our imagination Te difference betweenperception and imagination plays an important role in Bachelardrsquos poetical phi-

losophy In the introduction to La 1047298amme drsquoune chandelle he suggests the followingprinciple ldquoWhen one dreams before a 1047298ame what is perceived is nothing com-pared to what is imaginedrdquo15 And next he asserts ldquoTe disequilibrium between what is perceived and what is imagined quickly reaches its limits Te 1047298ame is nolonger an object of perception It has become a philosophical objectrdquo16

Terefore according to Bachelard an object of perception is an object of sci-ence of observation while a philosophical object is quite different or more pre-cisely it is a different phenomenon In La psychanalyse du feu he suggests ldquoFire isno longer a reality for science Fire that striking immediate object that object which

imposes itself as a 1047297rst choice ahead of many other phenomena no longer offersany perspective for scienti1047297c investigationrdquo17 It is an object for the imaginationfor imaginative philosophy What kind of value does this philosophy have in thecontemporary world

If we examine phenomena like 1047298ame or 1047297re we are not practicing philosophyas a rigorous science Te same is true for solitude friendship love Of course the

12 In the English translation the term ldquoimplementarityrdquo is used Cf Bachelard La 1047298amme

drsquoune chandelle p 92 (Te Flame of a Candle p 65)13 Joan Stambaugh translated the word as ldquousable materialrdquo See Martin Heidegger Being and

ime (Albany SUNY Press 1996) p 64 In an older translation John Macquarrie andEdward Robinson used the term ldquoequipmentalityrdquo See Martin Heidegger Being and ime(Malden Massachusetts Blackwell Publishing 2005) p 97

14 Bachelard La 1047298amme drsquoune chandelle p 89 (Te Flame of a Candle p 63)15 Bachelard La 1047298amme drsquoune chandelle p 1 (Te Flame of a Candle p 1)16 Bachelard La 1047298amme drsquoune chandelle p 33 (Te Flame of a Candle p 22)17 Gaston Bachelard Psychoanalysis of Fire trans A C M Ross (London Routledge and

Kegan Paul 1964) p 2



193

phenomenon of solitude does not belong in the realm of exact science But it isstill a phenomenon of philosophy According to Bachelard a philosopher has ldquotheright to dreamrdquo Tis kind of philosophy presupposes a receiver who is attentiveto the phenomena Bachelard knows that a polemic with people without imagina-

tion or with poorly developed imagination (with ldquothe unimaginative[s]rdquo)18

doesnot make sense It is time for a new topic reading and writing

Alone with the Others

Christian Tiboutot describes Bachelardrsquos later attitude to reading with the fol-lowing commentary

In reading Bachelardrsquos commentaries on various literary works one gains thedistinct impression that these works are sites or houses he has visited ratherthan objects he has observed inspected researched or mastered in the courseof a particular methodic pursuit His readings are patient explorations of splen-did mansions or magni1047297cent gardens and his writings are 1047297rst and foremostguideposts on how to visit these promising sites19

Tiboutot depicted an interesting aspect of Bachelardrsquos reading his visits to thedaydreaming rooms of poets and writers Bachelard reads alone at his table but

his solitary reading is still a visit involving contact with others Accordingly forBachelard things are not objects for observation and the writings of poets and writers do not belong to the sort of books dedicated to scienti1047297c research

He comes out from a central position oriented in two directions to authors whom he likes to read and to readers for whom he writes his commentaries oread and to write are two divergent activities Tere is a well known note writtenby Blanchot concerning how critics (reviewers commentators and especially phi-losophers) read He puts into question the role of a critic of ldquothis mediocre hybridof reading and writinghellipwho nevertheless only knows how to read through writing writing only about what he readsrdquo20

18 Bachelard La 1047298amme drsquoune chandelle p 72 (Te Flame of a Candle p 50)19 Christian Tiboutot ldquoSome Notes on Poetry and Language in the Works of Gaston Ba-

chelardrdquo Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 32 (2001) no 2 p 16720 Maurice Blanchot Lautreacuteamont and Sade trans S Kendall and M Kendall (Stanford

California Stanford University Press 2004) p 3



194

It seems that Blanchotrsquos essay on criticism is very close to Bachelardrsquos thinkingabout reading so let us brie1047298y examine this similarity Blanchot writes aboutcriticism as ldquothe space of resonancerdquo

If criticism is this open space into which the poem moves if it seeks to disappearin front of this poem so that this poem may truly appear this is because thisspace and this movement toward self-effacement (which is one of the ways in which this space manifests itself ) may already belong to the reality of the lit-erary work and also be at work within it while it takes shape only movingoutside it when it has achieved its purpose and to accomplish that purpose 21

For Blanchot the critic is only ldquoa spacerdquo through which the poem is being trans-mitted to another reader In fact there are two sorts of readers according to Blan-

chot readers at the 1047297rst level (they read a poem directly) and readers at the secondlevel (they read a poem through the words of a critic through ldquothe spacerdquo) Tecritic is a mediator between a poet and a reader at the second level Even if themediator resembles a diminutive gap between two immense boulders heshecommunicates in two directions Tis is similar to what Bachelard wrote How-ever the difference between Blanchot and Bachelard lies in the concept of valueFor Blanchot value is without importance to contemporary criticism

And insofar as criticism belongs more intimately to the life of the literary

work it turns what is not able to be evaluated into the experience of the workit grasps it as the depth and also the absence of depth which eludes everysystem of value being on the side of what is of value and challenging in advance every affi rmation that would like to get its hands on it to validate it22

Contrary to Blanchot Bachelard looks for value in the literary work Value is ahighly important characteristic of a well-done work For example when he readVoltairersquos Te Princess of Babylon he found it to be a work without poetical value without reverberation (retentissement )23

Tere appears an additional difference between Blanchot and Bachelard thedifference between concepts of resonance and of reverberation Blanchotrsquos ldquotunnelrdquo(as we might call it) represents a horizontal axis of communication For Bachelardthe resonance the echo (reacutesonance ) is the horizontal sound Te reverberation is

21 Ibid p 422 Ibid p 623

See Gaston Bachelard Fragments drsquoune poeacutetique du feu (Paris PUF 1988) pp 77-80



195

speci1047297cally a vertical schema of sound Reading and criticism would not only beldquothe space of resonancerdquo but would also be the space-time of reverberation orput more precisely ldquo[t]he exuberation and depth of a poem are always phenomenaof the resonance-reverberation doubletrdquo24

Te Bachelardian reader remains alone with the poetrsquos words and writings forothers But the others are not readers at the second level (as we saw in Blanchot)Of course they recognize the value of a poem through Bachelardrsquos words But thephilosopher does not intend to turn to the text of the poem but rather to theimagination which is its source Te reader must understand that the poem is onlya result a product of the original experience which was lived in advance

Te solitude of the poetrsquos lived experience is not the solitude of the readerNevertheless the nature of both solitudes is identical if there is an identity be-tween values of both lived-experiences

One new theme appears now the identity of reveries or of an inter-subjective1047297eld of reveries As Marcel Schaettel points out for Bachelard reading is only adraft Te real act of reading (l rsquooeuvre de lecture ) is accomplished by the second orthird reading when the work is so to speak our own25 For Bachelard the fusionof the reader and the work presupposes a distinction between two fundamentalattitudes Schaettel calls them intellectual and oneiric reading Te 1047297rst one refersto an objective attitude to reading Te second one requires imagination and workby the unconscious Te unconscious is very important for understanding theauthorrsquos images because we all understand the world through identical images as

Bachelard believesOf course the ldquounconsciousrdquo as used by Bachelard is a very different term than

that used by the psychoanalytic tradition Cristina Chimisso notes that his usageof various concepts according to derived meanings or in the words of ElisabethRoudinesco according to ldquotheoretical bricolagerdquo was not so unusual in the cul-tural context26 Bachelard used many psychoanalytical terms to describe the natureof imagination For example James S Hans points out that ldquo[a]rchetypes are thekey to trans-subjectivity so we must be clear about Bachelardrsquos notion of them An archetype is a primal image a material image an image all mankind has incommonrdquo27

24 Bachelard Te Poetics of Space p xxiii25 Marcel Schaettel ldquoLecture et recircverie selon Gaston Bachelardrdquo Revue de Meacutetaphysique et de

Morale 72 (1967) no 2 p 23326 See Chimisso Gaston Bachelard Critic of Science and the Imagination p 18927 James S Hans ldquoGaston Bachelard and the Phenomenology of the Reading Consciousnessrdquo

Te Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 35 (1977) no 3 p 318



196

Te idea of the common collective nature of our imagination is not only de-rived from Jung (as it is often suggested) but it seems also from Maurice Halbwachsthe French Durkheimian sociologist who popularized the term ldquocollective mem-oryrdquo Bachelard knew his work (1047297rst published in 1925) very well and in LrsquoIntuition

de l rsquoinstant he reminds his readers of it28

According to Halbwachs the collectivememory is tied with social frames of memory (les cadres sociaux de la meacutemoire ) but what is more important is his note that our recollections of infancy have a commonnature (un caractegravere commun)29 Recollections of infancy are not mere objectivememory imprints Tey are imagination imprints as well Where do these sorts ofimprints come from For Halbwachs an imagination imprint is speci1047297c to a cer-tain social group (a family a nation etc) However Bachelard extends this to allmankind We all dream about infancy in the same way Tat is why a Bachelar-dian day-dreamer in the full sense is not alone when dreaming in hisher own

solitude One more question however remains to be answeredhellip

Alone with the Self

In Mon compagnon de songes Henri Bosco writes

o dream (recircver ) means to listen In dreams a story passes a story of a day-dreamer (recircveur ) a story living in us sleeping there waking up at times and

speaking And it is such speech that creates images out of our dreams fromsimpler to stranger dreams What we see there we have heard It speaks andby speaking we imagine what comes from us But if it is silent then the dreamscease to exist30

Something somebody talks within us whenever we fall into daydreaming Analter ego of our existence is a further constituent of our solitude another compan-ion of solitude Te paradox of self-experience reminds us of Saint Augustinersquosstatement of the self as a magna questio in Confessiones (IV 4 9)

Jean-Luc Marion interprets this passage from Confessiones as alienation ldquoIn asingle moment I clearly discover myself to be someone other than myself I amnot what I am I become a quaestio for myself Te experience of self ends neitherin the aporia of substituting an object (the self the me ) for the I that I am nor in

28 See Bachelardrsquos note about ldquothe great book of Mr Halbwachsrdquo See Gaston BachelardLrsquointuition de l rsquoinstant (Paris Stock 1992) p 34

29 See Maurice Halbwachs Les cadres sociaux de la meacutemoire (Paris Albin Michel 1994) p 930

Bosco Mon compagnon de songes p 58



197

the pure identity with self but in the alienation of self from selfmdash I am to myselfan other than Irdquo31

Many similar expressions of Self-Otherness could be found in the philosophiesof both the Western and the Eastern traditions Te area of self-affectivity of the

lived-experienced Self is in sharp contradistinction to the clarity of self-con-sciousness An obscurity a terra incognita of the Self confuses a human beingrsquosclear thinking Marion adds ldquoI experience myself insofar as I discover myself tobe unintelligible to myselfrdquo32

Bachelard pays attention to this sphere of human consciousness For himphilosophers have been excessively concentrating on clear rational thinking andthey often forget about dreaming the oneiric aspect of human beings 33 Te ob-scure Self seems to be absolutely different from the clear Self

Let us return to the passage quoted above from Bosco An alien voice speaks

within us A stranger talks to us from our own depths Once again we approachedthe question of reading Neither pure words nor an author are important now butrather the Self of the reader is Georges Poulet understood the matter of readingas follows

I am someone who happens to have as objects of his own thought thoughts which are part of a book I am reading and which are therefore the cogitationsof another Tey are the thoughts of another and yet it is I who am their sub- jecthellipI am thinking the thoughts of another Of course there would be no

cause for astonishment if I were thinking it as the thought of another But Ithink it as my very own Ordinarily there is the I which thinks which recog-nizes itself (when it takes its bearings) in thoughts which may have come fromelsewhere but which it takes upon itself as its own in the moment it thinksthem34

According to Poulet the other offers us hisher thoughts and we as readers becomesubjects of these thoughts However it does not mean we think alien thoughts oruse an alien act of thinking In addition it does not mean thinking about the

31 Jean-Luc Marion ldquo Mihi magna quaestio factus sum Te Privilege of Unknowingrdquo Te Jour-nal of Religion 85 (2005) no 1 p 7

32 Ibid p 533 See some impressive passages in the lecture for Radion France Gaston Bachelard ldquoDormeurs

eacuteveilleacutes La recircverie luciderdquo Causeries (1952-54) ed Valeria Chiori (Genova Il melangolo2005) esp pp 90-94

34 Georges Poulet ldquoPhenomenology of Readingrdquo New Literary History 1 (1969) no 1 pp

55-56



198

thoughts of the other Reading is rather an introspection an insight into our ownthinking which is in rare accord with the thinking of the other who speaks as wespeak who articulated hisher thinking long ago in the past

Norimichi Osakabe pays attention to the same aspect ldquoo read a bookhellip

means rather to know oneself than immediately to recognize the world and thethought about which the author writesrdquo35 In addition Osakabe reminds us of thepassage from La poeacutetique de la recircverie in which Bachelard describes reading booksas ldquoan expansion of the beingrdquo and ldquoa deepening of the beingrdquo36 Moreover we canspeak about the Gadamerian fusion of horizons horizons of an author and that ofa reader Te act of fusion or more precisely the act of interaction is speci1047297c tothe entirety of Bachelardrsquos thinking A text enriches a reader and reciprocally (ina sort of reciprocal dialectics) the reader enriches the text For Bachelard to readdoes not mean to uncover the signi1047297cations of the text (he refuses to explore ob-

jective relationships between the signifying and the signi1047297ed which he understandsas a psychoanalytical unpicking of what is hidden behind the text ) By readingBachelard ldquoonly leaves a literary area to that which can provoke the lsquorecovery ofmeaningrsquo (reprise du sens ) with which Paul Ricoeur has de1047297ned the hermeneuticattituderdquo37

Te Bachelardian solitary reader does not interpret what the work is about butrather interprets who heshe actually is in essence how the intimate world of thereading person exists for him-herself In fact heshe is no one else but a Self-interpreter a Self-mediator However we must add that heshe desires for others

mdashpoets and writersmdashto discover their own obscure Selves ldquoTe consciousness ofbeing solitary the philosopher in effect says is always in shadows longing to betwordquo38

Ending Note

Terefore what is solitude In the end of our analysis we can modify the 1047297rstquestion as follows How can we be true solitary philosophers (as Bachelard in-

35 Norimichi Osakabe ldquoLecture de Gaston Bachelard et sa Conscience de Soirdquo Josai Univer-sity Bulletin Liberal Arts 6 (1982) no 3 p 89

36 Gaston Bachelard Te Poetics of Reverie trans D Russell (Boston Beacon Press 1971) p89

37 Jean-Pierre Roy Bachelard ou le concept contre l rsquo image (Montreacuteal Les presses de lrsquouniversiteacutede Montreacuteal 1977) p 200

38 Gaston Bachelard ldquoFragment drsquoun journal de lrsquohommerdquo Le droit de recircver ed PhilippeGarcin (Paris QuadrigePUF 2002) p 235 We can consider the Fragmenthellipto be a very

personal confession about the solitude of the philosopher



199

tended it) As we saw three features of solitude arise if we want to discuss thespeci1047297c way of Bachelardian solitude We mentioned three solitudes but in factthey were only three complementary aspects of solitude solitude with things withthe others and with the Self All of them have a common condition non-objec-

tivity A thing is not a scienti1047297c object an object of observation Te phenomenon ofthe thing is experienced by a human being as a vivid object Non-objectivity (inour attitude to the things) means being attentive to many different perspectivesof things beyond merely keeping a subjective stance Tings should not be reducedto something seen by a one-dimensional view No thing is vivid for naiumlve realistsbut we rather constitute them as animated Te point is that things present them-selves in various modes of being And we should be sensitive enough to thesemodes if we want to say something about the reality of things We can talk about

a community of things if the term ldquocommunityrdquo does not signify only humansociety

However the othersmdashespecially people around usmdashalso constitute our soli-tude Te solitary human being is not alone if heshe shares hisher own experi-ence with others An author who writes hisher text tries to communicate withthe human world with readers No one is alone if heshe writes An absolutesolitude would be a pure form of solipsism No attempt to write can be intelligi-ble in the world of a radical follower of solipsism Why should heshe write o whom should heshe address hisher words Should heshe write to himself

herself No one else exists in this world In truth there is no solitude for the rigor-ous solipsist Solitude presupposes a community of the others because we cannotrecognize solitude if we do not know what it means to be in a community Andeven if we retreat into the solitude of our own room to read or to write a book wedo not enter solitude in the strict sense We rather try to concentrate on our ownthinking in order to share something valuable with the others (authors as well asreaders)

Finally our own Self is an additional strange companion in our solitude Tereare Iagorsquos famous words ldquoI am not what I amrdquo (Othello I 1 57-65) as well asPlatorsquos dialogue of the soul with itself which is in fact a de1047297nition of thinking Te bifurcated Self acquires many forms if we think about it carefully Tere isno simple identity between the questioning Self and the answering Self betweenthe clarifying Self and the clari1047297ed Self Solitude constitutes a space (and also atime) for an act of understanding the Self Te act of understanding supposes that we want to clarify what has been unknown to us Tat is why Cristina Chimisso was right when she emphasized that ldquo[Bachelard] insists on the solitude as di-



200

mension of rationalityrdquo39 For him solitude does not mean an irrational (uncon-scious) submission of his rational (vigilant) Self to his confusing (dreaming) Selfbut in fact the particular clarifying of it He desires to understand how the Selfof a daydreamer works and this project requires participation in the dreaming

mode of the Self He believes it is not possible to explore this sphere of humanconsciousness objectively from the outside disinterested By participating in thedreaming mode of the Self we can accomplish our exploration of the dark cornersin which the solitary philosopher dwells

An absolute solitude never existed Authentic solitude is a form of relation

Bibliography

Bachelard Gaston ldquoDormeurs eacuteveilleacutes La recircverie luciderdquo Causeries (1952-54) ed Vale-ria Chiori Genova Il melangolo 2005 pp 90-111

mdash ldquoFragment drsquoun journal de lrsquohommerdquo Le droit de recircver ed Philippe Garcin Paris

QuadrigePUF 2002 pp 231-245

mdash Fragments drsquoune poeacutetique du feu Paris PUF 1988

mdash La 1047298amme drsquoune chandelle Paris QuadrigePUF 2011 English translation Te Flame

of a Candle trans J Caldwell Dallas Te Dallas Institute Publications 1988

mdash La formation de l rsquoesprit scienti1047297que Paris Vrin 1977

mdash Le rationalisme appliqueacute Paris QuadrigePUF 1986

mdash Lrsquointuition de l rsquoinstant Paris Stock 1992mdash Psychoanalysis of Fire trans A C M Ross London Routledge and Kegan Paul

1964

mdash Te Poetics of Reverie trans D Russell Boston Beacon Press 1971

mdash Te Poetics of Space trans M Jolas Boston Beacon Press 1994

Blanchot Maurice Lautreacuteamont and Sade trans S Kendall and M Kendall Stanford

California Stanford University Press 2004

Bosco Henri Mon compagnon de songes Paris Gallimard 1967

mdash Un oubli moins profond Paris Gallimard 1961

Chimisso Cristina Gaston Bachelard Critic of Science and the Imagination London and

New York Routledge 2001

Halbwachs Maurice Les cadres sociaux de la meacutemoire Paris Albin Michel 1994

Hans James S ldquoGaston Bachelard and the Phenomenology of the Reading Conscious-

nessrdquo Te Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 35 (1977) no 3 pp 315-327

Heidegger Martin Being and ime trans J Macquarrie and E Robinson Malden

Massachusetts Blackwell Publishing 2005

39

Chimisso Gaston Bachelard Critic of Science and the Imagination p 121



201

mdash Being and ime trans J Stambaugh Albany SUNY Press 1996

Kennedy Miles Home A Bachelardian Concrete Metaphysics Oxford et al Peter Lang

2011

Marion Jean-Luc ldquo Mihi magna quaestio factus sum Te Privilege of Unknowingrdquo Te

Journal of Religion 85 (2005) no 1 pp 1-24Osakabe Norimichi ldquoLecture de Gaston Bachelard et sa Conscience de Soirdquo Josai Uni-

versity Bulletin Liberal Arts 6 (1982) no 3 pp 87-99

Poulet Georges ldquoPhenomenology of Readingrdquo New Literary History 1 (1969) no 1 pp

53-68

Roy Jean-Pierre Bachelard ou le concept contre l rsquo image Montreacuteal Les presses de l rsquouniversiteacute

de Montreacuteal 1977

Schaettel Marcel ldquoLecture et recircverie selon Gaston Bachelardrdquo Revue de Meacutetaphysique et

de Morale 72 (1967) no 2 pp 231-242

Tiboutot Christian ldquoSome Notes on Poetry and Language in the Works of GastonBachelardrdquo Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 32 (2001) no 2 pp 155-169

Tis article was produced at the Institute of Philosophy of rnava University aspart of the grant project VEGA 2020111





189












190











191








28



192
















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195












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Alone with the Self











197














55-56



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Ending Note









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200




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53-68




de Morale 72 (1967) no 2 pp 231-242





190











191








28



192
















193















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195












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Alone with the Self











197














55-56



198







Ending Note









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53-68




de Morale 72 (1967) no 2 pp 231-242





191








28



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193















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195












196





Alone with the Self











197














55-56



198







Ending Note









199









200




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2011





53-68




de Morale 72 (1967) no 2 pp 231-242





192
















193















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195












196





Alone with the Self











197














55-56



198







Ending Note









199









200




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39




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53-68




de Morale 72 (1967) no 2 pp 231-242





193















194













195












196





Alone with the Self











197














55-56



198







Ending Note









199









200




Bibliography










1964














39




201



2011





53-68




de Morale 72 (1967) no 2 pp 231-242





194













195












196





Alone with the Self











197














55-56



198







Ending Note









199









200




Bibliography










1964














39




201



2011





53-68




de Morale 72 (1967) no 2 pp 231-242





195












196





Alone with the Self











197














55-56



198







Ending Note









199









200




Bibliography










1964














39




201



2011





53-68




de Morale 72 (1967) no 2 pp 231-242





196





Alone with the Self











197














55-56



198







Ending Note









199









200




Bibliography










1964














39




201



2011





53-68




de Morale 72 (1967) no 2 pp 231-242





197














55-56



198







Ending Note









199









200




Bibliography










1964














39




201



2011





53-68




de Morale 72 (1967) no 2 pp 231-242





198







Ending Note









199









200




Bibliography










1964














39




201



2011





53-68




de Morale 72 (1967) no 2 pp 231-242





199









200




Bibliography










1964














39




201



2011





53-68




de Morale 72 (1967) no 2 pp 231-242





200




Bibliography










1964














39




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2011





53-68




de Morale 72 (1967) no 2 pp 231-242





201



2011





53-68




de Morale 72 (1967) no 2 pp 231-242



solitude as a philosophical stance in the later bachelard

Documents