A place between nest and corner, curve and angle

Gaston Bachelard's poetics of space, in contrast to some of the previous readings in our course, seems constantly on a cusp. Cusp is defined as "a pointed end or part where two curves meet" but here it would be more appropriate to say "where a curve and an angle meet" or where poetry and philosophy, dream and thought, nest and corner meet (or fail to do so, but remain within a "reasonable" vicinity of one and other).

I enjoyed Bachelard's abundance of poetic images. For instance, in the beginning of the text, he says "how psychology would deepen if we could know the psychology of each muscle". This finds an echo further on (p. 101) when he quotes Jules Michelet on how birds (humans in fact) use their breasts to shape the grass that will go into building the nest. Bachelard notes: "what an incredible inversion of images! Here we have the breast created by the embryo". Other images include "well-being takes us back to the primitiveness of refuge" or  "what a quantity of animal beings there are in the being of a man" - there's almost a sense of some shamanistic relation to the being.

Bachelard's comments on Hugo's "Notre Dame de Paris" and how Quasimodo assumed "the contorted forms of his numerous hiding places in the corners of this complex structure" brought to mind two of Thomas Pynchon's novels which address the interrelationship of space and spaces' inhabitants with structures that are, like the cathedral, both complex and full of hidden corners.

The first is "Against the Day", set in the late 1800's. One of the characters is lead by a bell hop through the corridors of a very old hotel (how old, no one really knows), the structure of which seems to have a logic of its own - hallways ending abruptly or seemingly nowhere, an elevator following, at times, a horizontal or even diagonal course. Perhaps Pynchon here found some inspiration from "Alice in Wonderland", in which Alice's psycho-physical journey is one, essentially, through altered and shifting space. In another novel by Pynchon, "Inherent Vice", the author speaks of an off-the-grid casino in a forgotten section of Vegas, with chandeliers, cigarette-hole ridden rugs (almost like scars) and various anachronistic fixtures that seem packed with an overbearing presence, while an oddball collection of characters convene there and gamble.

In both of Pynchon's accounts what may strike us is a sense that the architecture, the physical space is not static or predefined. It is a poetic structure, and as such it is in flux, ultimately unreliable, not to be trusted at face value - a mostly uncharted, irrational and digressive territory. It appears, on the one hand, as the sum of experiences and lives of both past and present dwellers (tolerated guests, really). On the other, it performs as a slightly oppressive force, perceived, at best, unconsciously but never fully acknowledged - an inner realm with a volition of its own. Unlike Bachelard's nests, these spaces are not really homes, nor are they welcoming places of "well-being" - they appear more like the corners that he evokes, collecting dust and mirroring the psyche of their dwellers. They are places of hiding, perhaps of loss.

In certain ways, corners seem to be a variation of the childhood fort ("a piece of furniture constitutes a barrier" (p.137). Somehow, corners also conjure, in my mind, the image of a napping figure, someone whom you didn't know was in the room until you saw an arm, or heard their body shift. Corners also remind me of these patchworks of cardboard boxes in the street in which there is someone sleeping. All you see is a leg, or you hear snoring.

Nests seem to relate to a primordial sense of home, of nurturing, while the corner is more of a sense of retreat, removal and isolation - regression or death perhaps? While Hughes' little girl discovers she is herself, Milosz's "corner dreamer" seems to dwindle, shrink into a state of complacent depression. On p. 141, discussing the Lithuanian writer's work, Bachelard writes: "exchanges of animal and human life are frequent in Milosz's novels". I can't help but hear this song in my head "Spiders and Flies" (2001) by Mercury Rev:

"Pharaohs and kings

Favorite queens

Buried with their precious rings

When they lived they loved complete

But in their tombs, I hear them scream

Spiders and flies

Live and die

Six legs to stand on and two wings to fly

I can't remember and I can't decide

What was the season

and the color of your eyes"

Loosely related to these architectural "corners" I mentioned above, or spaces with seemingly internal lives - but with less angst - is David Byrne's musical / architectural project "Playing the Building", at the Battery Maritime Building in New York (2008), and Hayao Miyazaki's film, "Howl's Moving Castle" (2005), pictured below.

At the end of our reading (p. 145-146), Bachelard contrasts the rhetorician or the intellectualist philosopher on one hand, with the daring poet who "brings earth and sky together" (p. 147) on the other. In this, I'm reminded of the French art philosopher, Jacques Ranciere, and his self-proclaimed endeavor to bring together poetry and philosophical thought, though I found some of his work obscure and pedantic - unlike Bachelard's. Perhaps this poetic dimension to work that leans primarily towards philosophy is a trait of Gilles Deleuze's work as well.

It seems that Bachelard manifests the opposition between ‘innovative’ and ‘representational’ thought. While his writing is charged with poetic images and style - we could say they are non-linear - he nevertheless offers a philosophical investigation into the nature of human spaces. He does so, however, without withdrawing himself, his experience, perception, imagination from that enterprise (in this, it is more of the "innovative" type and less "representational"). The result is an investigation that feels intimate, poetic - one that mirrors the author's own uncertainties and digressions, in a way that reminds us perhaps of Paul Valery's quoted by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in "The Phenomenology of Perception" (p. 207).

I'll close with a signature - Bachelard's (or at least one that wikipedia attributes to him). This may be a way to connect back to the hand, the body through the writer's hand. Bachelard started out as a postmaster. As such, he must have seen a lot of letters, and so, in those days, a lot of handwriting. Today, the "space of handwriting" if we can call it so, has shrunk, obviously, at the "hand" of the keyboard. The standard length of any handwritten text today may be less than a paragraph, or the length allowed by the size of a post-it. Handwriting activates a different space - that of the analog - than the keyboard's. The hand moves along the surface connecting to the paper in a much more immediate and physically tangible manner. The hand can be shaky or assertive.

Bien cordialement,