'....I wish I could make clear how his provincial origins and his familiarity with the things of the earth affected his intellectual life and influenced the course of his philosophical reflections Owing to his courageous efforts, Bachelard finally succeeded in giving himself a university education, got all the university degrees one can get and ended as a university professor, yet, unlike most of us, at least in France, he never allowed himself to become molded by the traditional ways of thinking to which universities unavoidably begin by submitting their students His intellectual superiority was such that he could not fail to succeed in all his academic ventures We all loved him, admired him and envied him a little, because we felt he was a free mind, unfettered by any conventions either in his choice of the problems he wanted to handle or in his way of handling them.'
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His table of contents for The Poetics of Space gives us a sense of the intent of this exploration of buildings and people.
The House. From Cellar to Garret.
The Significance of the Hut
House and Universe
Drawers, Chests and Wardrobes
Nests
Shells
Corners
Miniature
Intimate Immensity
The Dialectics of Outside and Inside
The Phenomenology of Roundness
The text of The Poetics of Space contains this quote:
...[W]hen they read Poe’s Tales together, both the phenomenologist and the psychoanalyst will understand the value of this achievement. For these tales are the realization of childhood fears. The reader who is ...devoted ...[to] reading will hear the accursed cat, which is a symbol of unredeemed guilt, mewing behind the wall. The cellar dreamer knows that the walls of the cellar are buried walls, that they are walls with a single casing, walls that have the entire earth behind them. And so the situation grows more dramatic, and fear becomes exaggerated. But where is the fear that does not become exaggerated. In this spirit of shared trepidation, the phenomenologist listens intently, as the poet Thoby Marcelin puts it, “flush with madness." The cellar then becomes buried madness, walled-in tragedy. Stories of criminal cellars leave indelible marks on our memory, marks that we prefer not to deepen; who would like to re-read Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”? In this instance, the dramatic element...exploits natural fears, which are inherent to the dual nature of both man and house. ... [T]he cellar dream irrefutably increases reality.
The text of The Poetics of Space contains this quote:
...[W]hen they read Poe’s Tales together, both the phenomenologist and the psychoanalyst will understand the value of this achievement. For these tales are the realization of childhood fears. The reader who is ...devoted ...[to] reading will hear the accursed cat, which is a symbol of unredeemed guilt, mewing behind the wall. The cellar dreamer knows that the walls of the cellar are buried walls, that they are walls with a single casing, walls that have the entire earth behind them. And so the situation grows more dramatic, and fear becomes exaggerated. But where is the fear that does not become exaggerated. In this spirit of shared trepidation, the phenomenologist listens intently, as the poet Thoby Marcelin puts it, “flush with madness." The cellar then becomes buried madness, walled-in tragedy. Stories of criminal cellars leave indelible marks on our memory, marks that we prefer not to deepen; who would like to re-read Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”? In this instance, the dramatic element...exploits natural fears, which are inherent to the dual nature of both man and house. ... [T]he cellar dream irrefutably increases reality.
Bachelard is full of delicate comments, like, "In a garden we grow more attached to a tree inhabited by birds."
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