Quotes from book
The Poetics of Space

Name: The Poetics of Space
Author: Gaston Bachelard

Gaston BachelardOriginal title La poétique de l'espace (French, 1958)

The Poetics of Space is a 1958 book about architecture by the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard. The book is considered an important work about art. Commentators have compared Bachelard's views to those of the philosopher Martin Heidegger.

“I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.”

Gaston Bachelard book The Poetics of Space

Source: The Poetics of Space

“We are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost.”

Gaston Bachelard book The Poetics of Space

Source: The Poetics of Space

“When the image is new, the world is new.”

Gaston Bachelard book The Poetics of Space

Source: The Poetics of Space

“If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.”

Gaston Bachelard book The Poetics of Space

Source: La poétique de l'espace (The Poetics of Space) (1958), Ch. 1

“It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality.”

Gaston Bachelard book The Poetics of Space

Source: The Poetics of Space

“Rilke wrote: 'These trees are magnificent, but even more magnificent is the sublime and moving space between them, as though with their growth it too increased.”

Gaston Bachelard book The Poetics of Space

Source: The Poetics of Space

“We must listen to poets.”

Gaston Bachelard book The Poetics of Space

Source: The Poetics of Space

“Words … are little houses, each with its cellar and garret. Common sense lives on the ground floor, always ready to engage in ‘foreign commerce’ on the same level as the others, as the passers-by, who are never dreamers. To go upstairs in the word house is to withdraw step by step; while to go down to the cellar is to dream, it is losing oneself in the distant corridors of an obscure etymology, looking for treasures that cannot be found in words. To mount and descend in the words themselves—this is a poet’s life. To mount too high or descend too low is allowed in the case of poets, who bring earth and sky together.”

Gaston Bachelard book The Poetics of Space

Source: La poétique de l'espace (The Poetics of Space) (1958), Ch. 6

“The mollusk's motto would be: one must live to build one's house, and not build one's house to live in.”

Gaston Bachelard book The Poetics of Space

La poétique de l'espace (The Poetics of Space) (1958)

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