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Abstract
The activities of thought and daydream are inseparable of the reflexive silence and of solitude which follow hand in hand the meditation fostered by the flame of a candle, as Gaston Bachelard emphasises in La flamme d’une chandelle (1961). In a more philosophical perspective rather than psychological, the author’s hermeneutics seeks to understand how “the dreaming of daydreaming” and “the thinking of thoughts” can be reconciled within a silent solitude. Its study includes three parts: from the imaginary of the candle (daydreaming) to its conceptualization (thoughts); the solitary and silent nature of the flame of a candle and its influence in the acts of studying and daydreaming of the one who dreams and of the other who thinks; and the thinking and daydreaming before a black page in an atmosphere of silence and solitude. The study, on one hand, defends the possibility of decreasing, in the context of a silent solitude, the antagonism between daydream and reason and, on the other hand, suggests that the figure of cogito rêveur (this is Bachelard’s original French expression), contributes to understand the possibility of establishing, if not a synthesis, at least a certain creative convergence between concept (activity of the spirit) and image (activity of the soul).