Les rêveries terrestres de Gaston Bachelard

Abstract

After fire, water, and air, earth appears to close the cycle of Gaston Bachelard’s reveries on the elements. Drawing upon all his prior studies, in 1947 he approached the earth – the richest and most overflowing element, and for that reason, the least obvious to grasp using the method he had devised. Lacking the evident unity of the other elements, earth is stirred by metamorphoses and opposing dynamics, while remaining polarized by the same fundamental axiological ambivalence, revealing itself alternately as nurturing or deadly. So, what is the common property that symbolizes earth beyond the diversity and tensions that shake the terrestrial imagination? Paradoxically, despite the dispersion of these images, it seems to lie in a form of stability: earth is the consistent element, the one that sometimes stubbornly resists our will, but that can also be shaped lastingly; the one whose formations are not doomed to be ephemeral; earth is also, from the standpoint of values, the element that weighs most heavily upon us and imprisons us, but also the one that most securely protects us from harm when it becomes an enclosure. Thus, Bachelard invites us on two inner journeys: on one side, an encounter with the resistance of materials and the impulse of forms and reliefs; on the other, a search in the depths of the earth–and of our innermost being–for a gentle and comforting stability. But before exploring the two works that Bachelard devoted to this theme, we will briefly revisit some significant aspects of his life that shed light on his attachment to the imagery of earth.