Table Of ContentBEACON- BP-375 $3.45*
V ikiiSl* ' * , i •
■
THE
POETICS
OF
Childhood., LaMguaqe, idle
OMCL COSMOS
GASTON
BACHELARD
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2017 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/peoticsofreverieOObach
«•§
««§
«•§
GASTON BACHELARD
THE POETICS
O F ^E V E R I E
CHILDHOOD, LANGUAGE, AND THE COSMOS
Translated from the French by Daniel Russell
BEACON PRESS ^ BOSTON
La Poetique de la Reverie
© i960 by Presses Universitaires de France
Translation © 1969 by Grossman Publishers, Inc.
All rights reserved
International Standard Book Number: 0-8070-6413-0
First published as a Beacon Paperback in 1971 by arrangement
with Grossman Publishers, Inc.
Published simultaneously in Canada by Saunders of Toronto, Ltd.
Beacon Press books are published under the auspices of the
Unitarian Universalist Association
Printed in the United States of America
Translator’s Preface
oflc3
Men have always fashioned reveries out of sights and sounds,
odors and memories. Indeed, reverie is such a common and even
characteristic phenomenon of human nature that one may well
wonder why it has not more often been the subject of scrutiny,
description and analysis. Some of the reasons for this curious
neglect may help explain the difficulties encountered in trans-
lating into English a discussion of reverie such as we find in this
book by Gaston Bachelard.
Reverie has traditionally been understood, especially in the
United States, to be unproductive, impractical and so completely
unempirical as to be considered almost immoral in a society
oriented toward pure and sometimes mindless action. The com-
munication of reveries is, of course, possible through the language
of poetry, but the English language used in social and intellectual
transactions within the context of contemporary Anglo-Saxon
culture is poorly suited to the inspection and discussion of all
that is unempirical. Not only have we Anglo-Saxons lost our
genders, but because of our life style and attitude toward the
everyday manifestations of the imagination, we have also become
inattentive to the immensely rich resonances of conceits and the
profound analogies to be felt in the verbal or visual resemblances
of puns. The difference between the French and English lan-
guages and the resulting divergence of thought patterns in the
two different cultures become abundantly clear as we read this
extraordinary book. But since conceits and puns translate so
Translator's Preface
VI
poorly, since gender reveries can hardly be translated at all, the
reader will have difficulty appreciating the enormously rich po-
tential of Bachelard’s phenomenological method for the investi-
gation of reverie. He should, however, become increasingly aware
of the immense value of reverie and see how to make use of his
own reverie in reading the poets with a new feeling of solidarity
reaching far beyond the traditional forms of banal compre-
hension.
A discussion of reverie is not easy even in the language in which
the reverie took form. It is inseparable from the personal past
of memories and images which belongs only to the dreamer, and
each word he uses is colored by this past. And since a reverie,
as Bachelard suggests, is inseparable as well from the language
in which it was dreamed, a translation is especially difficult. The
very nature of the dreamer’s language has shaped the reverie. So
when a discussion or account of reveries is translated, the pecu-
liarities of the original language must somehow be circumvented.
That is why I have often been forced, in the course of this trans-
lation, to give the gender of French words and even the French
words themselves on occasions when those words cast spells by
their shape and sound as well as by their multiplicity of inter-
acting meanings. Double meanings had to be explained in notes
to alert the reader to puns and conceits. And, in some cases, I
made no effort to translate, letting the reader discover the mean-
ing of a word like chosier from the context as most French readers
too would be obliged to do. Generally, these words refer to such
a uniquely regional or personal reality as to be utterly untrans-
latable into English.
Such explanatory devices were used as sparingly as possible
and were intended to remain unobtrusive, but they were, it seems
to me, necessary to make my description of Bachelard’s undertak-
ing as clear and precise as possible. This word “description” may
be disconcerting when used to refer to what is generally called a
translation. But when one wishes to render a verbal creation (as
opposed to a didactic statement) from one language to another,
he is confronted with two equally unsatisfactory choices. He may,
according to his talents, elaborate a similar, but never identical
creation, or he may describe that creation as completely as possible
Translator's Preface vii
in his own language. I have chosen to “describe” Gaston Bache-
lard’s inquiry into the nature and uses of reverie and have used
the devices of notes and parentheses to make my “description”
as objective, as dear, as impersonal, as photographic if you will,
as possible. It is hoped that such attempted objectivity will faith-
fully present not only the method and the thought but the man
as well, in all his articulate complexity, in all his wealth of human
understanding.
Daniel Russell
Pittsburgh
May 20, 1969
