Bachelard's The Poetics of Space
A beautifully written phenomenological meditation on the nature of space and home, Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space is an exercise in the pure pleasure of thinking.
To give readers a first glimpse into the book’s contents, it is divided into sections arrange by height, from the cellar to the attic, and in each section, Bachelard discusses how different kinds of domestic spaces shape out thoughts, keep our memories, and harbor our dreams.
It’s a nearly perfect little book and a great of example of what a mind trained in phenomenological observation can achieve. Readers will want to take this book to a quiet corner and revel in it, probably more than once.
This book pairs very well with Henry Lefebvre’s masterful The Production of Space , as well as Martin Heidegger’s meditations in “Building, Dwelling, Thinking” (found in his Poetry Language Thought ).