Water and Dreams: On the Imagination of Matter

Author: Gaston Bachelard [France] Gu Jiachen
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-10-01
Features: This is an important theoretical work on poetics by Bachelard, novel and captivating, with significant influence in Europe and the United States. He establishes a poetic of dreams based on the four elemental substances—fire, water, earth, and air—using imagination and new theories, combined with his extensive knowledge of natural sciences. He points out that the philosophical theory of imagination should first study the relationship between material causality and formal causality. Poetic imagery is also a material. Water is not only dispersed but also a series of images recognized in the fleeting moments of imagination, and it is both a carrier of images and the origin of their formation. Any poetics should accept the various compositions of material essence, and it is precisely this arrangement through the basic elemental substances that should strongly reveal the soul of poetry.