Poetic Image

Definition

The poetic image is Bachelard's object of a "phenomenological reading" (as the Intimus editors frame it): an image that is not a representation of reality, not a memory, and not a description, but a self-standing creation of the imagination that, once given, reorganizes the subject who receives it. Its defining features in the selection: it "does not transpose a reality… It would be ridiculous, in fact, to ask the dreamer its dimensions. It does not lend itself to geometrical intuition, but is a solid framework for secret being" (p. 22); it is "under the domination of a heightened quality" — "A single value suffices to coordinate any number of dreams" (p. 23); it is received by participation and thereby individualized ("a general image, that is, an image which participation keeps us from confusing with a generality. We individualize this general image right away," p. 23); and it is fragile before paraphrase — "As soon as we depart from expression as it is… we risk relapsing into literal meaning" (p. 23).

Two exclusions define it negatively. Against memory: "Memory would encumber this image by stocking it with composite memories from several periods of time. Here everything is simpler, more radically simple" (p. 23). Against description: "Neither word nor idea suffices, the writer must help us to reverse space, and shun description, in order to have a more valid experience of the hierarchy of repose" (p. 23). The image is inhabited — "Here the poet inhabits the cellular image… just as one inhabits an image which is 'in the imagination'" (p. 22) — making it the psychic correlate of dwelling: one dwells in the image as in a room.

The editors' introduction adds the methodological frame: the selection probes "the geometrical divide between inside and outside through an analysis of the imagination of matter," a "reflexive inquiry on interiority, what Bachelard calls intimate geometry grounded in imagination" (p. 22). The poetic image is thus also a spatial operator: it deposits "virtual elements of highly-colored space in the heart of our being" (p. 22).

Key Thinkers

• Gaston Bachelard — the founding account: the image's heightened quality, its independence from geometry, memory and description, and its inhabitation ("the poet inhabits the cellular image").
• Mark Taylor & Julieanna Preston — frame the selection as "a phenomenological reading of the poetic image" conducted "through an analysis of the imagination of matter" (p. 22).
• Maurice Blanchot — the exemplary image-maker for Bachelard: the dark inner room "made to live with a life that is not life, but which is stronger than life."

Related Concepts

• The Dialectics of Outside and Inside — what the poetic image demonstrates: an inside/outside division that escapes geometrical intuition.
• Representation — the counter-concept: the poetic image "does not transpose a reality," refusing the transposition that representation claims.
• Memory — the encumbering register the image must escape: composite memories "from several periods of time" would overstock it.
• Perception — the image is not a perception of an existing thing; it does not "lend itself to geometrical intuition" — a psychic object, not a sensed one.
• Atmosphere — the "heightened quality" that dominates the image (whiteness protecting the cell) is atmosphere in miniature: a quality that governs before geometry.
• Dwelling — the image is inhabited: dwelling extended into the imagination, the "cell of intimacy."
• Intimate Immensity — the image's spatial yield: "virtual elements of highly-colored space in the heart of our being."

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• The Dialectics of Outside and Inside (Bachelard 1958/2006) — the source: Jouve's cell and Blanchot's inner room as poetic images; the "heightened quality" and "single value" theses; the memory/description exclusions; the reversal of space in reading (pp. 22–24).
• Proximities (Taylor & Preston 2006) — the framing: the selection introduced as "a phenomenological reading of the poetic image" (p. 22); the Intimus emblematic dressing-table photograph read as a comparable image-space ("a pocket where body is central," p. 8).
• Oceanic interiorities (Treadwell 2018) — the poetic image as architectural-theoretical method: "the making of a written image of the space of the sea," an image built from Hau'ofa, Hoare, Teaiwa, Ruskin, Cixous — "marine references… fabricat[ing] an image of oceanic interiority as an empathetic practice," "the extracted interior space being poised between the poetic and the accurate"; and the thesis that "to write is always to construct an interior, through familiarity and estrangement" — writing as the construction of interior space, with the image "both an act of mourning and a collaborative, formal undertaking." Where Bachelard's image shelters secret being, Treadwell's constructs a spatial condition from dispersed quotations — the image as composite, collaborative, mourning work. See oceanic-interiority.
• Design studio through the subtle revelations of phenomenology (Smith 2018) — the pedagogical transmission of the poetic image: Bachelard "offers refreshing poetics to phenomenology and architecture in an approach that is particularly interiorist," and the studio requires "a poetic language to bring life to the phenomena, sensation, and interpretation." The quoted doctrine from The Poetics of Space (p. 134): "With a single poetic detail, the imagination confronts us with a new world. From then on, the detail takes precedence over the panorama, and a simple image, if it is new, will open up an entire world… By solving small problems, we teach ourselves to solve large ones" — the poetic image as the studio's unit of perception and of pedagogy: "imagined propositions for living," not "an imaginary landscape." See subtle-revelation, phenomenography.
• Notes on Digital Nesting (Goulthorpe 2002/2006) — the poetic image as the evaluative criterion for digital architecture: the essay judges the early digital vanguard (Lynn, Nox, Novac) by "their capacity as 'images' rather than… their 'prudence' as actualisable architectural works, such images then seemingly legitimised by the Poetics" (p. 133), and finds in Frazer's evolutionary architecture "no 'image' in the book that is adequate to Bachelard's appellation" (p. 136). The mechanism of failure is Bachelard's own, from "Shells": computed grotesques are "simply an abridged evolution, never attaining the force of image" (p. 135) — "In order to achieve grotesqueness, it suffices to abridge an evolution" (p. 136). The image's adversary here is neither memory nor description but technical feasibility: the shell-forms whose formation is now computable lose the "impulsion" that gave them the force of image (see forms-of-absence, function-of-inhabiting).

Open Questions

• Benjamin's dialectical image and Bachelard's poetic image are both non-representational "images" that crystallize a relation between past and present — are they cognate operations (one political-historical, one intimate-oneiric), or rivals?
• If the poetic image must "shun description," can architecture — a practice of drawings, models, and specifications — produce one at all, or does building always already paraphrase? Is the built room an image, or only its evocation?
• The image is received "thanks to what we are obliged to call a general image" that participation individualizes: what is the collective status of the poetic image — is intimacy shareable?
• Goulthorpe's audit adds a technical criterion: the image fails when its formation becomes feasible ("an abridged evolution… never attaining the force of image") — is the force of image constitutively tied to the mystery of formation, such that any medium (computation, fabrication) that renders formation transparent disqualifies its own outputs? Or can a computed form still be an image if the selection that formed it remains inscrutable?