The Dialectics of Outside and Inside

Author: Gaston Bachelard Year: 2006 (Intimus reprint; original The Poetics of Space 1958, trans. Maria Jolas, Orion Press 1964; excerpt pp. 227–31) Source type: chapter (selection from The Poetics of Space reprinted in Intimus: Interior Design Theory Reader, eds. Mark Taylor & Julieanna Preston, John Wiley & Sons)

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Summary

Bachelard's chapter — the selection from The Poetics of Space (1958) reprinted as the philosophical anchor-text of Intimus — argues that the opposition of outside and inside, however ready-made its geometrical evidence appears, does not survive phenomenological scrutiny: "the opposition of outside and inside ceases to have as coefficient its geometrical evidence." Through close readings of poetic images (Jouve's whitewashed cell of the secret, Blanchot's utterly dark inner room, Rilke's narrow space whose outside is immeasurable), Bachelard shows that interior and exterior are lived dialectically, not geometrically: concentration in the most restricted space draws the dialectic's strength, the exterior can be "an old intimacy lost in the shadow of memory," and immensity rises inside the body. The Balzac coda — the correction of "he made space withdraw before his advance" to "He left space, as he said, behind him" — records for Bachelard the "decline of power of being faced with space," the fall from tonalized space back to "indifferent space." The editors' framing introduction calls the selection "a phenomenological reading of the poetic image" that probes the geometrical divide "through an analysis of the imagination of matter," and names its double condition "interior immensity" and the "immeasurable outside" — "interiority" as "intimate geometry grounded in imagination."

Key Claims

• The poetic image is not a representation: Jouve's cell "does not transpose a reality… It does not lend itself to geometrical intuition, but is a solid framework for secret being" — it would be "ridiculous… to ask the dreamer its dimensions" (p. 22).
• The poetic image is governed by quality, not quantity: "it is always like that, the poetic image is under the domination of a heightened quality. The whiteness of the walls, alone, protects the dreamer's cell. It is stronger than all geometry" (pp. 22–23). "A single value suffices to coordinate any number of dreams" (p. 23).
• The dreamer's cell is guarded "more by the whiteness of the lime-wash than by the strong walls" — the protective function migrates from physical boundary to imagined quality: "It is stronger than all geometry. It is a part of the cell of intimacy" (pp. 22–23).
• Poetic images lack stability when detached from their spontaneous expression: "As soon as we depart from expression as it is, as the author gives it, in all spontaneity, we risk relapsing into literal meaning" (p. 23).
• Blanchot's room ("plunged in utter darkness") is an image entered and borne within, not a described abode: "Blanchot's room is an abode of intimate space, it is his inner room"; description would encumber it — "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).
• The image is shared by participation, not by generality: "an image which participation keeps us from confusing with a generality. We individualize this general image right away. We live in it, we enter into it the way Blanchot enters into his" (p. 23).
• Reading requires a reversal of space: "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 dialectic of inside and outside draws its strength precisely from the most restricted intimacy: "Often it is from the very fact of concentration in the most restricted intimate space that the dialectics of inside and outside draws its strength" (p. 23). Rilke's narrowness consoles — "you feel almost calm at the thought that it is impossible for anything very large to hold in this narrowness" — in "inner space where everything is commensurate with inner being" (p. 23).
• The dialectical continuation (Rilke): "But outside, everything is immeasurable. And when the level rises outside, it also rises in you… but it grows in the capillary veins, drawn upward into the furthermost branches of your infinitely ramified existence" (pp. 23–24) — the outside's immensity is lived bodily, not measured geometrically.
• "Inside and outside are not abandoned to their geometrical opposition" (p. 24). The Rilke passage "has dynamic continuity": the frightful, silent house ("Oh night without objects… Oh silence in the stair-well") is re-peopled by memory — "the mother comes back to watch over her child, as she once did. She restores to all these confused, unreal sounds their concrete, familiar meaning. Limitless night ceases to be empty space" (p. 24).
• The exterior itself may be an intimacy: "Isn't the exterior an old intimacy lost in the shadow of memory? In what silence does the stair-well resound?" (p. 24). Experiencing this "in the reality of the images" requires being "the contemporary of an osmosis between intimate and undetermined space" (p. 24).
• The geometrical evidence is demoted to a secondary coefficient: "there exists a play of values, which makes everything in the category of simple determinations fall into second place. The opposition of outside and inside ceases to have as coefficient its geometrical evidence" (p. 24).
• The Balzac correction as the decline of being's power over space: the early Louis Lambert — "he made space withdraw before his advance" — becomes in the final version "He left space, as he said, behind him." For Bachelard this is "What decline of power of being faced with space": Balzac "returned, in other words, to 'indifferent space'"; the lost "tonalization" of being is legible in the subsidence of "admiration" (pp. 24–25). The admirable power was "to make space withdraw, to put space, all space, outside, in order that meditating being might be free to think" (p. 25).
• Editors' framing (Taylor & Preston): the selection is "a phenomenological reading of the poetic image," probing "the geometrical divide between inside and outside through an analysis of the imagination of matter"; it engages "both physical and psychological body-space relations" and describes "an exchange between interior and exterior in which the latter might be 'an old intimacy'"; the dialectical condition of "'interior immensity' and the 'immeasurable outside'" attests to "the spatiality of being as a reflexive inquiry on interiority, what Bachelard calls intimate geometry grounded in imagination" (p. 22).

Connections

Concepts: The Dialectics of Outside and Inside · Intimate Immensity · Poetic Image · interiority · dwelling · memory · embodiment · Lived Body · space · boundaries · uncanny · Domestic Interior Authors: Gaston Bachelard · Taylor & Preston (editors and framing introduction) · Maurice Blanchot (his room, quoted as Bachelard's exemplary image) Debates: Phenomenology vs. Psychoanalysis — the selection works the phenomenological pole in the interior register (per the editors' framing), though the excerpt itself does not engage psychoanalysis directly Related source notes: Taylor & Preston — Proximities (the Intimus introduction that frames this selection) · Spuybroek — Habit and Inhabit, Stuff and Trash (engages The Poetics of Space directly: pocketed space, the attic, daydreaming) · Ries — Anthropology and the Everyday (the intimacy of domestic space) · Vidler — The Architectural Uncanny (the unhomely house against Bachelard's intimate one) · Ardener — The Partition of Space (the anthropological version of the same inside/outside pair) · Gilbert & Gubar — Towards a Feminist Poetics: Infection in the Sentence (the feminist counter-reading: "the extraordinary discrepancy between the almost consistently 'felicitous space' he discusses and the negative space we have found," p. 121)

Direct Quotes

"Once we have been touched by the grace of super-imagination, we feel it in the presence of the simpler images through which the exterior world deposits virtual elements of highly-colored space in the heart of our being." (p. 22)

"The cell of myself fills with wonder / The white-washed wall of my secret." — Pierre Jean Jouve, Les Noces, quoted (p. 22)

"Here the poet inhabits the cellular image. This image 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)

"And secret being feels that it is guarded more by the whiteness of the lime-wash than by the strong walls. The cell of the secret is white. A single value suffices to coordinate any number of dreams." (p. 23)

"it is always like that, the poetic image is under the domination of a heightened quality. The whiteness of the walls, alone, protects the dreamer's cell. It is stronger than all geometry. It is a part of the cell of intimacy." (p. 23)

"Memory would encumber this image by stocking it with composite memories from several periods of time. Here everything is simpler, more radically simple. Blanchot's room is an abode of intimate space, it is his inner room." (p. 23)

"We share the writer's image, thanks to what we are obliged to call a general image, that is, an image which participation keeps us from confusing with a generality. We individualize this general image right away. We live in it, we enter into it the way Blanchot enters into his." (p. 23)

"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)

"Often it is from the very fact of concentration in the most restricted intimate space that the dialectics of inside and outside draws its strength." (p. 23)

"There is consolation in knowing that one is in an atmosphere of calm, in a narrow space. Rilke achieved this narrowness intimately, in inner space where everything is commensurate with inner being." (p. 23)

"But outside, everything is immeasurable. And when the level rises outside, it also rises in you… but it grows in the capillary veins, drawn upward into the furthermost branches of your infinitely ramified existence." — Rilke, quoted (pp. 23–24)

"I have given this long passage without cuts for the reason that it has dynamic continuity. Inside and outside are not abandoned to their geometrical opposition." (p. 24)

"Isn't the exterior an old intimacy lost in the shadow of memory? In what silence does the stair-well resound? In this silence there are soft foot-steps: the mother comes back to watch over her child, as she once did. She restores to all these confused, unreal sounds their concrete, familiar meaning. Limitless night ceases to be empty space." (p. 24)

"In order to experience it in the reality of the images, one would have to remain the contemporary of an osmosis between intimate and undetermined space." (p. 24)

"I have presented texts that were as varied as possible, in order to show that there exists a play of values, which makes everything in the category of simple determinations fall into second place. The opposition of outside and inside ceases to have as coefficient its geometrical evidence." (p. 24)

"he made space withdraw before his advance." — early Balzac, Louis Lambert, quoted (p. 24)

"He left space, as he said, behind him." — final Balzac, quoted (p. 24)

"What a difference between these two movements of expression! What decline of power of being faced with space, between the first and second forms! In fact, one is puzzled that Balzac should have made such a correction. He returned, in other words, to 'indifferent space.'" (pp. 24–25)

"Because it really was admirable, this power to make space withdraw, to put space, all space, outside, in order that meditating being might be free to think." (p. 25)

"As a phenomenological reading of the poetic image, it probes the geometrical divide between inside and outside through an analysis of the imagination of matter." — editors' introduction (p. 22)

"The dialectical condition of 'interior immensity' and the 'immeasurable outside', attests to the spatiality of being as a reflexive inquiry on interiority, what Bachelard calls intimate geometry grounded in imagination." — editors' introduction (p. 22)

Open Questions

• The excerpt gives the values-play (whiteness, darkness, narrowness) that displaces geometry — but what does this imply for design practice, which works in drawings whose very medium is geometrical evidence? Can the architect design the "heightened quality" rather than the cell?
• The exterior as "an old intimacy lost in the shadow of memory" inverts the standard inside/outside hierarchy: is the outside always an inside that has been lost? How would this read against Ardener's classification (public/private, inner/outer as cross-cultural mapping criteria) and Grosz's demarcation thesis (no inside without enframing)?
• The mother is the figure who re-peoples the frightful, silent house — is Bachelard's intimate dialectic implicitly a child's dialectic (the maternal protection of the first universe), and what follows for interiors not organized around that figure?
• Balzac's "indifferent space" — the space put "behind" the meditating being — is for Bachelard a decline. Does architectural theory's default conception of space (container, extension) already inhabit Balzac's corrected version?
• How does the poetic image's resistance to memory ("Memory would encumber this image") cohere with Bachelard's elsewhere-celebrated topoanalysis of memory-laden places — is the image prior to memory, and is that distinction designable?