The following quotes about a phenomenology of the imagination are from Gaston Bachelard, ‘The Poetics of Space‘, ISBN-13: 978-0807064733, first published in French under the title ‘La poétique de l’espace’ in 1958.
This French philosopher‘s later work is a revelation to me. I didn’t know it is allowed to practice philosophy in such a heartfelt manner.
The communicability of an unusual image is a fact of great ontological significance. p. xvii
[...] the poetic act itself, the sudden image, the flare-up of being in the imagination, are inaccessible to such [psychoanalytical] investigations. p. xviii
[...] how can an image, at times very unusual, appear to be a concentration of the entire psyche? How – with no preparation – can this singular, short-lived event constituted by the appearance of an unusual poetic image, react on other minds and in other hearts, despite all the barriers of common sense, all the disciplined schools of thought, content in their immobility? p. xviii, xix
[...] the soul – as Rouault’s painting proves – possesses an inner light, the light that an inner vision knows and expresses in the world of brilliant colors, in the world of sunlight, so that a veritable reversal of psychological perspectives is demanded of those who seek to understand, at the same time that they love Rouault’s painting. They must participate in an inner light which is not a reflection of light from the outside world. p. xxi
Painting like this is therefore a phenomenon of the soul. The oeuvre must redeem an impassioned soul. p. xxi
A consciousness associated with the soul is more relaxed, less intentionalized than a consciousness associated with the phenomena of the mind. p. xxi
[...] if I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace. Thought and experience are not the only things that sanction human values. The values that belong to daydreaming mark humanity in its depths. p. 6
[...] the house is one of the greatest powers of integration for the thoughts, memories and dreams of mankind. The binding principle in this integration is the daydream. p. 6
To read poetry is essentially to daydream. p. 17
[...] every good book should be re-read as soon as it is finished. p. 21
In the realm of absolute imagination, we remain young late in life. p. 33
[...] we feel warm because it is cold out-of-doors. [...] Baudelaire declares that dreamers like a severe winter. “Every year they ask the sky to send down as much snow, hail and frost as it can contain. What they really need are Canadian or Russian winters. Their own nests will be all the warmer, all the downier, all the better beloved …” [...] Henri Bosco has given an excellent description of this type of revery in the following short phrase: “When the shelter is sure, the storm is good.” p. 39
[...] phenomenology of the imagination cannot be content with a reduction which would make the image a subordinate means of expression; it demands, on the contrary, that images be lived directly, that they be taken as sudden events in life. When the image is new, the world is new. p. 47
To verify images kills them, and it is always more enriching to imagine than to experience. p. 88