Gaston Bachelard’s theory of four poetic temperaments: On the affinity of the poet

Abstract

If Bachelard as a philosopher of science reveals in his epistemological works the negative significance of the image as a factor inhibiting scientific progress, as well as the source of epistemological obstacles, then as a poetry philosopher he aims to determine its positive value in the poetic-oniric domain. By discovering the value of the fertility of images and the existence of material images dictated by presocratic elements of nature — fire, water, air and earth — he proves the importance and autonomy of the image in the field of aesthetics and artistic creativity. Together with the application of the method appropriate for these studies, bringing the subject closer to the subject in close subjective experience, as opposed to its “cold” form, the image becomes known as the essential activity of the psyche. Imagination, “as the first and vital function” (Bachelard) of the psyche, delves into its first being, which is an image. Imagination — so deeply inscribed in the creative, affective, but also the unconscious constitution of the subject — from the point of view of its content appears as material imagination. We know that the image gains a material meaning in contact with cosmological substances — it derives its content from the symbolism of the four elements: fire, earth, water and air — which Bachelard calls “imagination hormones” — thanks to them “man grows mentally”. This article presents the first definition of a Bachelardian image: an image as a composite and combination of archetypal forms of the unconscious that belong to man/poet with material materiality of the perceived external world independent of him.