Gaston Bachelard: An Elemental Reverie on the World's Stuff We are renewed when we follow Bachelard's instruction on how to read the world or how to read a poem. For all his inspiriting of matter, his enlivening of the world, there always remains a down-to-earth cast to his thoughts. Bachelard's contribution to the understanding of the imagination, indeed to the whole of consciousness, is measureless. - Joanne H. Stroud "Joanne Stroud Bilby's book on Bachelard is, you can bet on it, written by an enthusiast of the first order, and--in my view--enthusiasm is, along with his curiosity and illuminating intelligence, exactly the quality we most value in the work of the wonderful philosopher of surrealism. This is what imagination is about." - Mary Ann Caws Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature, Graduate School, CUNY, and author of The Surrealist Look: an Erotics of Encounter (MIT) and editor of Surrealism (Phaidon), Surrealist Love Poems (Tate Publishing), and Surrealist Painters and Poets (MIT). THE BACHELARD TRANSLATIONS are the inspiration of Joanne H. Stroud, Director of Publications for The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, who in 1981 contracted with José Corti to publish in English the untranslated works of Bachelard on the imagination. Quite directly said, Dr. Stroud presents Gaston Bachelard in an exquisitely "Bachelardian" fashion, through images, in images, and through what we might think of as "the great reversal"-being more "objective" about our inner life while at the same time becoming more "subjective" in our presence with the world. We discover that it is quite possible to carefully and with care "track" the inner world through deepest engagement, and at the same time feel everything around us as a Who, as Presences. The imaginal world discovered by Gaston Bachlard, lover of poetic images, that great alchemical union of "knowing and presence," can heal the world, can heal the soul, can heal our relationships, from the most intimate pairing to the boardroom, even leading to international intimacy of respect. This book presents these possibilities. With Bachelard, and with Dr. Stroud, we experience something of a revolutionary shift: that it is indeed possible to live poetic, imaginal existence as formative of daily life. Bachelard seemed to be somewhat of a recluse, which seemed necessary to the work he was doing, for the disturbances of the hectic world would have delayed or even foiled the unfolding of his work. Dr. Stroud, however, intimates that it is possible, indeed imperative in this time, to be fully within the world as active world-dreamers. While the process may well be the "grasping, mapping, making," equally important is the primacy of the imaginal Earth, and dedication to imaginal ecology. - From Robert Sardello's introduction.
