The Poetics of Space - Paperback

First published in 1958, The Poetics of Space is one of those rare works of philosophy that reads like poetry — a sustained meditation on the intimate spaces that shape how we dream, remember, and understand ourselves. Gaston Bachelard moves through houses and rooms, cellars and attics, drawers and wardrobes, nests and corners, finding in each a universe of thought and feeling that ordinary experience overlooks.

For architects, writers, psychologists, and anyone who has ever felt that a particular room or threshold held something ineffable, this book offers a language for what they already sensed. It remains, more than sixty years after its first publication, one of the most quietly influential works ever written about the relationship between space and the human imagination.

This Penguin Classics edition features a foreword by Mark Z. Danielewski, whose cult novel House of Leaves drew directly from Bachelard's ideas, and an introduction by philosopher Richard Kearney on the book's enduring significance.

Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) was the son of shoemakers who became one of France's most celebrated philosophers, credited with renewing the emphasis on symbol and poetic meaning in architecture. Translated by Maria Jolas.

304 pages. Published December 2014.