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The great function of poetry is to give back to us the situations of our dreams.

Gaston Bachelard

Through imagination, thanks to the subtleties of the irreality function, we re-enter the world of confidence, the world of the confident being, which is the proper world for reverie.
GASTON BACHELARD

Confidence Function Imagination Proper Thankful World
To disappear into deep water or to disappear toward a far horizon, to become part of depth of infinity, such is the destiny of man that finds its image in the destiny of water.
GASTON BACHELARD

Destiny Disappear Finding Infinity Nature Water
The metaphor is – an origin, the origin of an image which acts directly, immediately.
GASTON BACHELARD

Act Direct Image Origin
All the senses awaken and fall into harmony in poetic reverie. Poetic reverie listens to this polyphony of the senses, and the poetic consciousness must record it.
GASTON BACHELARD

Awake Consciousness Fall Harmony Poetic Record
Empirical description involves enslavement to the object by decreeing passivity on the part of the subject.
GASTON BACHELARD

Description Object Slave Subject
A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language.
GASTON BACHELARD

Beautiful Born Existence Kind Language Special
The reveries of two solitary souls prepare the sweetness of loving.
GASTON BACHELARD

Love Preparation Soul Sweet
To live life well is to express life poorly; if one expresses life too well, one is living it no longer.
GASTON BACHELARD

Expression Life Live Oneself Philosophy Poor Understand
Any comparison diminishes the expressive qualities of the terms of the comparison.
GASTON BACHELARD

Comparison Diminish Quality Term
Even a minor event in the life of a child is an event of that child’s world and thus a world event.
GASTON BACHELARD

Children Event Life World
Daydream transports the dreamer outside the immediate world to a world that bears the mark of infinity.
GASTON BACHELARD

Dreamer Infinity Transportation World
By listening to certain words as a child listens to the sea in a seashell, a word dreamer hears the murmur of a world of dreams.
GASTON BACHELARD

Children Dreamer Listening Sea Word World
He who ceases to learn cannot adequately teach.
GASTON BACHELARD

Accurate Learning Properly Teaching
A clear conscience is, for me, an occupied conscience-never empty-the conscience of a man at work until his last breath.
GASTON BACHELARD

Breathe Conscience Empty Man Myself
Ideas are invented only as correctives to the past. Through repeated rectification of this kind one may hope to disengage an idea that is valid.
GASTON BACHELARD

Corrective Hope Ideas Invention Repeat
There are reveries so deep, reveries which help us descend so deeply within ourselves that they rid us of our history. They liberate us from our name. These solitudes of today return us to the original solitudes.
GASTON BACHELARD

Help History Liberty Name Original Ourselves Return Solitude Spiritual

The great function of poetry is to give back to us the situations of our dreams.

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The great function of poetry is to give back to us the situations of our dreams.

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