In twenty-six texts on aesthetics from the posthumously released collection, Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) — a French philosopher who “gives himself the right to dream” and “immerse himself in a meditative dream about the nature of things” — turns to the space of active imagination, finding it not only in the visual arts (Monet, Chagall, Flock, and others), poetry and prose (Rimbaud, Poe, Balzac, and others), but also in dreams, radio, rest, and solitude. In his dreams, one hears the call of the elements and the logosphere, the magic of the mask comes to life, and the “iron cosmos” reveals the psychological depths of the “textbook of solitude.” Interweaving a subtle analysis of the dreaming mind with existential, dynamic, airy dreams, dreams of ink, force, stone, and dreams of silence and music, Bachelard asserts the inherent right of man to integrity and a profound unity with nature.
