from Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (1958) trans. Maria Jolas (1964)
...snow especially reduces the exterior world to nothing rather too easily. It gives a single color to the entire universe which, with the one word, snow, is both expressed and nullified for those who have found shelter...
In any case, outside the occupied house, the winter cosmos is a simplified cosmos. It is a non-house in the same way that metaphysicians speak of a non-I, and between the house and the non-house it is easy to establish all sorts of contradictions. Inside the house, everything may be differentiated and multiplied. The house derives reserves and refinements of intimacy from winter; while in the outside world, snow covers all tracks, blurs the road, muffles every sound, conceals all colors. As a result of this universal whiteness, we feel a form of cosmic negation in action. The dreamer of houses knows and senses this, and because of the diminished entity of the outside world, experiences all the qualities of intimacy with increased intensity.
II
Winter is by far the oldest of the seasons. Not only does it confer age upon our memories, taking us back to a remote past but, on snowy days, the house too is old. It is as though it were living in the past of centuries gone by.
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2 comments:
TB, you have absolutely no idea how difficult is was getting back from the barroom last evening. I don't care how many gila monsters or porcupines or what-have-yous you might have braved in returning to the hostel. Here, every surface remains encrusted in ice. One had to become a gazelle to get home - jumping and twirling on the sidewalks. A gazelle or an ice capader, I guess.
This whole blog idea is a consequence of seasonal affective disorder.
Nice post. The second part reminds me of Elizabeth Bishop's "Sestina," although in that poem, it is September rain that besieges the house rather than snow. But an evocative interior space nonetheless.
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