Gaston Bachelard Past Quotations

The philosophy of poetry must acknowledge that the poetic act has no past, at least no recent past, in which its preparation and appearance could be followed.

The poetic image […] is not an echo of the past. On the contrary: through the brilliance of any image, the distant past resounds with echoes.

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.

Words, in their distant past, have the past of my reveries.

The past of the soul is so distant! The soul does not live on the edge of time. It finds its rest in the universe imagined by reverie.

One must always maintain one's connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it.