Earth and Reveries of Will

An engaging poetic investigation that introduces us to the space where matter touches the unconscious.

The book “Earth and the Dreams of the Will” opens Bachelard’s two-part work about the ground within the cycle “Psychoanalysis of Elements.” The focus is on active dreams that push a person to transform matter: the mythologems and images of the potter and the blacksmith; rocks and cliffs as the oldest figures of imagination; precious stones and their connection to the deeper layers of the psyche; minerals and metals as the memory and past of the planet.

Bachelard carries out his poetic “investigation” through texts by Virginia Woolf, Elias Lönnrot, Herman Melville, J. W. Goethe, Jean-Paul Sartre, Alexander Blok, Andrey Bely, Sergei Yesenin, and other authors.

“Matter appears as the hidden force of the worker. Earthly things bring us an echo of the promised energy. Only let us grant work with matter its rightful oneirism—and narcissism of one’s own daring will awaken in us.”