What are the limits of empathy? What are the boundaries of our self? What color is the darkness of our soul? Where does fear exist? What if we were to imagine in our mind's eye the seemingly nonvisible? Is it possible?

Not only is this process of localizing abstract aspects of our psychology possible, but it also has a name:  topoanalysis, defined by French philosopher Gaston Bachelard (June 27, 1884 – October 16, 1962).

I should like to give the name of topoanalysis to this auxiliary of psychoanalysis. Topoanalysis, then, would be the systematic psychological study of the sites of our intimate lives. In the theater of the past that is constituted by memory, the stage setting maintains the characters in their dominant roles.

The Poetics of Space, Bachelard's seminal work, mixes poetics, illusion, and familiar images we all know and can render mentally to localize some of our most abstract self-concepts. An attic might represent fear, or a nest could mean safety. While he might not answer these questions I posed above directly, he gives us a suitable framework to find the answers. What you might discover is that you do this already.

"Occulus" by Isobel Egan. Photograph by Ellen Vrana.

Bachelard's preferred "imagined" locales are pretty intimate and known—thus accessible—to any person reading his work. A home, something Bachelard argued we created wherever we went (and which I argue is often a misleading memory), is his primary image. When British author Laurie Lee reckons he was formed while tracing the ceiling cracks over his bed at night, or C. S. Lewis noted he was the "product of attics explored," they speak of Bachelard's melting pot of space, memory, and locales.

The great function of poetry is to give us back the situations of our dreams. The house we were born in is more than the embodiment of home, it is also an embodiment of dreams. Each one of its nooks and corners was a resting place for daydreaming. And often the resting place particularized the daydream.

However, Bachelard's concept of topoanlysis went beyond simple metaphor and worked through what he called "poetic space." Where metaphor ('our imagination is like a house') falls flat, the poetic image ('our imagination exists in a form we know as a house') flexes to meet our complex psychoanalytic needs.

We all try to contain abstract mental concepts; consider these examples: Rilke's famous advice to "go into oneself" to find answers (what does 'in self' look like?) or Anna Deavere Smith's discussion of "being in and out of it" to summon creative power. In and out of what? Or choreographer Twyla Tharp's directive to find a warm, nurturing space to begin the creative process. Does she mean a room, a mindset, or both?
 
Bachelard argues - and you might find yourself nodding along - in The Poetics of Space that we imagine places and locals we know—either specific or generalized—to make this existential process easier.

Porcelain walls by Irish ceramist, Isobel Egan. Photograph by Ellen Vrana.

Bachelard also explores the microspaces within the house image; corners, nests, drawers, cupboards, cellars, and attics all figure in his analysis. 

A few of his thoughts on corners:

And every retreat on the part of the soul possesses, in my opinion, figures of havens. That most sordid of all havens, the corner, deserves to be examined. To withdraw into one's corner is undoubtedly a meager expression. But despite its meagerness, it has numerous images, some, perhaps of great antiquity, images that are psychologically primitive.

To read and enjoy Bachelard's work takes a great deal of mental visualization, which some people can do more naturally than others, do not be discouraged. For example, his statement that a poet will "seek warmth and the quiet life in the arms of a curve" made me picture Allen Ginsberg on a swing. It takes special conjecture to move further.

One has only to look at pictures of ammonites to realize that, as early as the Mesozoic Age, mollusks constructed their shells according to the teachings of a transcendental geometry […] A poet naturally understands this esthetic category of life.

Novelist Penelope Lively would have loved that; she collected ammonites, not for the transcendental curves but because they housed her memories.

Bachelard's work reminds me of Vladimir Nabokov, who often turned abstract concepts into physical entities— "existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness." Or Rebecca Solnit, whose memory narratives often expand across ice fields and scramble up trees and reconfigure our imagined space.

In What Is a Wall? I approach from the other direction, starting with a poetic image and extracting the psychoanalysis.

"Palisade" by Isobel Egan. Photograph by Ellen Vrana.

I don't want to mislead you. The Poetics of Space doesn't answer the questions I proposed above. But it does provide tools to help visualize and "place" certain feelings and imaginations.   Like American poet and creative writing teacher Richard Hugo who wrote about the need to "locate a home for the impulse to the poem." The Poetics of Space is about cultivating, housing, storing, protecting, and accessing the imagination and the emotions tied to imagination.

When Irish ceramic artist Isobel Egan says her porcelain structures are about memory, I know exactly what she means. (Bachelard influenced her work.)

Why does it matter? Why do we need to localize, contain, or even imagine things like memory? For understanding. A different facet of anything helps us gain perspective—literally—and, thus, understand notions that might otherwise overwhelm and be ignored.   Of all aspects of self-awareness, our mortality might be the most difficult. It is common for writers to anchor concepts of death and mortality in physical spaces. From Joan Didion, who wrote about "twilight blue nights" after her daughter's death, to Christopher Hitchens, who imagined, when dying, that he crossed over to a "land of the ill."

Bachelard's writing expands one's thinking and illuminates many other authors. Read it alongside Jun'ichiro Tanizaki's study of the aesthetics of shadow, Walt Whitman's poetry, whose vision conceives a universe in his most immediate space of himself, or Jackie Morris' illustrations that deliver us back to the scope and scene of dreams.