From Word To Word

I have been revelling in Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, his exploration of intimate space, and one of the images that has resonated with me most is that of the house as tree. Speaking of the cellar, he says, “The house, the cellar, the deep earth, achieve totality through depth. The house has become a natural being whose fate is bound to that of the mountains and of the waters that plough the land. The enormous stone plant it has become would not flourish if it did not have subterranean water at its base.”  Then, later, while exploring the image of the garret, he adds, “The well rooted house likes to have a branch that is sensitive to the wind, or an attic that can hear the rustle of leaves.”

My appreciation of this image is not solely based on the conjunction of two things that I love: the house and the tree. It is also based on the aptness of these two things in conjunction. The house, as Bachelard assures his readers throughout the book, is not still, is not dead, is not immobile, not if it truly inhabited. The image of the house as tree recognizes, however, though Bachelard does not make this explicit, that the life of the house is not an animal life. It grows and moves and changes and lives with the slow deliberation of trees. This is not a growth that we ourselves can experience. We can merely inhabit it.

It is in this sense that homes take root beneath us. It is in this sense that they seek deep subterranean waters. It is in this sense also that, once rooted, they can have branches that are sensitive to the wind, can have the whole sky as their terrace. This is an image that I have lived myself. It is an image that I am, even now, inhabiting.