Log24

Monday, September 5, 2016

Space Case

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:00 pm

The New York Times  yesterday evening —

Michel Butor dies at 89

Butor reportedly died on August 24.

This journal on that date —

From Butor's obituary —

"He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne
under the phenomenologist
Gaston Bachelard, writing a thesis on
mathematics and the idea of necessity."

"In 2013 the Académie Française awarded
Mr. Butor its Grand Prix for his life’s work.

Explaining his philosophy in an interview
with the critic and television producer
Georges Charbonnier in 1965, Mr. Butor said,
'Every written word is a victory over death.' "

A search for Bachelard in this journal yields remarks
related to Bachelard's Poetics of Space  and to the above
phrase by Wallace Stevens.

Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Tuesday February 6, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 8:00 am
The Poetics of Space

The title is from Bachelard.
I prefer Stevens:

The rock is the habitation of the whole,
Its strength and measure, that which is near, point A
In a perspective that begins again

At B:  the origin of the mango's rind.
It is the rock where tranquil must adduce
Its tranquil self, the main of things, the mind,

The starting point of the human and the end,
That in which space itself is contained, the gate
To the enclosure, day, the things illumined

By day, night and that which night illumines,
Night and its midnight-minting fragrances,
Night's hymn of the rock, as in a vivid sleep.

— Wallace Stevens,
   "The Rock," 1954

Joan Ockman in Harvard Design Magazine (Fall 1998):

"'We are far removed from any reference to simple geometrical forms,' Bachelard wrote…."

No, we are not. See Log24, Christmas 2005: 

Compare and contrast:

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(Click on pictures for details.)

More on Bachelard from Harvard Design Magazine:

"The project of discerning a loi des quatre éléments would preoccupy him until his death…."

For such a loi, see Theme and Variations and…

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(Click on design for details.)

Thought for Today:
"If you can talk brilliantly
about a problem, it can create
the consoling illusion that
it has been mastered."
— Stanley Kubrick, American
movie director (1928-1999).

(AP, "Today in History,"
February 6, 2007)

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