Imagery of Life and Death in the Work of Gaston Bachelard : On The Flame of a Candle and Fragments of a Poetic of Fire

Early 20th century French philosopher Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962), who received extensive training in the physical sciences, devoted his life to the promotion of the human imagination. Taking most of his examples from poetry, he discussed and classified various kinds of images in terms of their relationships with the elements of earth, water, air, and fire. Before his death, he returned to images of fire. Some of this work was published before Bachelard died under the title The Flame of a Candle (La flame d\u27une chandelle, 1961). The remainder was edited by his daughter Suzanne and subsequently published as Fragments of a Poetic of Fire (Fragments d\u27une poétique du Feu, 1988). In this paper, I will consider Bachelard\u27s examination of life and death images, focusing chiefly on these two volumes. In The Flame of a Candle, Bachelard claims that the candle\u27s flame is a model of the tranquil and delicate life, because it expresses verticality and solitude. He uses the flame as a metaphor to explain how people live solitary lives with a desire to improve. On the other end of the spectrum, the death images of fire, which Bachelard examines in Fragments of a Poetic of Fire, are linked to the Phoenix, the mythical bird that dies by fire, and Empedocles, who killed himself by leaping into volcanic Mount Etna. Yet we must note that these two arguments, although published in two different volumes decades apart, were originally considered to be part of a single work. Consequently, to Bachelard, life and death images do not remain mutually exclusive opposites, but interdependent. The phoenix dies, but rises again from the ashes. Similarly, as I argue, Bachelard regarded life and death as two sides of the same coin