Twenty-second International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Gaston Bachelard, (1884-1962), was a French philosopher and an author of multiple conceptions. At the beginning of his carrier, he was occupied mainly by the sciences and epistemology, but later in his life he developed also the poetics of imagination, and, less know, the philosophy of vertical time. This theory concentrates on being in the moment and shows how this state of mind translates into the creative act, and into the poetry. For this reason, Bachelard’s conceptions influenced profoundly the XXth century Humanism and gave us the new tools to understand its representations in the literature. Moreover, thanks to their universal dimension, his conceptions are still recognized as relevant in many disciplines all over the world. That being said, interest in his work is not equal across countries. The aim of our paper will be to analyze the impact that Bachelard’s ideas had on the Polish humanist circles (philosophers and literary critics) and the state of the research in this domains in Poland during the last few decades. It is all the more interesting that some of his books have not even been translated into Polish yet. Therefore, we take a closer look at the possible causes and effects of this situation.