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Anton Vydra. "Solitude as a Philosophical Stance in the Later Bachelard" in Affectivity, Agency, and Intersubjectivity, (2012), p. 187-201.

French philosopher Gaston Blanchard (1884-1962) pursued the philosophy of science until about 1960 when he refocused his object of interest on phenomenology, a trend found in French philosophical circles generally at the time.  While the image of solitude found in the hut and the house is described in his The Poetics of Space, Blanchard developed a philosophy of solitude in later works such as The Flame of a Candle, in which he discovered solitude to depend upon Other and upon  the relationship of self to Other. Scholar Anton Vydra summarizes the issue in this helpful essay.

The author notes the influence on Bachelard of the writer and essayist Henri Bosco, to whom The Flame of a Candle is dedicated. Bosco's idiosyncratic treatment of phenomenological topics resonated with Bachelard's subjectivity themes. Solitude surrounded Bachelard's childhood, where objects took on larger presence. Objects inhabited and defined places, shaped emotions, animated dreams. A quiet village came to replace the scientific city of Bachelard's former interest. He had to conjure reveries to pass the time in large cities. Inevitably, Bachelard was attracted to poetry as expression, just as science and the philosophy of science has its own rigorous vocabulary reflecting its domineering view of reality as the counterpart.

Blanchard had stated in The Psychoanalysis of Fire that science could not truly grasp fire as reality but as a dissipation of reality, while poetry understood fire as imaginative, an object of imaginative philosophizing. Similarly, solitude, friendship, love, and similar realities could not be comprehended by "rigorous science." How, then, could one explore these phenomena with those who lack imagination or militate against it?

Blanchard explored literature as a continuum of the exploration of solitude. He viewed books as the equivalent of huts and houses, the latter as described in The Poetics of Space. Not only are books of literature and poetry not objects of scientific research but they are not objects of observation at all. A literary work should reverberate within the reader, therein revealing its value to the reader who, in turn, makes the effort to perceive and appreciate the work. Notes Vydra:

The solitude of the poet's lived experience is not the solitude of the reader. Nevertheless, the nature of both solitudes is identical, if there is an identity between values of both lived-experiences.

This is, of course, the ideal relationship: "every book its reader," as the Indian librarian Ranganathan put it. But the relation in Bachelard is within reveries, "intersubjective fields of reveries." Bachelard would have us read a work several times in order to compenetrate its value and make its value our own, both intellectually and oneirically, the latter revealing the unconscious or subconscious identification. Bachelard does not consider the subconscious as strictly psychoanalytical, but also in terms of archetypal imagination and knowledge.

The author sees an analogy between Bachelard's self and the alter ego that emerges from reverie, from within solitude. It is the "paradox of self-experience" that is classically considered alienation. One experiences the self as others would, or one experiences oneself as unintelligible to the self. Bachelard cites these experiences as those of clear self and obscure self. In the context of reading, we are consciously seeking out both the Other and the self, and at times these overlap, parallel, or diverge, in each instance not necessarily alienation but rumination, introspection, and -- ultimately -- an intensification of being. But Bachelard is not, as with many contemporary French philosophers, focusing on the significations of the text but providing a space or window for the "recovery of meaning."

The Bachelardian solitary readers does not interpret what the work is about, but rather interprets who he/she actually is in essence, how the intimate world of the reading person exists for him-/herself. In fact, he/she is no one else but a Self-interpreter, a Self-mediator ... [Writes Bachelard:] "The consciousness of being solitary, the philosopher in effect says, is always in shadows, longing to be two."

Rather than ask "What is solitude?" says Vydra, we can ask "How can we be truly philosophers (as Blanchard intended it?)" Three features  of solitude arise, three solitudes or complementary aspects of solitude, namely, 1) solitude with things, 2) solitude with others, and 3) solitude with self -- all of which are based on non-objectivity. Things are not vital to absolute realists, but the solitary animates them, brings them meaning and context, makes or conceives of them as a community of being. Similarly, a person is not physically alone in most instances, but again animates those around to meaning, at least subjectively.

There can be not absolute solipsism. Notes the author:

But the solitude of self also presupposes a duality of questioning/answering, of clarifying/clarified. Bachelard understands this distinction between rational vigilant self and confusing dreaming self. As Vydra puts it, "An absolute solitude never existed. Authentic solitude is a form of relation." But Bachelard's interest is specifically in the dreaming self, for it stands outside of objective exploration and rationalist understanding. The dreaming self contains that which the solitary philosopher seeks, into which the solitary philosopher seeks to dwell.

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