We thank Jonas Rutgeerts for the permission to reproduce on Rhuthmos this brilliant article published originally in Parrhesia n° 31, 2019, pp. 85-102.
Introduction
In recent years scholars from different fields have taken up the notion of rhythm to analyse different temporal and spatial phenomena. [1] Despite this turn towards rhythm, however, the term has remained enigmatic. We experience rhythm in everything, but we don’t seem to be able to generate a clear understanding of how rhythm operates. As Jacques Derrida mentioned “rhythm has always haunted our tradition, without ever reaching the centre of its concerns.” [2] In this article I aim to explore the operational capacity of rhythm, by analysing the work of two philosophers who devoted a great deal of attention to the concept : Gaston Bachelard and Henri Bergson. Both agree that rhythm plays a crucial role in the constitution of singular temporal existence : for Bergson it emerges when the omnipresent force of duration expresses itself in and through a distinct phenomenon, for Bachelard, by contrast, rhythm should be considered as the temporal architecture that is constitutive for the durational existence of singular entities. Exploring both theories of rhythm will allow me to come to a better understanding of how rhythms operates and how it relates to our experience of time.
For most of the English-speaking world the concept of rhythm and the method of rhythmanalysis is inherently connected to the theoretical oeuvre of French philosopher and social theorist Henri Lefebvre. The translation of his book Rhythmanalysis : Space, Time and Everyday Life in 2012 seems to herald rhythm’s appearance on the theoretical stage. [3] The rhythmanalytical project, however, does not begin with Lefebvre’s book, but can be traced back to the work of Gaston Bachelard and, more specific, to his book La dialectique de la durée (1936). [4] In the last chapter of this book, which bears the title ‘Rhythmanalysis’, Bachelard argues that one should never lose sight of the fact that “all exchanges take place through rhythms.” [5] Building on the work of Portuguese philosopher Lúcio Alberto Pinheiro dos Santos, from whom Bachelard borrows the term rhythmanalysis, the philosopher here advocates for an active rhythmanalytical theory that never loses sight of the fact that rhythm constitutes “the basis of the dynamics of both life and the psyche” (Bachelard 1950, 128). [6]
Bachelard’s conceptualization of rhythm fits in with a broader philosophy of time that the French philosopher was developing during his teaching period in Dijon between 1930 and 1940. This philosophical work resulted in two books, L’intuition de l’instant (1932) and La dialectic de la durée (1936), and two articles, “Instant Poétique et instant Métaphisique” (1931) and “La continuité et la multiplicité temporelles” (1937). [7] Bachelard framed this entire philosophy of time as a critique against Bergsonism and the Bergsonians, which he explicitly characterises as his “adversaries” (Bachelard 1950, 11). [8] Although Bachelard is sympathetic to Bergson’s attempt to develop a theory of time that does not understand temporality as abstract clock time, he profoundly disagrees with the Bergsonian idea of duration. For Bachelard time should not be understood as a continuous flow, in which the past is prolonged into the present, but as fractured and constantly riven, the present constantly breaking away from its past. The conceptualization of rhythm fits in this argument against Bergsonian duration. By advancing rhythm as a “fundamental temporal notion” (Bachelard 1950, ix), Bachelard aims to replace Bergson’s conceptualization of time as duration with a reading of time in which continuity is the result of a rhythmic interplay.
In recent years Bachelard’s philosophy of time and the accompanying polemic with Bergson have received new attention in different books and edited volumes. [9] In spite of Bachelard’s explicit critique, these works refuse to frame the discussion between Bergson and Bachelard in terms of a simple opposition. The idea behind this it that in his attempt to pick a fight with his contemporary, Bachelard not only failed to give an accurate account of the subtlety and complexity of the Bergsonian project, but also caricaturised his own philosophy. [10] Indeed, a close reading of both theoretical oeuvres shows more points of convergence than Bachelard seems willing to acknowledge. While I agree that it is important to look for the different affinities underlying the apparent difference between both philosophers, I would however also like to stress the fundamental difference between both philosophers. Although Bachelard takes up and re-reads a lot of concepts that were developed by Bergson, in the end his vision on time is radically different from that of Bergson. As Jean François Perraudin argues, this difference appears most clearly when we look at the “practical and therapeutic perspectives” of the theory, which indicates fundamentally different perspectives on how to relate to time. [11] By exploring how both philosophers develop the concept of rhythm in and through their oeuvre, I want to show the many micro-relations that emerge in-between Bergson’s and Bachelard’s analysis of time, while drawing attention to the profound differences in their attitude towards it.
Bergson and Bachelard : Continuity, discontinuity and rhythm
A reader of Bachelard does not even need to reach the first chapters of L’intuition de L’instant and La dialectique de la durée to realize the polemic character of both books. The titles already indicate Bachelard’s aim to radically rethink key concepts of the Bergsonian philosophy. [12] In L’intuition de l’instant Bachelard connects intuition, described by Bergson as the “direct vision” via which we “experience the uninterrupted prolongation of the past in the present encroaching towards the future,” [13] to the discontinuous instant. In doing so he not only brings together two concepts that are opposed in Bergson’s philosophical system, but also blurs the Bergsonian distinction between the intellect, which deals with the instantaneous, and philosophical/artistic intuition, which deals with duration. In a similar fashion La dialectique de la durée provokes the Bergsonian system, as it transforms duration, which Bergson describes as an immediate given of consciousness, into a dialectical movement. Duration is here no longer the ontological primary source of life, but rather the product of a discontinuous alternation of something and nothing. [14]
Bachelard’s critique on the Bergsonian project is primarily directed against Bergson’s concept of continuity. Bachelard wishes to develop a “discontinuous Bergsonism” (Bachelard 1950, 8), ironically stating that “of Bergsonism we accept everything but continuity” (Bachelard 1950, 7). However, in spite of Bachelard’s attempts to break the Bergsonian continuity, the discussion between the two philosophers cannot be reduced to a rigid polemic between homogenous continuity, illustrated by Bergson, and absolute discontinuity, illustrated by Bachelard, for two main reasons. Firstly, Bachelard’s theory cannot simply be reduced to a plea for discontinuity, rather one of Bachelard’s main goals in both L’intuition de l’instant and La dialectique de la durée is to understand how duration works. While in the beginning of L’intuition de l’instant, he firmly states that “time presents itself as solitary instant”, [15] he later on wonders how this solitary instant can be related to “the becoming of being” (Bachelard 1932, 60), thus trying to understand the “continuity of the discontinuous” (Bachelard 1932, 68). [16] Secondly, Bachelard’s characterisation – or caricaturisation – of Bergson’s duration as homogeneous continuity, fails to appreciate the fact that Bergson himself continuously critiques the idea of one all-encompassing duration. Already in his first major book Bergson describes duration in terms of “qualitative multiplicity” and “absolute heterogeneity”, stating that a conceptualization of duration as something homogenous would make freedom incomprehensible. [17] In the books that follow Bergson consistently talks about “durations with different elasticity”, [18] or about a “continuity of durations”. [19]
Rather than understanding the distinction between continuity and discontinuity as the end point of the discussion, and choosing one or the other, this distinction can serve as the point of departure for a discussion. For both Bachelard and Bergson concrete duration can only be understood as the outcome of a relation between continuity and discontinuity, or between a “dynamic force” and a “force of resistance”. [20] To understand this relation, both Bergson and Bachelard seek recourse to the mechanisms of rhythm. [21] Connected to both flow and form, to free-flowing movement and the organization of movement according to a beat, rhythm is an apt tool to understand the interaction between the forces of continuity and those of discontinuity. Consequently, both philosophers use it to conceptualize the concrete temporal existence and to analyze the difference between singular temporalities. Advocating neither absolute discontinuity nor homogeneous continuity, both philosophers try to understand the different temporalities that we experience as a complex rhythmic interplay between break and flow. According to Bergson, there is “no unique rhythm of duration”, but a multiplicity of “different rhythms”, which are each marked by a specific degree of tension, or relaxation that “fixes their respective places in the series of being” (Bergson 1939, 232). For Bachelard, on the other hand, it is “impossible not to recognize the need to base complex life on “a plurality of durations that have neither the same rhythm nor the same solidity in heir sequence, nor the same power of continuity” (Bachelard, 1950, viii).
These similarities, however, cannot lead to a simple equation of both theories, or to an understanding of Bachelard’s project as a mere rearticulation of Bergson. Both philosophers coin rhythm as a key concept, but they conceptualize rhythm radically different. To understand this, I will have to take a closer look at the conceptualization of rhythm in the work of Bergson and Bachelard.
Rhythm in Bergson : melodies and vibrations
Although Bachelard suggests otherwise, Bergson devotes a lot of attention to the idea of rhythm. It is a key concept in Matiere et mémoire (1896) and already plays an important role in his first major work Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience (1889). As is well known, the basic claim of Essai is that our inner experience of time is corrupted by space. Both common sense, science and philosophy have the tendency to reduce our inner experience of temporality to a sequence of now-moments, thus reducing time to a “homogeneous medium in which our conscious states are ranged alongside one another as in space, so as to form discrete multiplicity” (Bergson 1927, 67). However, “when our ego lets itself live, when it refrains from separating, its present states form its former states” (Bergson 1927, 75). This leads to a completely different experience of time, not as the repetition of instants, but as duration. That is, as “nothing but a succession of qualitative changes, which melt into and permeate one another, without precise outlines, without any tendency to externalise themselves in relation to one another, without any affiliation with number” (Bergson 1927, 77). To illustrate this experience of duration Bergson refers to the metaphor of melody, where the different notes interpenetrate each other to form one heterogeneous unity, an organic and dynamic whole “comparable to a living being” (Bergson 1927, 75). Similar to duration, we cannot understand a melody by breaking it down into discrete unit or notes. In order to understand it we should immerse ourselves into the movement of the music and let ourselves get carried away by its flow.
With the development of melody as one of the dominant metaphors for duration, rhythm also appears in Bergson’s discourse. Bergson sees a close relation between rhythm and melody, as both phenomena relate to a durational understanding of time. Take for example Bergson’s famous passage of the sounds of the bell :
The sounds of the bell certainly reach me one after the other ; but one of two alternatives must be true. Either I retain each of these successive sensations in order to combine it with the others and form a group which reminds me of an air or rhythm which I know : in that case I do not count the sounds, I limit myself to gathering, so to speak, the qualitative impression produced by the whole series. Or else I intend explicitly to count them, and then I shall have to separate them, and this separation must take place within some homogeneous medium in which the sounds, stripped of their qualities, and in a manner emptied, leave traces of their presence, which are absolutely alike. (Bergson 1927, 64-65 ; my emphasis)
In this passage, Bergson explicitly links rhythm to melody and, consequently, to duration. When we “limit” ourselves to the qualitative impression produced by the whole series, we experience it as rhythmic. Despite this link, however, rhythm should not simply be equated with melody, or with duration. As we will see, rhythm merely suggests or points to melodic duration, but does not coincide with it.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Bergson does not make a distinction between rhythm and measure. In the first half of twentieth century, it was common to distinguish artificial measure or meter, which was found in the stomping repetitions of the new mechanic labour, from natural rhythms, connected to the organic pulsation of the heart or the waves of the sea. [22] In Essai, however, Bergson defines rhythm as an aesthetic tool, refusing to connect it to nature : “Nature, like art, proceeds by suggestion, but does not command the resources of rhythm” (Bergson 1927, 12). Moreover, contrary to what we might expect from a philosopher with a clear predilection for gracious organic movement, Bergson states that the aesthetic power of rhythm resides exactly in its repetitive and predictable character. The “regularity of the rhythm” takes “complete possession of our thought and will” and gives us the feeling that we participate in the movement of the work of art (Bergson 1927, 9-10). Referring to poetry, Bergson describes this quality as follows :
The poet is he with whom feelings develop into images, and the images themselves into words, which translate them while obeying the laws of rhythm. In seeing these images pass before our eyes we in our turn experience the feeling which was, so to speak their emotional equivalent : but we should never realize these images so strongly without the regular movement of the rhythm by which our soul is lulled into self-forgetfulness, and, as in a dream thinks and sees with the poet. (Bergson 1927, p. 11 ; my emphasis) [23]
Through its regular movement rhythm makes us forget ourselves. In turn, this forgetting of the self allows us to immerse ourselves into the movement that is suggested by the phrase and to get carried away by its momentum. This can be connected to the previous example of the bell. It is no coincidence that Bergson uses an example that is markedly amelodic. [24] The monotone and staccato repetition of the strokes serves as the condition for a state of self-forgetfulness, which in turn allows for the experience of real duration. Rhythm thus functions as “instrument of suggestion”, or “vector of hypnosis” [25]. Its repetition, which in itself is quantitative, makes the listener forget her-/himself and lulls her in a state were she experiences the different strokes as one continuous melody. Rhythm, argues Bergson, functions as tool to evoke duration, it is “the quality of quantity” (Bergson 1927, p. 92)
In Matière et mémoire Bergson at the same time takes up this conceptualization of rhythm and changes it drastically. As in Essai, rhythm takes up an ambiguous position, being that in extensive reality that points to intensive duration. Contrary to Essai, however, this ‘pointing to’ should no longer be understood in terms of suggestion, but in terms of expression. In Matière et mémoire rhythm is no longer reduced to an aesthetic tool. Rather, it becomes an ontological operation through which duration expresses itself in concrete entities. Bergson here trades the rigid bifurcation, where inextensive time and extensive space are radically separated categories, for a view in which time and space are extremes on a continuum, or opposite forces that are always co-present. As such, every real phenomenon is “something intermediate between divided extension [pure space] and pure inextension [or duration]” (Bergson 1939, 276). In this context, rhythm gets a new function. It no longer suggests pure duration, but expresses concrete duration. Rhythm is here conceived as the specific outcome of the concrete interplay between the forces of extension and inextension that takes place in each phenomenon and characterises it.
In Matière et mémoire, rhythm is the defining feature of the phenomena : not only does everything have its own rhythm, rather, each entity is its rhythm. To understand this, we need to take into account Bergson’s understanding of durational movement as vibrational. As we have seen, duration is no longer a specific quality of our inner experience of time, but a force that permeates everything and makes everything move or “vibrate”. What appears stable and solid on the macro-level, “resolves itself into numberless vibration” on the micro-level (Bergson 1939, 234). In other words, everything consists out of vibration. What makes something singular is simply its rate of vibration, or rhythm. Elements that testify to a more powerful presence of the force of inextension, like the mind, have a higher more fluid rhythm. Elements in which the extensive forces are more present, like material objects, have a slower, more solid, rhythm. By introducing these differences in rhythm, or rate of vibration, Bergson not only explains the difference between elements, but he also reveals the reason why we experience stability. According to Bergson, the rhythm of our consciousness is so high that it fails to experience the slow rhythm of material things. To illustrate this Bergson refers to the perception of colours.
May we not conceive, for instance, that the irreducibility of two perceived colours is due mainly to the narrow duration into which are contracted the billions of vibrations, which they execute in one of our moments ? If we could stretch out this duration, that is to say, live at a slower rhythm, should we not, as the rhythm slowed down, see these colours pale and lengthen into successive impressions, still coloured, no doubt, but nearer and nearer to coincidence with pure vibrations ? In cases where the rhythm of the movement is slow enough to tally with the habits of our consciousness - as in the case of the deep notes of the musical scale, for instance - do we not feel that the quality perceived analyses itself into repeated and successive vibrations, bound together by an inner continuity ? (Bergson 1939, 127-128 ; my emphasis)
The fact that we perceive a colour as a stable quality can be explained by the difference in rhythm between vibrations of the colour and of our consciousness. Take for example the perception of red light. According to Bergson, our psychological perception of one second of red light corresponds with 400 billion physical vibrations of waves. Through our perception we habitually contract these vibrations of the “infinitely diluted existence” of the colour into a few moments of our “more intense life”, thus perceiving these waves as one stable quality.
Bergson thus paints a picture of a world were everything vibrates and where the difference between phenomena is reduced to a differences in rhythm. The only reason why we experience stability is because we impose our intense rhythm of duration onto the slower rhythms, thus condensing a dynamic sequence of vibrations into one stable image. In short, “to perceive means to immobilize” (Bergson 1939, 233). In itself, Bergson does not perceive this stabilizing process as problematic. Quite the contrary, in order to analyse our environment and to act upon it we need to create stability, which means that we have to impose our rhythm on the things that surrounds us. However, although this imposition is important for utilitarian ends, we simply need to immobilize the phenomena that surround us in order to survive, it is also a reduction of reality. By forcing the rich polyrhythmic reality to follow one dominant rhythm, we “turn our back upon true knowledge” (Bergson 1939, 222). If we really want to comprehend life, we need to reverse this movement. Rather than imposing our rhythm on the external reality we need to dissolve, or dilate, our rhythm and enter into the rhythms of the durational reality that surrounds us. Bergson defines this method as intuition. In opposition to intelligence, which follows the above-described procedure, intuition allows us to relax our own rhythm and to experience the other rhythms of durance. Here we are “thinking backwards”, so that we can “expand our scope of perception”. [26] According to Bergson this method is native to the artist and the philosopher. Contrary to the scientist who imposes his rhythm on the material, the philosopher/artist tries to penetrate into the inner rhythms of the material that she is dealing with. As such, she is able to express life in all its durational, or vibrational complexity. In Evolution Créatrice (1941) Bergson elaborates this idea, as he describes the higher effort of intuition as a way to coincide with matter “adopting the same rhythm and the same movement”. [27] This effort helps the philosopher/artist to go against “the natural inclination of intelligence”, and to grasp reality from within. [28] Or, as Le Roy states in Une philosophie nouvelle – Henri Bergson (1912) the “absolute revelation is only given to the man who passes into the object, flings himself upon the stream, and lives within its rhythm.” [29]
Bachelard and rhythm : habits and dialectics
Already in the first sentence of L’intuition de l’instant Bachelard clarifies the stakes of his book, as he argues that : Time has but one reality, the reality of the instant (Bachelard 1932, 13). [30] Throughout the book Bachelard comes back to the idea that time can only exist as solitary instant, thus depriving past and future from any ontological reality. This ontological preference for the instant, however, confronts Bachelard with the challenge to understand why we experience time as something that is continuously unfolding. How can we have the impression of duration, when time should, both ontologically and intuitively, be understood as “a reality grafted on the instant and suspended between two nothingnesses” (Bachelard 1932, 13). Bachelard’s answer to this question is rhythm. According to Bachelard, the feeling of continuity between past, present and future is created by rhythms, which transform independent moments into “groupings of instants” or patterns (Bachelard 1932, 90). This continuity, however, is not grounded in reality. Past and future are merely dimensions of the present, which is the only reality of time. The past is thus reduced to the retention or echo of what was, and the future to the anticipation of, or intent towards what is about to come. Or, as Bachelard states, “the past is as empty as the future” and “the future is as dead as the past” (Bachelard 1932, 48).
Durational continuity is thus not a “direct force”, but the product of rhythms that establish themselves – and always have to re-establish themselves – in the present. Bachelard stresses that these rhythms are not predicated on a “pre-established harmony”, but that they are habitual : “past and future are essentially no more than habits” (Bachelard 1932, 51). The philosopher’s conceptualization of habit, however, differs from our common sense understanding of the term. Traditionally we understand habits as patterns that we establish throughout repetition. We have the habit to say ‘sorry’ when we bump into somebody in the streets, or to stop when the traffic light turns red. Habits are here understood as actions that we do. For Bachelard, however, habits are “fundamental” (Bachelard 1932, 70). We don’t perform them, but they constitute us. Habitual rhythms construct durational continuity, thus creating a sense of self or an identity. [31] Or, more prosaically phrased :
Global identity is thus composed of more or less accurate repetitions [redites], more or less detailed reflections. The individual will no doubt make an effort to trace its today upon its yesterday, and this copy will be aided by the dynamic of rhythms. […] Life carries our image from mirror to mirror. (Bachelard 1932, 71 ; my emphasis)
Our individual existence and identity are nothing but a habitual rhythm that needs to be re-actualized in every moment : “We should neither speak of the unity of the self nor of the identity of the self beyond synthesis of the instant” (Bachelard 1932, 71). The individual self, in so far as it persists through time, is nothing but “the integral sum of rhythms”
In other words, we don’t constitute habitual rhythms, but habitual rhythms constitute us. In condensing different instants into a continuous temporal pattern, they also tie together the individual identity and make that identity persist in and through time. This persistence, moreover, should not be understood as a simple repetition, but as a progression. This leads to a second fundamental difference between our common sense understanding of rhythm and Bachelard’s conceptualization of the term. According to Bachelard habit should not be understood in terms of a status quo, something that does not develop through time, but as something that constantly renews itself and changes. Bachelard gives the example of playing the piano. If we want to develop our piano playing, we have to practice every day, incorporating new elements in our technique. A habitual rhythm is thus always a “synthesis of novelty and routine”(Bachelard 1932, 65). In order to be efficient, a habit has to learn. It has to deal with novelty or difference, and to adapt its rhythm in order to incorporate this new element. If it isn’t able to do this, the rhythm will no longer be useful and, consequently, no longer be reiterated in the instant. In other words, “what persist is always what regenerates itself” (Bachelard 1932, 83). The past only stays when it is re-actualised in the present and it is only re-articulated in the present when it serves the progression of this present. Paraphrasing Nietzsche, Bachelard here talks about an “eternal reprise”, rather than an “eternal return” (Bachelard 1932, 81-82). [32]
In La dialectique de la durée Bachelard returns to the idea that durational continuity is “constructed with rhythms” rather than being based on pre-established “temporal base” (Bachelard 1950, ix). He picks up Bergson’s metaphor of the melody to underscore this idea. According to Bachelard “[w]e must in fact learn the continuity of a melody” (Bachelard 1950, 114). Melodic continuity is thus never experienced instantly. Instead, it is “the recognition of a theme that makes us aware of the melodic continuity”. We have to learn the continuity of a melody. We have to repeat and memorise its theme, before we can experience it as a durational continuity. In line with what we said before, this learning, however, cannot simply be equated with active learning, rather it resembles the way in which our perception is always conditioned by the patterns that we – consciously or unconsciously – inhabit. We don’t have to study each individual tune in order to like it, but for us to acknowledge it as a melody, it has to be part of our habit In other words, if we would have been born in a different time or place, we would not recognize its melodic continuity. In other words, melodic durations are always established belatedly (après coup) when we have trained the ear too recognize certain pattern.
In La dialectique de la durée Bachelard not only takes up his earlier conceptualization of rhythm, he also develops it. In this book Bachelard relates rhythm to the idea of dialectics. Rhythm is no longer simply sequential, connecting different moments into a continuous refrain, but develops itself dialectically. [33] This dialectics operate in a double fashion. Firstly, dialectics refers to a “fundamental heterogeneity that lies at the very heart of lived, active, creative duration” (Bachelard 1950, 8). According to Bachelard, duration is constituted by the dual operation of two states : creation and destruction, work and repose, affirmation and negation. This duality is crucial if we want to understand the possibility of change or the introduction of newness in time. For something to appear as new it should always break away from what came before. As such, every change is preceded by a moment of negation. Rather than being a concatenation of instants, rhythm thus appears as the alternation of – or interaction between – two opposite possibilities : “either in this instant nothing is happening, or else in the instant, something is happening. [34] Secondly, dialectics also refers to the fact that every rhythm is dialectally conditioned by other rhythms. Rhythms are always “relative”. They interrupt, build on, take their cues from or syncopate one another. Rhythms are thus always “overlaid and interdependendant” (Bachelard 1950, 123). They constantly interlock and superimpose so as to create a larger harmony of time.
This multiplicity, or density, also explains why we experience time as continuous and things as stable through time. Continuity cannot be found on the level of the individual rhythms, which are always the result of a dialectics between something and nothing, but is experienced at the higher level, where the different discontinuous rhythms are superimposed, and the different states have neutralized each other. Bachelard here refers to another musical metaphor : the orchestra. According to Bachelard the durational continuity of the music is not experienced at the level of the individual musicians, as these musicians are not continuously playing. Rather, it is experienced at the level of the orchestra, where the different instruments, which each play their own discontinuous line, come together to perform an overall harmony. In sum, the overall continuity of time is not connected to “one fundamental rhythm to which all the instruments refer”, but rather to the summation of the different rhythms of the different instruments that “support each other and carry each other along” (Bachelard 1950, 123). There is not one fundamental rhythm to which the instruments obey, but rather different independent rhythms that have to be brought together to form a continuous harmony. [35] Time should thus not be understood as a single thread, but as a tapestry, in which different threads are woven together to form a rich temporal texture.
Conclusion : Bachelard and the creation of new rhythmic textures
Despite the fact that Bachelard throws down the gauntlet to Bergson, there are still clear resemblances between the conceptualization of rhythm in both philosophical systems. Both Bachelard and Bergson coin rhythm as a crucial instrument to understand concrete duration. Rhythm is the pacemaker of our temporal existence. As such, rhythm is not only constitutive for the self, as it creates the temporality in which this self can live and persist through time, but also it is the tool via which we impose our time on the world that surround us and make it our home. In Bergson’s case this happens because through our perception, we impose the fast rhythm of our thinking onto the slow rhythm of material things, thus immobilizing them and making it possible for us to use them. In the case of Bachelard it is through our habits that we create a sustainable habitus for ourselves and find our place in the symphony of life.
Nevertheless, both philosophers have a fundamentally different vision on how we should relate to these rhythms. For Bergson, rhythm is an expression of the durational force that permeates everything and gives everything a specific (im)pulse. Consequently, rhythm is not only a tool via which we impose our will on our surrounding world, but also a way to connect to gain ‘true knowledge’ about that world, experiencing it “from within” (Bergson 1939 72). When we disengage ourselves from the particular rhythm of our consciousness and tune into the rhythms of duration we will manage to come into contact with the primary forces of life that are lurking underneath the superficial temporality of everyday life. For Bachelard, on the other hand, rhythms should not be understood as the expression of duration, but as that what produces duration. As such, the rhythms of becoming do not express anything natural or immediate. Quite the contrary, rhythms are always constructed. They are habits that, although primary to and constitutive for the individual self, fail to express any deeper truth about that self or the reality it relates to. For this reason, Bachelard is not interested in the search for the originary or primal rhythms of duration, but in the creation of radically new rhythmic constellations. Bachelard is fascinated by the moments of abrupt irruptions, when old rhythms are negated and new temporal structures are created : “Flat horizontality suddenly vanishes. Time no longer flows. It spouts [jaillit].” (Bachelard 1932, 106)
Bachelard finds this attempt to construct new rhythmic constellations in two figures that he holds in the highest esteem : the scientist and the poet. [36] The scientist is the one who says no to tradition, as he abandons the values and interests that guide our practical life. She “must first destroy in order to make room for her constructions” (Bachelard 1950, 14). As Bachelard states in Rationalisme Applique (1966), her method – the “antithesis of the habit” – imposes a “chronotechnique” that “expels lived duration”, thus producing a “suspended time” in which new “significant events” or new rhythmic constellations can emerge. [37] Similarly, the poet has the task to shatter the “simple continuity of shackled time” in order to make new temporalities arise (Bachelard 1932, 58). “Being a poet means multiplying the temporal dialectic and refusing the easy continuity of sensation and deduction” (Bachelard 1950, 124). Contrary to Bergson, for whom poetry should create a regular meter that lulls the listener/reader into a state self-forgetfulness, Bachelard’s argues that “the rhythmics of poetry gradually breaks away from ideas of measurement and is arithmetised by grouping together notable instants rather than by measuring uniform durations” (Bergson 1950, 124). Here the reader/listener does not regain contact with the original rhythms of durance, but is confronted with the possibilities of new rhythms, new temporalities that emerge out of the poetic experimentation. [38] As Bachelard mentions in Poetics of Space, the poem here gives us a “veritable cure of rhythmanalysis” : “to charm or to disturb – always to awaken – the sleeping being lost in its automatisms.” [39]
Contrary to Bergson, Bachelard is not interested in the actual time in which we live, but in the possible times that we can think of, or imagine. Rhythms should not be traced back to their temporal origins. Rather, they should be broken up and deconstructed so that new significant rhythms can emerge. Or, as Bachelard argues in the article Surrationalism, which was published in the same year as Dialectique de la durée, we should advocate a new model of thinking : “To turn the rationalism from the past towards the future, from recollection towards the tentative, from the elementary towards the complex, from the logic towards the surlogic these are the indispensible tasks of a spiritual revolution.” [40] It is within this context that we can best understand Bachelard’s rhythmanalytical project : not so much as an analytical method, than as a pedagogical project. [41] Understanding how life operates rhythmically will allow us to “regain mastery of the dialectics of duration” and to create new temporal structures (Bachelard 1950, 154). Consequently, the ongoing task of rhythmanalysis is to “look anywhere and everywhere in order to discover new opportunities for creating rhythms” (Bachelard 1950, 148).
