Nests Summary and Analysis

Bachelard moves the imagery of small boxes and secrets to nests and inhabiting. He quotes Victor Hugo's character, the Notre Dame hunchback Quasimodo, that the cathedral is "egg, nest, house, country and universe." These are being and images of the inhabiting function. Vlaminck, a painter writes of the contentment humans feel similar to the animal refuge a rat finds in his hole or a rabbit in his burrow. Bachelard characterizes them as primal images of nests and shells that allow one safe and pleasurable withdrawal into his corner. Bachelard criticizes any images that attribute human qualities to a nest, commenting on the use in literature of a nest as "childish."

Bachelard uses the metaphor of the happy household as a flourishing nest. The woodpecker is the "proprietor" of the tree in which he lives and works. The pecking in a tree...