“ONERIC INFIDELITY” IN L’EMPLOI DU TEMPS OR HOW MICHEL BUTOR DISCUSSES GASTON BACHELARD’S IDEAS20th century philosopher Gaston Bachelard considers the combination of two elements of nature as a metaphorical “marriage,” with all its symbolic and religious meaning, including fidelity and prohibition of adultery. Water and fire, united in a moment of alchemical inspiration, form an archetypal couple of great creators, which participate in cosmogonic myths. Bachelard imagines any elemental union in the aquatic categories, which results from his theory where water is the main component of each association due to its properties of universal solvent, and the other three elements — fire, air and earth — represent only secondary components. However, some contemporary writers like Michel Butor offer a completely opposite conception, according to which the elements of nature do not respect the binary rule of the “marriage” and form triple or even quadruple unions. These monstrous mixtures described in his novel L’Emploi du temps give, indeed, a destructive effect and tend to doom the world. What would become of the notion of “oneiric fidelity,” postulated by Bachelard, in the sacrilegious universe of Butor’s novel, filled with accursed amalgamates of multiple elements?
The article proposes to look at the idea of the infinity from the perspective of a French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard. His theory concerning the four elements is one of the twentieth century’s most interesting elementary concepts. The aim of this work is to show a manifest link between the notion of the infinity and its realizations (materializations) on the physical plane, that is to say Bachelard’s water and air. Both of these elements represent their own, specific kind of infinity, which is nonetheless very close to a man, because not only conceivable but also present in everyday life. Every single contact with the element is a touch of infinity.
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