Élan Vital — Pascale Bardos

É l a n V i t a l

I’m interested in the slippages between scientific rationale and poetic logic, using a phenomenological framework to observe my reception of information, and how that translates into my work. While studying ‘The Poetics of Space’ (1958), by Gaston Bachelard, philosopher of poetics, I found myself deeply intrigued by his reference to reverberation and perception as intuition and memory that combine through echoes and shape how we perceive our present. I researched his references to Eugène Minkowski, phenomenologist, who follows philosopher Henri Bergson’s notion of ‘élan vital.’

“‘Élan vital:’ the vital force or impulse of life; especially: a creative principle held by Bergson to be immanent in all organisms and responsible for evolution.”(1)

Bergson saw a ‘vital force’ as a creative impulse within an organism that is accountable for change and adaptation through the progression of humanity. In his book ‘Creative Evolution’ (1907), he navigates the philosophy of process with reflection on biology at the forefront of his thoughts. Bergson recognised evolution as a scientific fact and through his examination of existence, he established the importance of duration, being the unique qualitative essence of life. Bergson “…proposed that the whole evolutionary process should be seen as the endurance of an ‘élan vital’ (“vital impulse”), that is continually developing and generating new forms. Evolution, in short, is creative, not mechanistic.”(2)

Bergson uses notions of duration to conceive a perception of consciousness, as “duration is incomplete and continuously, not beginning or ending but intermingling.”(3) He explains consciousness in reference to duration as being an outward progression through one’s life, and an inward accumulation of memory that echoes through one’s existence to form perception. An innate momentum of the vital force shaped by the experiential resonance of memory through one’s trajectory. “Bergson defines the immediate data of consciousness as being temporal, in other words, as the duration.”(4)

The ‘élan vital’ is a sustained note that passes through time, transforms and gives shape to life through an evolutionary duration. The deep resonance of the ‘vital force’ is embedded into our beings and reverberates into an infinite continuum. The vital force is embedded within me as a living human being, and is strengthened by perceptive existential experience.

Eugène Minkowski was inspired by Bergson’s notion of ‘élan vital’ as the dynamic origin of human life, in which without, we would be stagnant and non-evolving.(5) Minkowski evolved the concept of this vital force as an elemental momentum that aligns us to the essence of existence that is participatory, and continually evolving through time and space. In Minkowski’s book ‘Towards a Cosmology,’ (1999) he speaks to the vital force as a ‘retentir’ (reverberation), and uses auditive metaphors, “for in sound both time and space are epitomized,”(6) to further articulate the true nature of resonate existence.

Minkowski writes, “If, having fixed the original form in our mind’s eye, we ask ourselves how that form comes alive and fills with life, we discover a new dynamic and vital category, a new property of the universe: reverberation (retentir).”(7) He further explains the sonority of life as a poetic image within our mind, activated by auditive words such as well-spring, horns, waves, and echoes where upon reception, our mind attunes to the reverberations of the soundwaves held in a word that “belongs to the material and palpable world.”(8)

Minkowski proposes that the vital force of life, the reverberation of existence, isn’t derived from the material or palpable world that activates a resonance of life. He believes it is independent of any instrument. He expresses that when we attune ourselves to our innate vital force, we ignite an internal sonority that sends penetrating waves into our existence. This interpretation is aligned with the audible sensory meaning, where sonorous is “…harmonious, resonant, melodic, and capable of determining the whole tonality of life.”(9) When we orientate ourselves to our innate reverberations, we heighten an immanent depth of being. He explains, “…here to ‘fill up’ and ‘plenitude,’ will have a completely different sense. It is not a material object, which fills another by espousing the form that the other imposes. No, it is the dynamism of the sonorous life itself, which by engulfing and appropriating everything, it finds in its path, fills the slice of paper, or better, the slice of the world that it assigns itself by its movement, making it reverberate, breathing into it its own life.”(10)

Bachelard references Minkowski’s notions of reverberation throughout his book “Poetics of Space.” He explores the phenomenological enquiry in the encounter of art, and whether the experience is inherently within us or within the work. He expresses, “…a phenomenological inquiry on poetry… must go beyond the sentimental resonance with which we receive a work of art. This is where the phenomenological doublet of resonances and repercussions must be sensitized. The resonances are dispersed on the different planes of our life in the world, while the repercussions invite us to give greater depth to our own existence. In resonance we hear the poem, in the reverberations we speak it, it is our own.”(11) The resonance of my research reverberates into my being and into my work, while the reverberations encapsulated in the work, unify the multiplicities of the resonance in the research. This in turn resonates within the experience of the viewer, enmeshing the reverberation of an individual experience into a collective encounter.

The Sun has been a vital force that has perpetuated endless scientific discoveries and subsequently expanded human consciousness. Investigations that predate Bergson, which act as anticipations of his work, can be seen in the principles developed by philosopher Posidonius who proposed that the sun emanated a "vital force" to all living beings on Earth.(12) Posidonius also endeavored to determine the distance between the sun and Earth. While his calculation was half the true distance, in measuring the size of the sun, however, he reached more accurate figures than those proposed by other Greek astronomers, including Aristarchus of Samos. His work is a reflection on the evolution of knowledge and conscious thought, which placed essential foundations for the transition of a geocentric perception of the universe into a heliocentric existence. This proposition was clarified by Nicolaus Copernicus in the 16th century, who created a geometric mathematical model of a heliocentric system with the sun at the centre of the universe that the Earth, planets and other stars revolved around. This laid way for Newton’s discovery of gravity that gave way to Einstein’s theory of general relativity (mass causing space-time to curve), and to further predict gravitational waves that were proven 100 years later in 2015 at LIGO.(13)

The consequence of acquired knowledge trickles through human consciousness to provoke further contemplations into further discoveries. In 1653, astronomer Christiaan Huygens calculated the distance from Earth to the sun as 149.6 million km. This advancement of measurement could then produce evidence for the time it takes for light to reach Earth. 8 minutes on average, as the Earth revolves on an elliptical rotation. The distance from the Sun to Earth forms the perfect conditions to produce and sustain the vital force.

We are consistently constructing the past as much as the past constructs us. How we orientate ourselves mentally and physically, constructs how we perceive and receive. This constant interaction of body and world forms a reciprocal reality. We equally create the world through our perception as much as the world is informing our sense of perception. The perceptual interactivity of self and world enmeshes the ‘flesh’ of the world with one’s own as our environment continually alters our brain, which in turn redefines our behavior.

“Élan Vital,” Merriam-Webster, date accessed 30.9.18. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/%C3%A9lan%20vital
“Henri Bergson,” Encyclopedia Britannica, date accessed 25.09.18. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henri-Bergson#ref202559
“Henri Bergson and the Perception of Time,” John-Francis Phipps, date accessed, 25.09.18. https://philosophynow.org/issues/48/Henri_Bergson_and_the_Perception_of_Time
“Henri Bergson,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, last modified March 21, 2016. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bergson/
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), xvi.
ibid.
ibid.
Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, xvii
ibid.
ibid.
Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, xxii
Eric Berne, A Layman’s Guide to Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), 98-9.
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory