bachelard

Alexander Dumas tells in his Mémoires that, as a child, he was bored, bored to tears. When his mother found him like that, weeping from sheer boredom, she said: "And what is Dumas crying about?" "Dumas is crying because Dumas has tears," replied the six-year-old child. This is the kind of anecdote people tell in their memoirs. But how well it exemplifies absolute boredom, the boredom that is not the equivalent of the absence of playmates. There are children who will leave a game to go and be bored in a corner of the garret. How often have I wished for the attic of my boredome when the complications of life made me lose the very germ of all freedom! (94)

Bachelard, Gaston. "Poetics of Space (Extract)." Ed. Neil Lench. Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Critical Theory. Routedge, 1997. 86-97.