So, it’s official - I’ve managed to make it through one month, and what better way to celebrate my first month’s anniversary and having reached the famous “madeleine scene” than with madeleines and tea!!
I’ve gone back and read that passage over and over, and, like the pressed Japanese paper capsules which metamorphose when placed in water, new facets and depths of meaning unfold and materialize with each reading. It is such an exquisite description of that kind of memory he calls “involuntary,” which comes out of nowhere, completely unexpected, from a smell, a taste, or a sight, and which triggers a flood of memory so complete and immediate that nothing else exists in that moment; one is transported away; where the "smell and taste of things remain poised a long time...and bear, unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection ; l’odeur et la saveur restent encore longtemps, comme des âmes, à se rappeler, à attendre, à espérer, sur la ruine de tout le reste, à porter sans fléchir, sur leur gouttelette presque impalpable, l’édifice immense du souvenir." Mon dieu!!
I had just such an experience a couple of years ago when I started skating lessons at the rink where I skated often as a child and teenager. Just the sight of the building brought back many fond memories (except when I fell and broke my wrist when I was 10); but - the second I went inside, the smell!! Such a peculiar, but totally unique, mix of smells...the popcorn and hotdogs from the snack bar, the musty leather of the skates, the wooden skating floor... I was instantly and so wholly transported back to my childhood that I stood transfixed for must have been quite a while, as I came out of my reverie only when someone stood waving their hand in front of my face, saying, “hello? anyone there?”
It is interesting to note that these “Proustian moments” are most often triggered by smell or taste, and much less often by sight or sound. He says in Swann, "The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I had tasted it; perhaps because I had so often seen such things in the meantime, without tasting them..."
I’ve gone back and read that passage over and over, and, like the pressed Japanese paper capsules which metamorphose when placed in water, new facets and depths of meaning unfold and materialize with each reading. It is such an exquisite description of that kind of memory he calls “involuntary,” which comes out of nowhere, completely unexpected, from a smell, a taste, or a sight, and which triggers a flood of memory so complete and immediate that nothing else exists in that moment; one is transported away; where the "smell and taste of things remain poised a long time...and bear, unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection ; l’odeur et la saveur restent encore longtemps, comme des âmes, à se rappeler, à attendre, à espérer, sur la ruine de tout le reste, à porter sans fléchir, sur leur gouttelette presque impalpable, l’édifice immense du souvenir." Mon dieu!!
I had just such an experience a couple of years ago when I started skating lessons at the rink where I skated often as a child and teenager. Just the sight of the building brought back many fond memories (except when I fell and broke my wrist when I was 10); but - the second I went inside, the smell!! Such a peculiar, but totally unique, mix of smells...the popcorn and hotdogs from the snack bar, the musty leather of the skates, the wooden skating floor... I was instantly and so wholly transported back to my childhood that I stood transfixed for must have been quite a while, as I came out of my reverie only when someone stood waving their hand in front of my face, saying, “hello? anyone there?”
It is interesting to note that these “Proustian moments” are most often triggered by smell or taste, and much less often by sight or sound. He says in Swann, "The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I had tasted it; perhaps because I had so often seen such things in the meantime, without tasting them..."
From a scientific perspective, this is possibly due to the fact that smells and tastes are chemical in nature, which in turn causes our brains to create very specific chemical memories which allow us to differentiate among thousands of smells and tastes.
Why, then, does not every smell and taste have this "Proustian" effect? Again, from the scientific perspective, it has been shown that adrenaline causes us to remember things much more quickly, clearly, and intensely; and it is emotion, both positive and negative, that causes the release of adrenaline. That is why the mundane, the boring, the repetitive things in our lives are often not remembered - they have little or no emotion attached to them - the indelible ink of adrenaline was not used to write the memory.
My favorite part of this scene, however, is his use, to describe the process of his recollection, of those Japanese paper tablets, which when immersed in water would slowly expand and unfold into beautiful flowers and pagodas:
These were still around when I was a child in the early 1960s, and I have vivid recollections of the magic they created, and of which I never tired, no matter how many times I saw it."And as in the game wherein the Japanese amuse themselves by filling a porcelain bowl with water and steeping in it little pieces of paper which until then are without character or form, but, the moment they become wet, stretch and twist and take on colour, solid and recognisable, so in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann's park, and the water lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and its surroundings, taking shape and solidity, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea."
Je suis un peu triste de quitter cette belle scène...
À bientôt,
Michel
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