A La Recherche du Temps Perdu. Tome I

1954

Private Collection

[Paris]: Gallimard

Marcel Proust’s moments are often instances of involuntary memory, triggered by a sensory experience. In In Search of Lost Time (or Remembrance of Things Past), the best-known example is a memory prompted by the taste of a madeleine (a small cake). In volume one, Swann’s Way, displayed here, the narrator believes that he has only one memory of his childhood visits to Combray, until, years later, a madeleine dipped in tea touches his palate: a shudder runs through him, an exquisite pleasure invades his senses, and suddenly a memory reveals itself. He remembers the taste of the madeleine his aunt Léonie gave him on Sunday mornings at Combray.