Swann's Way: Combray Chapter 1 (4th post)

 And so we come to the one part of the novel that everyone who has heard of Proust, non-readers included, knows: the episode of the madeleine.

Proust prepares by introducing the idea of voluntary memory. He describes this as the memory of the intellect and does not prize it very highly because "the pictures which that kind of memory shows us preserve nothing of the past itself" (p.57 Scott Moncrieff, p.47 Terence Kilmartin). Of our own past, he says: "It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm and reach of the intellect in some material object ... which we do not suspect", or to be more precise "in the sensation which that material object will give us".

Rather, we can only recapture the past by way of an involuntary memory (a term which Proust coined) and we will discover in the final part of the novel, after a series of similar but lesser known "Proustian moments", why and how that is so.

The first and most famous such memory arises like this: an older Marcel arrives home on a winter day and, to warm him, his mother gives him a cup of tea.

He raises to his lips a spoonful of tea in which he had soaked a morsel of a madeleine, a plump little cake which he describes as looking as though it has been moulded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell.

"No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin." (p.58 SM, p.48 TK). Marcel describes the resulting sensation as an "all-powerful joy" and asks himself where it could have come from and what it signifies. He realises that the object of his quest lies not in the cup but in himself. He puts down the cup and examines his mind. His efforts eventually bear some fruit: he feels "something start within me, something that leaves its resting-place and attempts to rise, something that has been embedded like an anchor at a great depth; I do not know yet what it is, but I can feel it mounting slowly; I can measure the resistance, I can hear the echo of great spaces traversed. Undoubtedly what is thus palpitating in the depths of my being must be the image, the visual memory which, being linked to that taste, is trying to follow it into my conscious mind. But its struggles are too far off, too confused and chaotic." (p.60 SM, p.49 TK). In the space of a single sentence, Marcel moves from not knowing the nature of the cause of his sensation ("I do not know yet what it is") to asserting it is a "visual memory", but despite his repeated efforts to draw "this memory" to the surface of his consciousness, he fails as a result of his habitual mental laziness when confronted with difficult enterprises.

But then "suddenly the memory returns". It was of Sunday mornings as a child at Combray when his invalid aunt Léonie would give him a morsel of madeleine which she had dipped in her cup of tea or lime-flower infusion. He observes on the lasting power of taste and smell to reawaken forgotten memories: "when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered ... taste and smell remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection." (p.61 SM, p.50 TK).

Not content with that wonderful passage, Proust ends the chapter with an incredible description of how the taste of the tea-soaked madeleine brings the old Combray back to life: "And just as the Japanese amuse themselves by filling a porcelain bowl with water and steeping in it little crumbs of paper which until then are without character or form, but, the moment they become wet, stretch themselves and bend, take on colour and distinctive shape, become flowers or houses or people, permanent and recognisable, so in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann’s park, and the waterlilies 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 their proper shapes and growing solid, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea." (p.62 SM, p.51 TK).

There is something a little unusual about Marcel's "involuntary memory" (a phrase which, incidentally, is not used until later in the novel). Partly that is to do with the terminology: in what sense is the memory "involuntary"? Marcel is actively trying to remember - he makes repeated conscious efforts to raise the submerged memory. It is, however, involuntary in that it does not resurface as a result of his endeavours but afterwards seemingly of its own accord. Another oddity is that involuntary memories triggered by sensory stimuli usually emerge immediately: a smell of floor polish reminds us instantly of an assembly hall of our childhood; a passing whiff of scent we straightaway identify as that of an old teacher; etc. In this case, however, Marcel's submerged memory is coupled with an inability to recall it fully, rather like the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon we experience with names. And finally, his reaction to the stimulus which eventually causes the memory is one of "exquisite pleasure" and "all-powerful joy", but the reason for this is not explained by his subsequent realisation that the memory is of an event from his childhood. He admits as much: "although I did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so happy" (p.61 SM, p.51 TK).