It is plain that the object of my quest, the truth, lies not in the cup but in myself.’ It is time to stop the potion is losing its magic. I drink a second mouthful, in which I find nothing more than in the first, a third, which gives me rather less than the second. Whence did it come? What did it signify? How could I seize upon and define it? Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory - this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself. ‘An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. The prolonged madeleine scene is situated in the ‘Overture’ of the first volume of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time - Swann’s Way (1913), and begins with a cold, adult Marcel, who is offered tea and madeleines by his mother (‘those short, plump little cakes called “petites madeleines,” which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim’s shell.’), tasting a morsel of the madeleine cake soaked in tea: The whole scene was suddenly changing before the eyes of my memory, with different colours, textures, and flavours. I was even more surprised to realize that as a child Proust was probably not even drinking tea with it, but rather ‘tilleul’, a herbal tea made with lime (or linden-tree) flowers, more suitable to children. When I then decided to tackle the giant Proustian oeuvre by myself, years later, I was surprised to find out my teacher had lied about the biscuits – because in the notorious scene Proust is not eating a simple biscuit, but rather precisely a madeleine – which of course has given literature scholars more to think about than a biscuit would have. And so, the beginning of twentieth-century literature as studied in school appeared to me marked by one French person dunking a biscuit – fantastic. When we first studied Proust in school, my literature teacher told us, quite simply, that adult Marcel was dunking a biscuit in his tea, which made him remember things from his childhood, and that was the start of his narrations, ‘in search of lost time’. And so, sweet madeleines and savoury madeleines (yes, they exist!) would came out of my oven and crowd my kitchen, to be then distributed amongst various friends and family members: green, matcha-flavoured madeleines amber-coloured, honey and cardamom madeleines dark-tinged, chocolate and hazelnut madeleines pale, almond and ricotta ones…ĭid this improve my understanding of Proust? Maybe. In order to better prepare me for this conference, my mother bought me a madeleine mould as a present -a great gift indeed-, and instead of worrying about the conference, Proust, and my paper, as most of my friends can imagine, I started baking madeleines frenziedly, in an attempt at mastering the art of making this rather simple, yet sublime sweet. Over a year ago, I decided to take part in a postgraduate conference on Proust: my paper got accepted, and I was pleased yet rather nervous about it, as this was really out of my ‘comfort zone’, me being by no means a French Literature expert.
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