... when one day in winter, as I returned home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, suggested that, contrary to my habit, I have a little tea. I refused at first and then, I do not know why, changed my mind. she sent for one of those squat, plump cakes called petites madeleines that look as though they have been molded in the grooved valve of a scallop shell. and soon, mechanically, oppressed by the gloomy day and the prospect of another sad day to follow, I carried to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had let soften a bit of madeleine. but at the very instant when the mouthful of tea mixed with the cake crumbs touched my palate, I quivered, attentive to the extraordinary thing that was happening inside me. a delicious pleasure had invaded me, isolated me, without my having any notion as to its cause. It had immediately rendered the vicissitudes of life unimportant to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory, acting in the same way that love acts, by filling me with a pure essence; or rather this essence was not merely inside me, it was me. where could it have come to me from – this powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected to the taste of the tea and the cake, but that it went infinitely far beyond it, could not be of the same nature. where did it come from? what did it mean? how could I grasp it? reflections that forever influenced, and expanded our relationship to the connection between aroma (scent and flavor) and memory -- ☀
Posted on: Tue, 05 Nov 2013 15:29:00 +0000
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