Proust On Memory and Madeleines

"But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection." In this celebrated literary exploration of our evocative, mysterious relationship to memory, Marcel Proust vividly describes the torrent of experience unleashed by one 'memorable' bite of a madeleine, and his attempt at decoding the process.

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