Undoubtedly what is thus palpitating in the depths of my being must be the image, the visual memory which, being linked to that taste, has tried to follow it into my conscious mind. - Proust
The role of memory in literary studies is a
vibrant thrust area for an intensely passionate research endeavour! Also, memory
in literature is conditioned by a host of factors, which include the
historical, the political, the social, and the religious events that impact the
lives of the characters!
Writers since days of yore, have dabbled
with such finesse on the role of memory in their works! One such writer who’s
got such a unique way with memory is T. S. Eliot! And this prodigy was influenced
in his endeavours by the pathway shown by Marcel Proust and his amazing and astonishing tryst with
memory!
Sample this from Eliot's much-renowned Burnt Norton, on time and memory! (the
first in his Four Quartets)
Time
present and time past
Are
both perhaps present in time future
And
time future contained in time past.
What
might have been and what has been
Point
to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus,
in your mind.
But
to what purpose
Disturbing
the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I
do not know.
Go,
said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden
excitedly, containing laughter.
Go,
go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot
bear very much reality.
Time
past and time future
What
might have been and what has been
Point
to one end, which is always present.
In fact, Eliot’s breath-taking descriptions
here make this delightful read his best work in his entire oeuvre! Moreover, his
awesome take on memory here, has a lot of impactful associations with Marcel
Proust’s too!
If for Chaucer, memory aided his characters and their idiosyncrasies in the
construction of a collective identity, to the Romantics, memory was a tool that
helped them fly back into the past, or fly into the ideal world of imagination,
or to reflect on their personal conflicts, ‘charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
in the viewless wings of poesy’!
Marcel Proust takes this a step forward,
through his sense-evoked memory!
Well, in general, to most of us, some of the
sensory impulses evoke unique memories all the time!
It could be one cherished song we’d have loved
to listen to, since our childhood days, or it could be a phrase that we associate
with a particular person, a nickname that we use for a particular friend, or an
object that evokes strong recollections and reverberations into the past!
Similarly, on ‘disturbing the dust on a
bowl of rose-leaves’, through the sensory memories, Marcel Proust takes us all
down memory lane with his nostalgic reflections that beautifully connect with tasting
a little cake dipped in tea! From this little flashback that is stirred up in the
writer through the taste of the cake, and the mental connects associated with
it, he brings out a vast interconnected array of divergent identities constructed
through the realm of memory! This ‘drawing of a network of associations,
crafted effectively from a personal sensory memory of a cake,’ was used with
finesse by Marcel Proust, and later perfected with such alacrity by a host of
twentieth century writers, including namma
Eliot!
This component of memory, known as
involuntary memory, occurs with such frequency in most of us, when habituated incidents
of everyday life help evoke recollections of the past without much ado, and
with such spontaneity! Ain’t it? To Proust, dunking the tea biscuits in a cup
of piping hot coffee or tea, is one such example that can evoke wondrous
nostalgic involuntary memories from the past!
 |
| In Search of Lost Time in Six Volumes |
In his monumental autobiographical novel of
epic proportions, titled, In Search of
Lost Time, [originally translated as Remembrance
of Things Past] that runs to a whopping 4,215 pages, in seven volumes,
Proust recollects with such intense
detailed descriptions on his childhood experiences up till his adulthood in
early 20th century aristocratic France! He simultaneously reflects on the loss
of time and lack of meaning in the world!
The role of memory assumes significance
throughout the novel, through involuntary memory, wherein sensory experiences of
smells, touch, sights and sounds, bring up a plethora of important memories
right in front of him!
Let’s start rightaway on our ‘snippety’ hitch-hikey
journey through Proust’s wondrous autobiographical novel!
Just a few delightful excerpts for us all,
from this awesome read!
Over to Marcel Proust -
I
feel that there is much to be said for the Celtic belief that the souls of those
whom we have lost are held captive in some inferior being, in an animal, in a
plant, in some inani mate object, and so effectively lost to us until the day (which
to many never comes) when we happen to pass by the tree or to obtain possession
of the object which forms their prison. Then they start and tremble, they call
us by our name, and as soon as we have recognised their voice the spell is
broken. We have delivered them: they have overcome death and return to share
our life.
And
so it is with our own past. 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, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material
object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do
not suspect. And as for that object, it depends on chance whether we come upon
it or not before we ourselves must die.
Many
years had elapsed during which nothing of Combray, save what was comprised in
the theatre and the drama of my going to bed there, had any existence for me,
when one day in winter, as I came home, my mother, seeing that I was cold,
offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily take. I declined at first,
and then, for no particular reason, changed my mind. She sent out for one of
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. And soon,
mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow,
I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the
cake.
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. 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. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal.
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. Whence did it come?
What did it signify? How could I seize upon and define it?
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. It is time to stop; the potion is losing
its magic. It is plain that the object of my quest, the truth, lies not in the cup
but in myself. The tea has called up in me, but does not itself understand, and
can only repeat indefinitely with a gradual loss of strength, the same testimony;
which I, too, cannot interpret, though I hope at least to be able to call upon
the tea for it again and to find it there presently, intact and at my disposal,
for my final enlightenment. I put down my cup and examine my own mind. It is for
it to discover the truth. But how? What an abyss of uncertainty whenever the mind
feels that some part of it has strayed beyond its own borders; when it, the seeker,
is at once the dark region through which it must go seeking, where all its equipment
will avail it nothing. Seek? More than that: create. It is face to face with
something which does not so far exist, to which it alone can give reality and substance,
which it alone can bring into the light of day.
And
I begin again to ask myself what it could have been, this unremembered state
which brought with it no logical proof of its existence, but only the sense
that it was a happy, that it was a real state in whose presence other states of
consciousness melted and vanished. I decide to attempt to make it reappear. I
retrace my thoughts to the moment at which I drank the first spoonful of tea. I
find again the same state, illumined by no fresh light. I compel my mind to
make one further effort, to follow and recapture once again the fleeting sensation. And that
nothing may interrupt it in its course I shut out every obstacle, every
extraneous idea, I stop my ears and inhibit all attention to the sounds which
come from the next room. And then, feeling that my mind is growing fatigued
without having any success to report, I compel it for a change to enjoy that
distraction which I have just denied it, to think of other things, to rest and
refresh itself before the supreme attempt. And then for the second time I clear
an empty space in front of it. I place in position before my mind's eye the still
recent taste of that first mouthful, and I feel 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, has tried to follow it into my
conscious mind. But its struggles are too far off, too much confused; scarcely
can I perceive the colourless reflection in which are blended the uncapturable
whirling medley of radiant hues, and I cannot distinguish its form, cannot
invite it, as the one possible interpreter, to translate to me the evidence of its
contemporary, its inseparable paramour, the taste of cake soaked in tea; cannot
ask it to inform me what special circumstance is in question, of what period in
my past life.
How beautifully he makes us recall Eliot,
in every possible way!
Re-quoting
Eliot yet again makes much sense here! Here we go -
Footfalls
echo in the memory
Down
the passage which we did not take
Towards
the door we never opened
Into
the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus,
in your mind.
But
to what purpose
Disturbing
the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I
do not know…
No wonder this phenomenal autobiographical
novel by Marcel Proust, has been a benchmark and a paradigm of excellence, hugely impacting the use of memory in the entire gamut of modern
literature.
Our
tryst with the ‘autobiographical’ continues…
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