On Marcel Proust | ‘Taste & Memory’ Combo 😊
Remembering Proust on his birthday today!
“A lot can happen over coffee”, goes the famous tagline of Café Coffee Day!
Indeed, “A lot can happen over tea” as well, proves Proust, Marcel Proust, and goes on to connect ‘taste’ with memory!
Yes! A lovely Taste & Memory Combo!
Imagine yourself back in your childhood days, ‘tasting’ a strange new variety of fruit, that made you deliriously ill for the next couple of days.
Chances are, when someone gives you the same fruit today, you will run helter skelter, far far away from the fruit, won’t you?
Here, the ‘taste’, the ‘memory’ of the taste and the place it happened get themselves seated in the hippocampus of the brain, and helps you react in a certain way!
The
hippocampus then, happens to be the area where episodic memories or
autobiographical memories are stored and catalogued for your own future access.
Episodic memories could refer to specific incidents in our lives, like the coffee we had with our favourite friend, at Starbucks or Coffee Day, a long time ago!
To Marcel Proust, similarly, one small bite of a madeleine dipped in his tea was enough to transport him on a beautiful journey through memory!
A lovely instance of taste ‘summoning’ memory!
In short, a ‘sense-evoked’ memory!
Yes! One small bite of a madeleine dipped in his tea, was able to summon up a memory that inspired him to write his seven-volumed, 4,215-page novel, titled, Remembrance of Things Past.
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.’
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!
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?
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.
says Proust, in Volume 1 of this novel.
[T. S. Eliot would call it, ‘disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves’ through the sensory memories.]
And thus happened Proust’s monumental autobiographical novel of epic proportions, through which, he 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!
To William Wordsworth, ‘the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears’.
Which means, ‘thoughts’ can be sparked, and ‘memories’ kindled, when one’s consciousness is directed towards an object.
To Wordsworth, since his conscious thoughts are directed towards the ‘flower’, it makes nostalgic thoughts by the number well up within him!
To Marcel Proust then, when his consciousness is directed towards the ‘dunking of the morsel of cake in his tea’, it facilitates the insurrection of a range of subjugated memories!
Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey is yet another delightful rumination on revisiting Tintern Abbey five years later.
Every object that he sees here, impresses him to the core, and the “steep and lofty cliffs” in especial, impress upon him “thoughts of more deep seclusion”!
In philosophy, this experience is referred to as intentionality, the capacity of humans to direct themselves at objects!
Brentano, a great inspiration for Husserl, says that,
Every mental phenomena, is directed at an object, which we might call, intentional object or intentional inexistence or immanent objectivity!
Hence it is that, every belief has a believed!
Every desire has a desired! Every Love has a loved! Every Hate has a hated!!!
This capacity of directing one’s consciousness towards an object/s is also called ‘Aboutness’ or ‘directedness!’
It’s called thus, since it is intended towards, is about, or directed towards an object!
Intentionality, then, becomes the key to understanding human experience!
Thoughts can be sparked, and memories kindled, when one’s consciousness is directed towards an object.
Well, what’s that one particular song that you so relish down the ages, and that still resonates in your heart and soul even this very moment?
What’s that one particular sip of coffee that you so relish down the ages, and that still resonates in your heart and soul even this very moment?
What’s that particular nick-name of yours that you so cherish, across the years, and that still stirs a chord in you even this very moment?
In short, what’s that ‘disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves’ moment for you?
PS: Photos and templates, this blogger’s.
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