While reading of how a simple cup
of tea and a “buttery cookie flavored with lemon zest and shaped like a
seashell” immediately and spontaneously flooded Marcel Proust’s mind with an
overwhelming sense of joy, the thought occurs: What else can seemingly
commonplace occurrences evoke from the depths of our most secluded
subconscious? In his article, Marcel Proust: The Method of Memory, Johan Lerer suggests that Proust had a sort of
uncanny awareness of the value of introspection, or the psychoanalysis of the
self. In mentioning that Proust, unlike his predecessors and contemporaries,
invested a significant deal more into thoughts than he did things (a grave critique of his fellow persons of letters),
it becomes clear that the mind, in Proust’s opinion, was the truly beautiful
and amazing specimen, rather than that which it perceives. Proust’s work
“became a celebration of intuition, of all the truths we can know just by lying
in bed and quietly thinking.” Yet, while a thorough investigation of the
psyche, in a quasi-meditative style, held many secretive riddles to which
Proust sought suitable answers, such bedridden philosophical inquiries would prove
only so fruitful. Lerer makes note of the work of Brown psychologist Rachel
Herz, who, in studying the complexities of Proust’s literature along with the
neurological implications of his revelations, found that, indeed, “our senses
of smell and taste are uniquely sentimental.” It is no coincidence, then, that
Proust should have experienced such an “exquisite pleasure” from such an
apparently ordinary snack.
It becomes even more curious when
this singular instance in Proust’s life is extrapolated to envelope all of our
daily comings and goings. Might we, like Proust, find some deeply hidden,
nearly forgotten memory from the taste of a long-avoided food, or from the
distinct odor of some place where we have not been in ages? And for that
matter, is it not possible that such a revival of sensation and thought might
bring us the exact antithesis of “exquisite pleasure,” or any emotional shade
of grey falling in between? This presents a rather strange possibility. When
one least expects it, he may be immersed in any conceivable emotional state,
and without so much as a sign of warning. Proust finds nearly perfect words for
the dumbfounding inquiry that strikes at the heart of this phenomenon: “Will it
ultimately reach the clear surface of my consciousness, this memory, this old,
dead moment which the magnetism of an identical moment has traveled so far to
importune, to disturb, to raise up out of the very depths of my being?” Just as
Proust, himself, cannot provide a definitive response to such a confounding
dilemma, is it more likely than not that we, too, will be unable to reach the
solace that he does in The Episode of the Madeleine. At least, for his sake, he finally comes to the
realization that the root of his joy is derived from the long-lost memories of
a cherished aunt. The most haunting element of this discussion seems to be the
problem of discerning this origin. Just imagine the mounting frustration of
finding such an impetus as Proust’s Madeleine, experiencing its visceral
effects, and being yet unable to arrive at the source of your state of
heightened emotional response. Such baffling feelings, without any reasonable
explanation, might be comparably horrifying to being drugged with a
hallucinogen without your express knowledge. Such maddening futile curiosity
might well be simply unbearable.
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