A Proust madeleine is the trigger that brings back a childhood memory imbued with nostalgia, without trying to recreate this memory.
The expression comes from Marcel Proust's novel "Du cote de chez Swan", in which the narrator sees a childhood memory resurface when he eats a madeleine
More than the madeleine itself, it was the taste and smell of the cake that marked the narrator
A “Madeleine de Proust” is neither a cake nor a woman dear to the heart of Marcel Proust, a late 19th century writer.
Yet it is he who created this expression, describing a phenomenon of happy reminiscence in one of his novels.
Origin of Proust's Madeleine
In the novel
Du Côté de chez Swan
, the first work in the series "A la recherche du temps perdu", published in 1913, Marcel Proust describes how the simple fact of eating a madeleine brings up childhood memories in the mind of the narrator.
When he was a child, the narrator went to his aunt Léonie, in Combray, and ate madeleines previously soaked in an infusion or tea.
Later, as an adult, it was his mother who offered him a madeleine with tea, to warm him up.
Without knowing why, eating a madeleine caused strong emotions in the adult narrator.
Later in the novel, he realizes that this sensation was due to the fact that the madeleine had reactivated happy memories that were inscribed in his memory:
“Likewise, the taste of the little madeleine reminded me of Combray.
(…) The unevenness of the slabs, the taste of the madeleine went so far as to cause the past to encroach on the present, to make me hesitate to know which of the two I was in”.
Meaning of "Madeleine de Proust"
A "Madeleine de Proust" is an element that triggers the rise of a happy childhood memory, without our trying to remember it, and which can lead to a certain nostalgia for those lost moments.
It can be a smell, a taste, the sight of an object.
It is said, for example, that class photos are Proust's madeleines, because looking at them, certain details of the photo bring back memories and plunge the adult person back into childhood memories that belong to him.
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French language
Literature
Expression
Memory
Child
Company