Literal Translation
Proust’s madeleine
Actual Meaning
A smell, taste or sound which dredges up a long-lost memory
Etymology
In the novel Du côté de chez Swan, the first work in the series ‘In Search of Lost Time’, published in 1913, Marcel Proust describes how the simple act of eating a madeleine brings back childhood memories in the narrator’s mind. As a child, the narrator would visit his Aunt Léonie in Combray and eat madeleines dipped in tea or herbal tea. Later, as an adult, his mother offers him a madeleine with tea to warm him up. Without knowing why, eating a madeleine evokes strong emotions in the adult narrator. Later in the novel, he realises that this sensation was due to the fact that the madeleine had reactivated happy memories that were stored in his memory:
“In the same way, the taste of the little madeleine had reminded me of Combray. (…) The unevenness of the paving stones and the taste of the madeleine made the past encroach on the present, making me hesitate as to which of the two I was in.”
A madeleine de Proust is something that triggers a happy childhood memory, without one consciously trying to remember it, and which can lead to a certain nostalgia for those lost moments.