The Way by Swann’s - 3

A madeleine is a small cake in the shape of a sea shell. Marcel eats one of these, dipped in a cup of tea, and the taste of it brings back his life as a child with the memories of cakes when he was much younger triggering further memories and these in turn bringing other memories in a mad tumble. Proust describes the experience in minute detail. It is a stunning passage, justly famous.

But there is something in part one that is even more amazing. Marcel describes life in his family, specifically one aspect of his relationship with his mother. He lives for her goodnight kisses but his father thinks he is too old for such nonsense and tells him so. (Marcel is nine at this time.) Marcel describes his anguish when his mother, because she is busy entertaining guests, cannot kiss him goodnight. His loneliness and loss are cringe inducing. He describes his need for his mother's affection like a grown man lamenting an unrequited love. Such fearlessness in putting these things on the page. I have to respect Proust for the courage to tell the truth so candidly.

I am now 70 pages into the book, reading 10 pages a day. I am going slow because the prose asks me to. The paragraphs are long and dense. I find myself fuzzing out at times, reaching the bottom of a page and realizing that I did not take in any of it, so I go back to the top and try again. A very eerie thing, to realize one's eyes have tracked over a page of words, but one has not absorbed any of the meaning of the words. Proust describes this very thing at one point in the text: "...in those days, when I read, I often daydreamed, during entire pages, of something quite different.." (p. 44) It made me laugh. It was as though he was telling me "I know how it is reading about foreign people and customs. But stick with me. It'll be worth it." I suspect he's right.