Proust and his madeleines

The Buddhist concept of living in the moment is wonderful, but easier said than done at times.

The other week I attended a French literature class and they were discussing Marcel Proust, one of the greatest authors of the 20th century.

We were talking about his story of the madeleine, where he takes a bite of a madeleine cookie with his herbal tea and is immediately drawn back to his childhood for a moment: all the feelings of joy that he had experienced one day when his aunt had given him a madeleine cookie and tea during his childhood. Yet the vivid memory only lasted for a moment. The more he tried to recapture that sensation by taking more bites of his cookie and more sips of his tea, the more elusive the feelings and memories became, like waking up from a dream.

I had always thought this story was very nice, but rather simple. However, I think I was wrong. Proust isn't only nostalgic, he is trying to recapture specific feelings from his past and bring them into the present moment, yet is unable to do it. How true and universal this concept really is.

There are times when we are flooded with memories by re-tasting a certain food or smelling a particular scent, hearing a specific song, or even looking at old photos: these are like small gifts. They bring us directly into the past for a few seconds, allowing us to remember distincly, not only people and places, but also how we felt at that precise moment.

The feeling may not last, as Proust so desperately wanted, but still we sense something, even if for a moment. And whether in the past or present, we certainly spend much of our time thinking fondly and longingly of those people and places that are far from us.

"The Portuguese call it saudade: a longing for something so indefinite as to be indefinable. Love affairs, miseries of life, the way things were, people already dead, those who left and the ocean that tossed them on the shores of a different land - all things born of the soul that can only be felt."

- Anthony De Sa

What a truism saudade is. Saudades do passado perdido, saudades dos momentos felizes, saudades das pessoas queridas que estão longe!