Re-reading Proust. His choice of a cake called Magdalene
is a risky tribute, a bold connection. The women-filled pages of Combray
Chapter One culminate with the eating of food named, indirectly, after the
First Witness to the Resurrection. Marcel says this happened on Sunday mornings
“because that day I did not go out before it was time for Mass.” Tribute,
maybe; connection, surely; and guide to how memory may be both unwilled and
then willed. The madeleine, dipped in tea, is discovery and invocation of the
Muse; scallop-shelled cakes, reminder of Saint James, that provide one guide to
Proust’s procedure.
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