Proust's madeleine: the text of the passage, and what it really says
Looking for the text of Proust's madeleine? Here it is, in the original French, followed by a plain English reading: what exactly happens in that cup of tea, why Proust takes a whole page to tell it, and what the expression has become since.
The TextThe Madeleine Passage, the Text
The passage appears in Du côté de chez Swann, the first volume of In Search of Lost Time, published in 1913. Here is the moment of recognition, as Proust wrote it.
Et tout d'un coup le souvenir m'est apparu. Ce goût, c'était celui du petit morceau de madeleine que, le dimanche matin à Combray, quand j'allais lui dire bonjour dans sa chambre, ma tante Léonie m'offrait après l'avoir trempé dans son infusion de thé ou de tilleul.
Mais, quand d'un passé ancien rien ne subsiste, après la mort des êtres, après la destruction des choses, seules, plus frêles mais plus vivaces, plus immatérielles, plus persistantes, plus fidèles, l'odeur et la saveur restent encore longtemps, comme des âmes, à se rappeler, à attendre, à espérer, sur la ruine de tout le reste, à porter sans fléchir, sur leur gouttelette presque impalpable, l'édifice immense du souvenir.
Marcel Proust, Du côté de chez Swann, 1913.
A plain prose rendering, offered as a reading aid. The print itself keeps the original French.
And suddenly the memory appeared to me. That taste was the taste of the little piece of madeleine that on Sunday mornings at Combray, when I went to say good morning to her in her room, my aunt Léonie would give me after dipping it in her infusion of tea or lime blossom.
But when nothing remains of an ancient past, after the death of people and the destruction of things, alone, frailer but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, smell and taste still remain for a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, upon the ruin of all the rest, carrying without flinching, on their almost impalpable droplet, the immense edifice of memory.
What Actually Happens in That Cup
On a winter evening the narrator comes home frozen. His mother offers him tea, which he first refuses, then accepts. She sends for one of those madeleines, and at the first mouthful mixed with crumbs something inexplicable happens: an immense pleasure floods him, with no idea where it comes from.
What follows is a full page of failure. He takes a second sip, a third, he searches, he questions his memory, and finds nothing. Only when he gives up does the memory return by itself: the taste is that of Sunday mornings at Combray, at his aunt Léonie's. A whole childhood comes back out of a cup of tea.
A Step-by-Step Reading
Prose, not verse, but built like a musical movement: a sensation, a long search that fails, then the revelation. The sentences lengthen as the memory rises.
The Sensation, Before Any Idea
The starting point is not a thought but a taste. Proust insists that the narrator understands nothing of what is happening to him: the pleasure is there, isolated, with no notion of its cause. That is the wager of the whole book, truth passes through the body before it passes through the intellect.
The Search That Fails
Then comes the part nobody ever quotes: the narrator keeps at it, returns to the cup, forces his memory, and gets nothing. Proust shows that the will is useless here. Voluntary memory, the kind you summon, returns only dead images; it is the other kind, involuntary, that gives back the past alive.
The Recognition
The memory finally appears on its own, and Proust puts it into a sentence that became famous: smell and taste outlive everything, and carry the immense edifice of memory on an almost impalpable droplet. The imbalance of the image, an edifice on a drop, says everything about the fragility of what makes us who we are.
L'odeur et la saveur restent encore longtemps, comme des âmes, à porter sans fléchir l'édifice immense du souvenir. Proust's madeleine, Swann's Way
Why the Expression Left the Book Behind
A madeleine de Proust is now said of any childhood memory triggered by a smell or a taste, often by people who have never opened the book. The expression has drifted a little: for Proust the point is not nostalgia, it is the discovery that the past is not lost, merely out of reach of the will. And the rest of the work comes out of this page.
The Text on Your Wall
At Heure d'été we set this page of In Search of Lost Time as a typographic art print, exactly as it appears in the book: the page number, the running head, the text, nothing else. Printed to order on 170 g/m² matte paper, it finds its place in a reading corner, above a desk, or inside a gallery wall of literary prints.
A page you love on a wall is a text you reread. That is the whole idea.
The Last Word
Two paragraphs from a three thousand page book, and this is the one everybody knows. Read it, reread it, and if it is one of yours, give it a place where you can see it every day.
Literature as Art Prints
The great French texts set as typographic prints, made to order on 170 g/m² matte paper.
See the full collection →Frequently Asked Questions
Which book is the madeleine passage from?
The madeleine passage appears in Du côté de chez Swann (Swann's Way), the first volume of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, published in 1913.
What does the expression a madeleine de Proust mean?
It refers to an object, a smell or a taste that suddenly brings back a whole childhood memory. For Proust the key idea is that the memory returns unsought, through the senses rather than the will.
What does the narrator drink with the madeleine?
Tea. The narrator dips a piece of madeleine in a spoonful of tea, and it is that mixture which triggers the memory of Sunday mornings spent at Combray at his aunt Léonie's.
Why is this passage so famous?
Because it contains, in two pages, the principle of the entire work: the past is not lost, it is simply beyond the reach of voluntary memory, and one sensation is enough to bring it back intact.