![]() ![]() ![]() From Overture:Īnd so it was that, for a long time afterwards, when I lay awake at night and revived old memories of Combray, I saw no more of it than this sort of luminous panel, sharply defined against a vague and shadowy background, like the panels which a Bengal fire or some electric sign will illuminate and dissect from the front of a building the other parts of which remain plunged in darkness: broad enough at its base, the little parlour, the dining-room, the alluring shadows of the path along which would come M. As this is the scene that begins the Recherche, it is especially worth returning to given its the centenary of the publication of Swann’s Way: not only does “the whole of Combray … sprng into being … from my cup of tea,” but this is the entry point of the entire novel sequence - a stunning meditation on the difference between voluntary and involuntary memory time and the palpable sense of it being both finite and infinite and a consideration of the creative wellspring from which all art springs. Those who have read Proust, and even those who haven’t, all know about the episode with the madeleine and tisane. ![]()
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