Monday, September 10, 2007

Petit Madeleine

I have a new mania for madeleines. Today when I went to Starbucks for my daily coffee, I saw them and decided I had to have one. I used to work at Starbucks for about six months and never once thought of eating one, which is a shame because they're so delicious. Well, I enjoyed my three petite pieces and it made my coffee that much more enjoyable as well. So being that it's my new mania, I decided to do some research on it and it's just amazing how the search for a pastry can lead you to so many different places. It started off fairly normal with a wikipedia search. Not satisfied with the picture on that page, I did a google image search for "petit madeleine" and found this picture on a japanese page

But what caught my attention on the wikipedia entry was the section about involuntary memory and Proust's In Search of Lost Time. Yet again, I was not satisfied with that entry and searched more and found this:
Unusual experiences led Proust to "the truth of involuntary memory," the basis for his life's work. The famous incident of the petit madeleine revealed to him a past lying dormant within him, ready to be called back to consciousness. He was able to retrieve "a feeling of inexplicable happiness" when his mother offered him the little plump cake. He was illuminated by a childhood memory (of Combray), where his Aunt Leone on Sunday mornings used to give him a madeleine, dipping it first in her own cup of tea. It "all sprang into being, town and garden alike, from my cup of tea!"

It was on a secular humanism website. I remember a guy talking about secular humanism on bill moyers, but I couldn't remember his name so I searched PBS and found this on Faith and Reason. I still can't find this guy who was a scientist and secular humanist and I'm tired and it's getting late. But anyways, he believed that secuar humanism was going to save the world, or at least stop global warming or was it terrorism.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Okay Crazy.
Very academic albeit regarding a madeleine.

Anonymous said...

Yao-Man love's Madelines.