We imagine always when we speak that it is our own ears, our own mind, that are listening. - Marcel Proust

And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) of which we have no inkling. And it depends on chance whether or not we come upon this object before we ourselves must die.

نمی توانست با اندیشه اش درد را آرام کند، انگاری که دردی فیزیکی باشد، اما درد فیزیکی از آنجا که از اندیشه مستقل است ، دستکم اندیشه می تواند برا آن تامل کند، ببیند که فروکش کرده یا برای کوتاه زمانی بازایستاده است. ولی آن درد را، اندیشه با همان یادآوری اش دوباره پدید می آورد. همین که می خواستی دیگر به آن نیندیشی باز به آن می اندیشیدی و باز درد می کشیدی، و هنگامی که، در گفت و گو با دوستان، آن را از یاد برده بود، ناگهان کلمه ای حالت چهره اش را دگرگون می کرد، همچون زخمی ای که کسی ناآگاهانه و بی احتیاط به اندام آسیب دیده اش دست بزند.

No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. ... Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it? ... And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it. And all from my cup of tea.