State in whose presence other states of consciousness melted and vanished. Of its existence, but only the sense that it was a happy, that it was a real Substance, which it alone can bring into the light of day.Ĭould have been, this unremembered state which brought with it no logical proof Something which does not so far exist, to which it alone can give reality and Of it has strayed beyond its own borders when it, the seeker, is at once theĭark region through which it must go seeking, where all its equipment willĪvail it nothing. How? What an abyss of uncertainty whenever the mind feels that some part I put down my cup andĮxamine my own mind. Intact and at my disposal, for my final enlightenment. The same testimony which I, too, cannot interpret, though I hope at least toīe able to call upon the tea for it again and to find it there presently, Understand, and can only repeat indefinitely with a gradual loss of strength, The tea has called up in me, but does not itself That the object of my quest, the truth, lies not in the cup but in myself. It is time to stop the potion is losing its magic. Whence did it come? What did it signify? How could Iįind nothing more than in the first, a third, which gives me rather less than Transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of Was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it I hadĬeased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Precious essence or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself.

New sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a And at once the vicissitudes of life hadīecome indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusoryÂ–this An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached,

No sooner had the warm liquid,Īnd the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my wholeīody, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking Tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. With the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day Look as though they had been moulded in the fluted Plump little cakes called Â’petites madeleines,Â’ which I declined at first, and then,įor no particular reason, changed my mind. Me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily take. One day in winter, as I came home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered Theatre and the drama of my going to bed there, had any existence for me, when Nothing of Combray, save what was comprised in the

Marcel proust swann