In Marcel Proust’s seven-volume main work “In Search of Lost Time” there are a few striking passages that have made literary history. The so-called “Madeleine effect” or “Proust moment” is particularly prominent. A madeleine is a French fine pastry made from sand. Its taste, combined with that of linden blossom tea, triggered a long line of childhood memories for Marcel Proust.
The Salzburg Germanist and literary critic Anton Thuswaldner invited 14 authors to write about their “Madeleine Effects”, strong sensual impressions that make childhood memories bloom. Thuswaldner has made a clever choice of authors to avoid repetition and similarities. The oldest contributors are Martin Walser and Alexander Kluge, the youngest Christina Maria Landerl and Anna Kim. Born in South Korea in 1977, Kim tells of an intense garlic-chili smell that emanated from the packages that her father had sent to Vienna from South Korea.
Landerl, on the other hand, eats a muesli in Berlin that reminds her of another, long since digested one that she ate as a child in Bad Hall. This memory also includes the sofa corner with the blankets, the cousin and Tom and Jerry.
Bernd-Jürgen Fischer remembers a rare smell of gasoline; Jens Wonneberger’s, the creaking of the wooden stairs that led to the attic of his parents’ house. There was stored a great deal of fascinating junk that told the story of generations. Readers of Josef Winkler already know the Carinthian author as a master of describing sensual perceptions. He owes his impulse to write the “Proust Effect” to a confectioner who smells of pastries, but Winkler wouldn’t be Winkler if his surreal chains of associations didn’t also lead to the impulsive and painful aspects of sensuality.
Invitation to the readership
At the end of the beautifully designed volume, Anton Thuswaldner places blank pages and an invitation to the reader to document their own Proust moment. I didn’t need to be told twice, and I guarantee: My childhood memories of the smell of smoked, roasted and baked food in the pantry of the Knirzinger farmer (Pramet, Innviertel 1960) disenchanted Proust’s Madeleine to olfactory mediocrity. On the other hand, Proust writes better than I do – I have to admit.
Source: Nachrichten
